Category Archives: Nature

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A Magical Bond

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Last night we watched Werner Herzog’s film “Grizzly Man”, an amazing documentary featuring Timothy Treadwell’s video footage of grizzly bears in Alaska.  He spent 13 summers among them, mostly alone, and eventually he and his girlfriend were attacked and eaten by one.   This man was quite a character — often childlike, flamboyant, furious, arrogant, gentle, fearless and completely whacked.  At the core, though, he seemed to be straining toward a connection he deeply valued.  He wanted to bond with the bears, he may have even imagined he could become a bear.  It approximates a desperately unrequited love.  His affection for them (and for the foxes that follow him around and play with him like puppies) is palpable, although sometimes articulated in a corny, self-help guru fashion.  “Thank you, Mr. Chocolate, for being my friend…”  Okay, Fred Rogers he’s not; more like Richard Simmons.  It’s kinda weird.  But, still, he loves them; he would rather die with them than be anywhere else.  The pristine wilderness shots convey the aching beauty of the ideal.  The close ups reveal more reality: flies cover the lens and buzz around the speaker without ceasing.  Then there’s the inherent danger.  Treadwell is aware of the risks he’s taking; he talks about them quite theatrically to the camera, but they do not seem important.

Is he nuts?  Is he an idealist?  Is he wrong?  Is he inspiring?  What do we tell our kids about such passions?

I led 4 small groups of Boy Scouts on nature hikes this morning.  They were earning their Webelos Naturalist merit badge.  I had one directive: teach them about decomposers, producers, and consumers.  I added a goal of my own — introduce the Four As: awareness, appreciation, attitude, action.   For 10-year-olds, I thought this might fly.  I suppose I secretly hoped to see some of that childlike enthusiasm, the wonder and joy that can be ignited by spending a half hour on the trail.  Well, there weren’t many ‘Eureka!’ moments.  I forgot that boys can get more interested in hitting things with sticks and calling each other names than looking at mushrooms and picking up litter.   ‘Awareness’ to them meant “look out for things that could hurt you” instead of “look out for everything because the world is awesome!”  I think I may have impressed some of them by leading them to a decomposing deer carcass.  That may have provoked a “Cool!” from a few.  I wish I could do a one-on-one hike, take more time to slow down and eliminate some of the group social pressures, but these kids come with a program, so I only get one shot with a group of 8 for 30 minutes.   I wish I had taken more time to do this with my own 4 kids.

One thing to be aware of at Wehr

How do we bond with nature?  Will we ever fit in?  Are our brains just too big to allow us play nicely in the sandbox with the rest of the world?  Will we always be too distracted, too confused, too technological, too exploitative, too manipulative, too dominant, or too tasty?  I have to admit that to survive for 13 summers in Alaska among grizzlies is probably about the best record on that front.  Jane Goodall’s 45 years spent among chimpanzees is another monolithic example.   Will there be anyone like that in this next generation?  I can only hope…and volunteer to take as many as I can out on the trails.

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Encounters

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I went for a walk on Saturday morning.  Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I didn’t bring my camera.  The day was sunny and warm enough to be autumn.  On greyer days this week, it seemed more like winter.  Consequently, many of my fellow suburbanites were outside exhibiting their leisure preferences.  We are an odd lot, I think.  Some quirky, some staunchly mainstream seeking credence for their peculiar habits.  If you have a dog or a bicycle or Spandex athletic gear, you are allowed to be out on the paths.  You fit in.  No one stares.  If you’re wearing a mink, a wedding gown, or sitting in the lotus position on a fallen tree, you’re a little more suspect.  I have a story about all three of these.

At the end of my block lives an elderly lady with a cocker spaniel.  She takes him out to the sidewalk on a leash regularly.  The last two times I saw her, she was wearing a midi-length fur coat about the same color as her dog.  As I walked down the street, she faced me full on.  When I got within about 20 feet from her, she called out, “He’ll jump on you!”  I stopped.  “Would you like me to cross the street?” I asked.  “I don’t care what you do.  If you come near him, he’ll jump on you.  It doesn’t matter to me.”  I crossed the street.  “My, your hair is very long!  It goes all the way down to your waist!” she called.  “Yes, it does.”  “Do you live with Scott Peterson?”  “No, I live at the end of this street, at the corner.”  When I am older, can I make blunt comments out of the blue at passers-by?  I hope so.  I like the directness.  No little niceties required.

