In my opinion, the biggest problem with our society today is that no one stops long enough to notice or appreciate anything. We are in such a hurry to live life to the fullest that we miss out on a lot of things in the process.
- my classmate Amanda, in her post yesterday, which, itself, was in response to Pam's post
Living life to its fullest: what does that really mean? I love that Amanda used this phrase in contrast with the idea of not missing out on things. Typically, the two ideas are synonymous these days, but I agree that maybe they shouldn't be.
For the past week in class, we've discussed Native perspectives on nature, the idea that "wilderness" was a European fantasy and that in Native reality, wilderness was simply here, the same as everywhere else. What we are often tempted to call Childlike Wonder, should simply be the way we see, shouldn't it?
Why, do you think, we call it Acting Like an Adult when we stop noticing the everyday miracles?
I think it's because we're trying to justify actions--ignorance--that we know are wrong. My goals for my life each day include finding time to see, time to simply be here, whether it's among trees or inside my house or on a city street. To work hard and enjoy my work. To notice the everyday miracles.
In depleting our lives of the constant (pointless) demands we somehow think are important, we can free up our lives, slow down the pace, and make the time to fill our lives with the wonder of what we have sadly stopped seeing all around.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Grasping Vapor
When I was a little girl, I used to lie in the grass and stare at the sky, finding faces and animals and entire stories up there in the vaporous clouds. It’s a common childhood pastime, nothing unique, but I still love doing it all the same.
When I was in high school, I took a course on Astronomy, this time focusing on another kind of vaporous body in another kind of sky: the stars at night. Learning constellations and star names based on ancient civilizations’ own words for the shapes and faces and stories of the sky, was almost as exciting as coming up with my own.
What is it about the sky that draws me toward it? Its endless space? Its provision? Its possibilities? True, the mysteries of our own ocean floors outnumber the mysteries of outer space, but to this landlocked Pennsylvanian, the sky is an immediate reminder of all we still don’t know.
The sky, made of gasses and vapors; the clouds, water and dust; the stars, vaporous fire; and the planets and moons, reflections of light.
Although there are solids out there—the terra firma of certain planets, meteors, moons—most of outer space is just that: space. From the vapors of Earth’s atmosphere to the gasses of the Sun, most of what we see in the sky is made up of uncertainties. “How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?” sing Maria’s sisters in The Sound of Music. How do you hold a piece of the sky?
I wonder, if the sky and its clouds and stars and planets, were a character, what would the character be like? I once read a Snohomish story about humans and animals working together to push up the sky. In it, the sky wasn’t a character as much as a problem to be solved. Legends about the night sky call it a place, not a person. But what kind of person would it be?
I think the sky is unknowable, and despite our telescopes and rockets and space stations, the sky will always be a mysterious place, a place outside of us that is as inscrutable as the part of us that’s within. We can label the gaseous elements and trace the planets’ paths, but in the end, even naming something doesn’t mean we’ve figured it out.
When I was in high school, I took a course on Astronomy, this time focusing on another kind of vaporous body in another kind of sky: the stars at night. Learning constellations and star names based on ancient civilizations’ own words for the shapes and faces and stories of the sky, was almost as exciting as coming up with my own.
What is it about the sky that draws me toward it? Its endless space? Its provision? Its possibilities? True, the mysteries of our own ocean floors outnumber the mysteries of outer space, but to this landlocked Pennsylvanian, the sky is an immediate reminder of all we still don’t know.
The sky, made of gasses and vapors; the clouds, water and dust; the stars, vaporous fire; and the planets and moons, reflections of light.
Although there are solids out there—the terra firma of certain planets, meteors, moons—most of outer space is just that: space. From the vapors of Earth’s atmosphere to the gasses of the Sun, most of what we see in the sky is made up of uncertainties. “How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?” sing Maria’s sisters in The Sound of Music. How do you hold a piece of the sky?
I wonder, if the sky and its clouds and stars and planets, were a character, what would the character be like? I once read a Snohomish story about humans and animals working together to push up the sky. In it, the sky wasn’t a character as much as a problem to be solved. Legends about the night sky call it a place, not a person. But what kind of person would it be?
I think the sky is unknowable, and despite our telescopes and rockets and space stations, the sky will always be a mysterious place, a place outside of us that is as inscrutable as the part of us that’s within. We can label the gaseous elements and trace the planets’ paths, but in the end, even naming something doesn’t mean we’ve figured it out.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Backyard Healing
You might be surprised to learn that, for all I like to preach about the healing properties of nature, I seldom believe them, myself, when I really need them.
Like yesterday. It was a bad day. "Bad," as in (1) I am desperate to find time to go visit the friends in Baltimore whom I terribly miss, (2) I've reached the point in the semester when nothing I write has any future beyond the paper shredder/compost bin, and (3) we received notice from the county yesterday telling us they're changing our house number (... since it hasn't been functioning properly for the past twenty years?).
I took a moment from the Essays That I Wish Would Write Themselves to go to the kitchen and refill my water bottle, when I realized it was 6:00 and almost sunset. I hemmed. I hawed. I reeeeeally needed to work on those essays. I reeeeally didn't feel like taking off my slippers. I reeeeeally wasn't in the mood to put on extra layers to go outside, after the past four or five months of the cold. In the end, I left my water bottle on the counter, my Microsoft Word window open (it was blank anyway, not like it's going anywhere), and pulled on a pair of boots and a jacket.
The black-capped chickadees behind the garden shed welcomed me with chirping, and the hill of neighbors' lawns behind the house are greener by the day. It was cold, so cold, but after moving around the yard for a little bit, I felt warmer, and I thought of the line in Die Lorelei: Der Luft ist kuhl und es dunkelt (the air is cool and it's growing darker).
The wookiee, thrilled to have someone outside with him, popped out of a bush and grabbed my ankle before running across the yard. He's getting older now, and I'm not in very good shape either, so we gave up the game of tag after a few more minutes. I took some veggie peels to the compost bin and watched the clouds puff across the eastern sky like exhaust from a steam engine, tried to find the source of a unique bird call, and eventually returned to the house when it got too dark and too cool to merit remaining outside.
What's more: I felt better. Whether the essays write themselves or not, they'll get written. They may not be any good by finals week, but they'll stick around until I'm ready to revise them in another year or two. My friends will always welcome me in Baltimore, and the end of the semester (and along with it, some free time) is coming nearer so I can afford to see them again. And you know, even if they're changing my house's identity, they can't change the house. The yard is not defined by the number on my mailbox, and this weekend, that is the most important part of this little wedge of land.
:45°:
:partly cloudy skies:
Like yesterday. It was a bad day. "Bad," as in (1) I am desperate to find time to go visit the friends in Baltimore whom I terribly miss, (2) I've reached the point in the semester when nothing I write has any future beyond the paper shredder/compost bin, and (3) we received notice from the county yesterday telling us they're changing our house number (... since it hasn't been functioning properly for the past twenty years?).
I took a moment from the Essays That I Wish Would Write Themselves to go to the kitchen and refill my water bottle, when I realized it was 6:00 and almost sunset. I hemmed. I hawed. I reeeeeally needed to work on those essays. I reeeeally didn't feel like taking off my slippers. I reeeeeally wasn't in the mood to put on extra layers to go outside, after the past four or five months of the cold. In the end, I left my water bottle on the counter, my Microsoft Word window open (it was blank anyway, not like it's going anywhere), and pulled on a pair of boots and a jacket.
The black-capped chickadees behind the garden shed welcomed me with chirping, and the hill of neighbors' lawns behind the house are greener by the day. It was cold, so cold, but after moving around the yard for a little bit, I felt warmer, and I thought of the line in Die Lorelei: Der Luft ist kuhl und es dunkelt (the air is cool and it's growing darker).
The wookiee, thrilled to have someone outside with him, popped out of a bush and grabbed my ankle before running across the yard. He's getting older now, and I'm not in very good shape either, so we gave up the game of tag after a few more minutes. I took some veggie peels to the compost bin and watched the clouds puff across the eastern sky like exhaust from a steam engine, tried to find the source of a unique bird call, and eventually returned to the house when it got too dark and too cool to merit remaining outside.