When I got to the park, I saw a bride, a photographer and a small entourage.  It seems like every weekend someone’s getting their picture taken in that park.  It has a nice bridge, and the fall colors are pretty.  High school seniors and brides and families who send photo Christmas cards love it.  This bride was picking her was across the grass with four people holding up her skirt.  Her shoes were whitish-gold strappy heels adding about 5 inches to her height.  Her hair was in a blonde up-do with tiara and veil.  She might have been a fairy-tale princess except for the odd way she was walking…and her voice.  Despite the outfit, she was a rather pedestrian pedestrian, another modern bride having her day.

I made my way toward the woods.  Just outside the parking area for the pool is a bike trail and a train track.  A speedy middle aged guy in a helmet wheeled in front of me up the path.  When I got to the crest of the train trestle, I saw an older woman in sweatpants stooping over to part the fallen leaves with her hand.  She wasn’t a biker, didn’t seem like a hiker, either.  I think she was looking for mushrooms.  An Old World forager.  I walked past the golf course and headed into the woods.  I didn’t recognize any trails, so I simply made my way across a dry stream bed and found a fallen tree.  I wasn’t too far from the road, but I was surrounded by trees and leaves and moss.  It was pretty quiet.  I flung my coat over the trunk and sat atop it.  From where I was, I could spot a paper wasp nest, woodpeckers, squirrels, and single leaves spiraling gracefully to the forest floor.  I looked up and breathed a sigh.  This is how I recreate.  No Spandex necessary.  One solitary walking man and two men and their dogs eventually strolled by, crunching their way through the underbrush.  They looked at me.  I looked away.  One of the dog walkers went by quite close and made eye contact.  I said hello.  He greeted me and kept his head turned toward me as he walked away smiling.  What?!  I’m sitting in the woods; you got a problem with that?  I suppose I can be defensive in my head.  I often feel awkward socially, perceiving judgment when there’s no reason to.

Later that day, we went to the top of Lapham Peak in the Kettle Moraine park.  The day had turned cloudy again, and smoke from burning leaf piles gave the atmosphere a mournful grey haze.  Our species has its own way of living on the land.  I find it interesting, diverse, idiosyncratic.  Almost as fun as watching squirrels.

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Slanting Sun

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My home is on the top of the world.

Having rolled over in orbit, I feel sun on my backside.

It’s summer in the underbelly; lucky Argentina.

The light angles in like a flashlight under my chin,

All ghoulish, accentuating contrast.

South windows are a dusty liquid filtering rays like pond scum.

I blub like a sluggish fish.

November runs on borrowed energy, bounced off a distant prism.

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“I’m sorry; we can’t do that.”

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You know how once you get pregnant, all you see around you is pregnant women?  I want to trigger that phenomenon in this post and bring awareness to something I feel is pretty common in our fast-paced American life.  I want to see how often people come up with the “I’m sorry; we can’t do that” line when what they really mean is something else.  Something like, “I’m sorry; I haven’t been trained to do that” or “I’m sorry; my computer can’t do that, and I don’t know how to do anything without the computer” or “I’m sorry; we aren’t willing to do that.  Your request is not as important as other things.”  The real answer is absolutely valid and a fine place to begin negotiations.  The problem is, we don’t often get the real answer.

I worked in customer service for a few years, and I remember the nervousness that accompanied requests to depart from policy.  I didn’t know if I had the authority to make exceptions.  I often didn’t want to be in the position of the middle man going back and forth from the customer to my superior.  It made me feel caught in a conflict that wasn’t mine, especially if it dragged on and on.  Eventually, I got to the point where I rather enjoyed listening to people and trying to come up with creative compromises.  But then I was told that I was spending too much time on these discussions and I should simply state the policy and get off the phone.

Dealing with people is tricky.  They require your time, and time is money.  To be an efficient society, we must streamline our systems.  Any person who does not comply with procedure is throwing a monkey wrench into the works.  So what do we value more, the “works”, the people, or some other ideal?  Once you become aware that you’re getting an “I’m sorry; we can’t do that” response, what do you do?