What's more: I felt better. Whether the essays write themselves or not, they'll get written. They may not be any good by finals week, but they'll stick around until I'm ready to revise them in another year or two. My friends will always welcome me in Baltimore, and the end of the semester (and along with it, some free time) is coming nearer so I can afford to see them again. And you know, even if they're changing my house's identity, they can't change the house. The yard is not defined by the number on my mailbox, and this weekend, that is the most important part of this little wedge of land.
:45°:
:partly cloudy skies:
Friday, March 13, 2009
The Sky Is Raining
When I was twelve, I wrote a story, and in it, the main character/narrator says something to the effect of the following (although I don't remember word for word): I began to think about the weather. Not a thrilling topic, I know, but one which has a big effect on all our lives.
Literature, movies, and music have been using weather to their advantage for centuries, probably longer, to the point that groups like Flight of the Conchords spoof weather images:
No matter how long the weather has been used in art, however, it should never really get old. The weather really does affect our moods, and sometimes, it truly reflects them.
My classmate Amanda wrote about this in a recent blog post, and as she sat in a gloomy evening of a gloomy day, she says, "For once, nature was the rational being."
Sometimes, that's why I like nature so much. It reminds me what reality is, connects me back to the world, gets me out of myself. I commend Amanda's choice to retreat to nature on an undeniably bad day. And I hope she has many more sunny skies on the horizon.
Literature, movies, and music have been using weather to their advantage for centuries, probably longer, to the point that groups like Flight of the Conchords spoof weather images:
I'm not crying
It's just been raining
on my face.
It's just been raining
on my face.
No matter how long the weather has been used in art, however, it should never really get old. The weather really does affect our moods, and sometimes, it truly reflects them.
My classmate Amanda wrote about this in a recent blog post, and as she sat in a gloomy evening of a gloomy day, she says, "For once, nature was the rational being."
Sometimes, that's why I like nature so much. It reminds me what reality is, connects me back to the world, gets me out of myself. I commend Amanda's choice to retreat to nature on an undeniably bad day. And I hope she has many more sunny skies on the horizon.
Spirit in the Skye
I am nothing; I see all; . . . I am the lover
of uncontained and immortal beauty.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
of uncontained and immortal beauty.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
A week earlier, I had boarded an airplane with no company but my backpack, entrusted EasyJet to carry me from Cologne to London, and then spent the next week working my way northward to Scotland. American by birth, Scottish by soul, always inexplicably drawn to an area of the world known to me only through Robert Burns and sheet music for my oboe, I stood today on the Isle of Skye, a “thin place” between the seen and the unseen, between people and spirits, between perception and reality.
The next year, my roommate would ask me whether, when I missed Scotland, I was longing for where I had been or who I had been when I was there, but I cannot unravel the one from the other. Here, on the Isle of Skye, I am where I am; we are one and the same. Like the island, I have finally separated from the rest of my kind, independent. I am weightless, flying apart from the mainland, shackled only by gravity to the rest of the world.
I travel alone, the only person I know in the group of ten picking its way across a field speckled with dormant heather and grazing sheep, splashing across a narrow creek, sinking into the mud on the edge of the mountain. It squishes into the tread of my sneakers as I teeter on the edge of a soaring, narrow trail; I dig my fingernails into the peaty wall beside me, regaining my balance, and inhale: an expanding balloon ready for release.
Further in and higher up, I trade the mud for bare rock, scaling a thin land bridge to the pinnacle of the island, the world’s minaret, the first stop on the way to the sky, the gateway to Heaven. I have arrived.
Here I stand, the only living creature on Earth. The ephemeral clouds in the deep blue sky were created only for this moment, only for me. The distant ocean sparkles diamonds. The salty sea air blowing across the moor blends into a perfume intended, from the first, for me, and me only.
This is my land. I am this island; I am this view. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. My spirit sheds its physical constraints and rises into the sky.
Tea and Ten O'Clock
I find it easier to bird watch while seated at my dining room table drinking a mug of tea. It's more comfortable, for one thing, on these 30° mornings, and the birds can't see or smell or hear me while I'm behind the glass panes of my patio door. This morning, while nursing some steaming English Breakfast tea, I watched to see how the avian life has changed in the past two months.
The first bird I saw, of course, was a brazen blue jay, sweeping from the patio roof to drink from the bird bath on the deck railing, his wings and tail feathers spread out like a kite. The robins, newly arrived from some undisclosed southern location, were still more timid, and all week the mockingbirds have been chasing them from every corner of our yard. Their feathers flash like Semaphore flags as they fly.
Grackles then rose past the deck in an Air Force-like formation, and a red-winged blackbird preened his wings in our neighbor's tree, his ruddy shoulders flashing like air traffic control signals. I could hear the doves and a woodpecker, but it took a half-hour for the dove to appear on the garden fence. The woodpecker, however, remained hidden for the morning.
I was surprised to find no goldfinches, pine siskins, or black-capped chickadees, but then I remembered that they like food, and the birdfeeders out my dining room window are empty. A glance through the kitchen window, and I found them congregating on the feeders hanging from the clothesline.
With my tea drained and ten birds identified, I left the warmth of my dining room to walk among the neighbors who live in my backyard. I usually ramble through my yard in the evenings, and this morning walk was quite different. The birds were more active at this time of day, fighting for nesting space in our ash and cedar trees like pioneers in the midwest land rush. English sparrows bother my neighbor's tree and a starling couple bickers over the suet, the female finally winning out and eating first. A red squirrel bustled across the roof of the garden shed, skittish after a close encounter with the wookiee's front paw on Saturday.
But the active members of the garden aren't the only signs of life. The crocuses glowed in the morning sunlight, soon to be hidden again in the shade of the chimney on the north side of our house. The pussywillow buds cracked through the tips of the branches like warm, fuzzy snowflakes. The grass is still bleached from the harsh winter, but green leafy arrows shoot like promises from every flowerbed in the yard.
Two months ago, I dreaded the spring. But today, I think maybe its vibrant embrace will cushion the discomfort of another transition.
:31°F:
:clear and sunny skies:
The first bird I saw, of course, was a brazen blue jay, sweeping from the patio roof to drink from the bird bath on the deck railing, his wings and tail feathers spread out like a kite. The robins, newly arrived from some undisclosed southern location, were still more timid, and all week the mockingbirds have been chasing them from every corner of our yard. Their feathers flash like Semaphore flags as they fly.
Grackles then rose past the deck in an Air Force-like formation, and a red-winged blackbird preened his wings in our neighbor's tree, his ruddy shoulders flashing like air traffic control signals. I could hear the doves and a woodpecker, but it took a half-hour for the dove to appear on the garden fence. The woodpecker, however, remained hidden for the morning.
I was surprised to find no goldfinches, pine siskins, or black-capped chickadees, but then I remembered that they like food, and the birdfeeders out my dining room window are empty. A glance through the kitchen window, and I found them congregating on the feeders hanging from the clothesline.
With my tea drained and ten birds identified, I left the warmth of my dining room to walk among the neighbors who live in my backyard. I usually ramble through my yard in the evenings, and this morning walk was quite different. The birds were more active at this time of day, fighting for nesting space in our ash and cedar trees like pioneers in the midwest land rush. English sparrows bother my neighbor's tree and a starling couple bickers over the suet, the female finally winning out and eating first. A red squirrel bustled across the roof of the garden shed, skittish after a close encounter with the wookiee's front paw on Saturday.
But the active members of the garden aren't the only signs of life. The crocuses glowed in the morning sunlight, soon to be hidden again in the shade of the chimney on the north side of our house. The pussywillow buds cracked through the tips of the branches like warm, fuzzy snowflakes. The grass is still bleached from the harsh winter, but green leafy arrows shoot like promises from every flowerbed in the yard.
Two months ago, I dreaded the spring. But today, I think maybe its vibrant embrace will cushion the discomfort of another transition.
:31°F:
:clear and sunny skies:
Saturday, March 7, 2009
For Amusement Only
Because most of my readers are either classmates in my Masters of Fine Arts writing program or friends from outside this program who also happen to have studied English at some point in their post-secondary education, I think that we might all find a touch of entertainment from grammatical humor in The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. (Especially for my classmates, this point in the semester tends to call for a bit of extra levity!)
Because this is my nature blog, I have chosen this sign in a tree nursery as the prime post to share. (Or should I say "tree" nursery? It does seem ambiguous.)
And now back to our regularly scheduled coursework.
Because this is my nature blog, I have chosen this sign in a tree nursery as the prime post to share. (Or should I say "tree" nursery? It does seem ambiguous.)
And now back to our regularly scheduled coursework.
Urban Birds
I may vacillate between calling my neighborhood rural and suburban, but one thing is unquestionably certain: it is not urban. I'm technically in a township -- not even within "town" limits -- and, as I said earlier this week, I have no sidewalks.
But if I were in an urban setting, I might consider applying for a Celebrate Urban Birds mini-grant to encourage bird watching in urban areas. DNLee at Urban Science Adventures talks about the Celebrate Urban Birds project on her blog, and I hope that the idea takes off.
When I lived in Baltimore, I saw plenty of surprising birds, among them a pileated woodpecker and some kind of owl, plus countless others that I never took the time to identify. I wish I had, however, and had recruited friends and neighbors to join me.
In my nature writing course, we've been talking a lot this week about finding the green spaces in a city, and by "green," we aren't necessarily talking "environmentally-friendly" places, which would include recycling centers and solar panels. Those are great (I'm a big fan), but almost more important are the spots that are literally green. Community gardens, flower boxes, and dandelions growing through the cracks in a sidewalk are all little reminders that the concrete and brick still mix with the naturally-occurring ... nature. And my classmates agree that these green moments have succeeded in restoring our selves (hearts, minds, souls) from the daily drudge.
This Celebrate Urban Birds mini-grant would encourage city-dwellers to look for the natural elements that aren't green, too, by looking up. (I've never seen a green pigeon, woodpecker, or owl!) By interacting with each other and encouraging the neighborhood kids, especially, to look for birds like some kind of treasure hunt, we city- (and former city-) dwellers could start to once again seek out the "green" within the city.
Even here in the 'burbs (or sticks) we often forget to treasure the creatures both great and small that are as much our neighbors as the family in the house next door. With or without a grant, inside or outside city limits, we can all make the effort to notice the natural, appreciate the avians, and pass on our passion so that others can have those green, restorative moments, too.
But if I were in an urban setting, I might consider applying for a Celebrate Urban Birds mini-grant to encourage bird watching in urban areas. DNLee at Urban Science Adventures talks about the Celebrate Urban Birds project on her blog, and I hope that the idea takes off.
When I lived in Baltimore, I saw plenty of surprising birds, among them a pileated woodpecker and some kind of owl, plus countless others that I never took the time to identify. I wish I had, however, and had recruited friends and neighbors to join me.
In my nature writing course, we've been talking a lot this week about finding the green spaces in a city, and by "green," we aren't necessarily talking "environmentally-friendly" places, which would include recycling centers and solar panels. Those are great (I'm a big fan), but almost more important are the spots that are literally green. Community gardens, flower boxes, and dandelions growing through the cracks in a sidewalk are all little reminders that the concrete and brick still mix with the naturally-occurring ... nature. And my classmates agree that these green moments have succeeded in restoring our selves (hearts, minds, souls) from the daily drudge.
This Celebrate Urban Birds mini-grant would encourage city-dwellers to look for the natural elements that aren't green, too, by looking up. (I've never seen a green pigeon, woodpecker, or owl!) By interacting with each other and encouraging the neighborhood kids, especially, to look for birds like some kind of treasure hunt, we city- (and former city-) dwellers could start to once again seek out the "green" within the city.
Even here in the 'burbs (or sticks) we often forget to treasure the creatures both great and small that are as much our neighbors as the family in the house next door. With or without a grant, inside or outside city limits, we can all make the effort to notice the natural, appreciate the avians, and pass on our passion so that others can have those green, restorative moments, too.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Walk This Way
I’m a sucker for sidewalks.
When I went to college, it was the first time in my life that I had a sidewalk within several miles of my home. Before, I always had to walk along the gravel shoulder of unlined country roads if I took a walk around my neighborhood. In college, for the first time, I didn’t have to compete with cars and trucks and school buses when I was on foot. I loved it.
Now that I’m back in the same house where I grew up, I miss the sidewalks, but I’m also an old pro at dealing without such luxuries, thanks to 18 years of earlier practice. Besides, there’s not a whole lot to walk to from my house, which might explain the lack of pedestrian paths in the first place. (When my mom used to give directions by telling people, “Go to the end of the world and turn left,” she wasn’t too far off the mark.)
I go back and forth between claiming I live in a rural neighborhood and claiming that it’s a suburban one. I am less than a mile away from several farms, and my house sits on what itself was once farmland. I’m no more than a ten-minute drive from the local mall, movie theaters, restaurants, and a genuine taste of (small) city life. Then again, I’m also seven miles from a woodsy state park and a wind farm.
So, I think it’s the sidewalks that will determine my choice. I am a rural resident. And that’s why I can’t really walk anywhere.
Okay, that’s not entirely true. I can walk anywhere I want, if I don’t mind risking safety on the narrow shoulders of windy country roads or spending at least an hour on travel time just to get to the post office. My time in college on a small campus and in Marburg (that perfectly-sized and manageable town) spoiled me for pedestrian zones. Around here, my nearest grocery store is 3 ½ miles away, and I’m simply not going to walk there. Or ride my bike. (I mean, have you seen the hills in western PA? I’m not facing those with a gallon of milk strapped to my back.)
And this may be the biggest problem with rural and suburban areas. When houses are miles away from shopping areas, and the home is far from the workplace, people need automobiles to get to and from just about everything. When the population density isn’t high enough, public transportation isn’t even a logical option. It’s a shame that to live so in touch with a natural setting, we must also risk environmental damage in order to get to work, school, and any store.
I think I’m a townie at heart. Back in the proverbial day, I loved having the ability to walk to the post office (on a sidewalk), or pick up groceries and carry them in my backpack the quarter mile back to home. And I also loved the manageability of a town. It doesn’t carry the kinds of risks associated with a big city, and it’s possible to become associated with every corner of it. This rurally raised country girl finds it easier to breathe in a town than in a city.
It looks as though town experiments like Kyle, TX, and Celebration, FL, are attempting to provide this kind of town feeling (while also, unfortunately, making it an elite, upper-middle class WASP trap, but that’s a subject for another day). But if existing suburban and rural communities had fewer giant stores and more small and scattered shops, and if those windy country roads were just a little safer for the wary pedestrian, I think even we country mice might stop driving so much. We might prove that it doesn’t take a brand new town experiment to achieve New Urbanism.
And who knows what kind of natural camaraderie with neighbors and connection to the ground we walk and diversity of free market enterprises might sprout from simply placing our homes nearer our markets and offices? I’m sure there’s some way to keep the woodsy and residential feel of my neighborhood while making it a little easier to walk to the store. It could be that all it would take is a good sidewalk.
When I went to college, it was the first time in my life that I had a sidewalk within several miles of my home. Before, I always had to walk along the gravel shoulder of unlined country roads if I took a walk around my neighborhood. In college, for the first time, I didn’t have to compete with cars and trucks and school buses when I was on foot. I loved it.
Now that I’m back in the same house where I grew up, I miss the sidewalks, but I’m also an old pro at dealing without such luxuries, thanks to 18 years of earlier practice. Besides, there’s not a whole lot to walk to from my house, which might explain the lack of pedestrian paths in the first place. (When my mom used to give directions by telling people, “Go to the end of the world and turn left,” she wasn’t too far off the mark.)
I go back and forth between claiming I live in a rural neighborhood and claiming that it’s a suburban one. I am less than a mile away from several farms, and my house sits on what itself was once farmland. I’m no more than a ten-minute drive from the local mall, movie theaters, restaurants, and a genuine taste of (small) city life. Then again, I’m also seven miles from a woodsy state park and a wind farm.
So, I think it’s the sidewalks that will determine my choice. I am a rural resident. And that’s why I can’t really walk anywhere.
Okay, that’s not entirely true. I can walk anywhere I want, if I don’t mind risking safety on the narrow shoulders of windy country roads or spending at least an hour on travel time just to get to the post office. My time in college on a small campus and in Marburg (that perfectly-sized and manageable town) spoiled me for pedestrian zones. Around here, my nearest grocery store is 3 ½ miles away, and I’m simply not going to walk there. Or ride my bike. (I mean, have you seen the hills in western PA? I’m not facing those with a gallon of milk strapped to my back.)
And this may be the biggest problem with rural and suburban areas. When houses are miles away from shopping areas, and the home is far from the workplace, people need automobiles to get to and from just about everything. When the population density isn’t high enough, public transportation isn’t even a logical option. It’s a shame that to live so in touch with a natural setting, we must also risk environmental damage in order to get to work, school, and any store.
I think I’m a townie at heart. Back in the proverbial day, I loved having the ability to walk to the post office (on a sidewalk), or pick up groceries and carry them in my backpack the quarter mile back to home. And I also loved the manageability of a town. It doesn’t carry the kinds of risks associated with a big city, and it’s possible to become associated with every corner of it. This rurally raised country girl finds it easier to breathe in a town than in a city.
It looks as though town experiments like Kyle, TX, and Celebration, FL, are attempting to provide this kind of town feeling (while also, unfortunately, making it an elite, upper-middle class WASP trap, but that’s a subject for another day). But if existing suburban and rural communities had fewer giant stores and more small and scattered shops, and if those windy country roads were just a little safer for the wary pedestrian, I think even we country mice might stop driving so much. We might prove that it doesn’t take a brand new town experiment to achieve New Urbanism.
And who knows what kind of natural camaraderie with neighbors and connection to the ground we walk and diversity of free market enterprises might sprout from simply placing our homes nearer our markets and offices? I’m sure there’s some way to keep the woodsy and residential feel of my neighborhood while making it a little easier to walk to the store. It could be that all it would take is a good sidewalk.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
A Couple Images
The wookiee contemplates a monochromatic backyard.
The thermometer convinces us both to wait a few hours before braving the elements.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Finding Colors
My backyard is all a yellowish gray. The garden fence, the frozen blades of grass, the tree trunks and ivy, even the wookiee all blend together like some kind of old faded photograph. It’s obvious it was all vibrant with different hues once upon a time, but now, it’s all one ghastly, sickly shade.
At this point in the winter, my yard is in a state between dormancy and springtime. Now that the snow is gone, will the spring ever come? When I’m outside, I’m surrounded by yellowish gray, and the color brings on a sense of deepest despair.
I shouldn’t say deepest. Deepest despair came over me when musing similarly about color almost four years ago when I found myself visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp in Poland. Among the many (many, many) sights that affected me that day was a room full of shoes that had been taken from the prisoners. They were, like shoes from any era, all different colors; if you looked hard enough, you could see a red shoe, a blue one, a yellow one, but their situation in history and my perceptions standing there on some of the most unholy ground on our planet, turned everything the same dull shade of gray.
So today, while I fought off similar, though lighter, feelings toward my backyard, I sought out something—anything—to give me hope. I peeked into the yellowed flowerbed along the driveway. It was covered with yellowish-gray composting grass clippings that my mom spread there last fall to protect the bed from the winter weather. Some grayish sticks of some dead flower huddled together in the shadow of the arbor. But if I just looked closely enough, maybe …
And there it was. A purple crocus just peeking through the yellowed grass. And suddenly, my backyard was no longer a symbol of deepest despair, but instead the first sign of change to a barren and monochromatic world.
:18° F:
:partly cloudy:
At this point in the winter, my yard is in a state between dormancy and springtime. Now that the snow is gone, will the spring ever come? When I’m outside, I’m surrounded by yellowish gray, and the color brings on a sense of deepest despair.
I shouldn’t say deepest. Deepest despair came over me when musing similarly about color almost four years ago when I found myself visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp in Poland. Among the many (many, many) sights that affected me that day was a room full of shoes that had been taken from the prisoners. They were, like shoes from any era, all different colors; if you looked hard enough, you could see a red shoe, a blue one, a yellow one, but their situation in history and my perceptions standing there on some of the most unholy ground on our planet, turned everything the same dull shade of gray.
So today, while I fought off similar, though lighter, feelings toward my backyard, I sought out something—anything—to give me hope. I peeked into the yellowed flowerbed along the driveway. It was covered with yellowish-gray composting grass clippings that my mom spread there last fall to protect the bed from the winter weather. Some grayish sticks of some dead flower huddled together in the shadow of the arbor. But if I just looked closely enough, maybe …
And there it was. A purple crocus just peeking through the yellowed grass. And suddenly, my backyard was no longer a symbol of deepest despair, but instead the first sign of change to a barren and monochromatic world.
:18° F:
:partly cloudy:
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