Here are a few examples of this kind of exchange in real life.  The first one is “How do you want your coffee?”  Steve does not like the prevalent custom of serving coffee in disposable containers.  He likes to drink his latte from a mug.  He rarely orders anything “to go”.  He values conservation of resources and energy and is not too concerned with “convenience”.  We have breakfast often at a local cafe that has recently been hiring new staff.  Young staff.  I am patient and cheerful and as helpful as I can be when I’m placing our order.  I got to ordering Steve’s latte and said, “With that breakfast, I want a latte in a mug with 2% milk.”  “Um, okay.  What size?”  “In a mug.”  “I’m sorry; we can’t do that.”  We happened to have had breakfast there just the day before.  “Well, yesterday you could.”  A more veteran server came up behind him and whispered, “Yes we can.  It’s served in a soup mug.”

I’m not saying this young person did anything wrong.  It was probably about his third day on the job.  The point is that we often get streamlined into making concessions in our decision-making and forget that there are other options.  We don’t have to take the disposable option.  We don’t have to take the profitable option if profit is not our highest goal.   We don’t have to have a lawn or rake our leaves or live in the city or send our kids to public schools or give birth in a hospital.  We don’t have to go “up and to the right” and continue to support a growth economy.  But we’ll probably be told when we suggest an alternative, “I’m sorry; we can’t do that.”

Here’s another example.  I am following a discussion on a blog about an architectural idea coming out of Italy.  The title of the article is “Milan’s Vertical Forest”.  http://pensci.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/milans-vertical-forest   The premise of the idea is to create a “less crowded, less polluted, less inhumane” city by erecting high-rise buildings with open balcony space on all four sides to accommodate trees and greenery that would help clean the air and provide a natural aesthetic.  It sounds great, but it makes me wonder whether it’s assuming “we can’t” do something else instead.  If what Milan wants is forest, why not tear down the high-rises and convert the land into open green space?  If what Milan wants is urban housing, why are they calling it a forest when in reality, it’s just apartments with more balcony space?  Are potted trees really going to thrive there?  And will people actually use all that space for vegetation instead of storing their bicycles and grills and laundry there?  If we really want the city to be less crowded and polluted, why not encourage people to move out and work the small farms in France that are being abandoned, for example?  No, “we can’t do that”, we have to think of solutions that keep people in the city and promote more construction and more growth.  Well, we don’t have to.  Let’s just be honest about what our goals are and discuss from there.

So what happens when you “throw a monkey wrench” into the system and ask for a different option?  Do you get an honest negotiation?  I would like to gum up the works of the political machine and ask for a candidate who would admit that s/he is not perfect in character, is not superior in knowledge about every facet of American life and doesn’t necessarily have to be the prime ideologue, but who would be a skilled administrator willing to represent the people and carry out their ideas.

I don’t want a cardboard cup with the shiny logo and a snappy lid.  I just need a teacup to hold some tea long enough to get it to my mouth.  Any Buddhist will tell you, it’s not about the teacup, it’s about the tea.

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Suspension of Meaning

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In the quiet hours this morning as Steve slept beside me, the maple tree performed a Wayang shadow dance on the south window.

My mind began to wonder: what is 7 billion?  Are there 7 billion maple leaves in this town?  Has my heart beat 7 billion times?  Have I written 7 billion words?  Are there 7 billion of any other species on earth besides humans right now?  Are there 7 billion ants or bats or mice?  If I am one of 7 billion, does my life have meaning?  Am I unique?  Have I produced anything of value?  Am I a “productive member of society”?  And failing to produce any anxiety about this question, I ask myself: does it matter?

I found myself in a rather peaceful state, suspended as any other late fall maple leaf, not very concerned if the next gust of wind should liberate me forever from my connective  capacity.  Steve stirred and asked me what I was doing.  “Just thinking….”  As he awoke more fully, he told me of his late night reading adventures and the existential anger it stoked.  We began discussing morality and deep ecology and meaning.  At breakfast, we listened to Beethoven and Charles Ives and contemplated the difference in the world of the 1800s and the post WWI era.  He mentioned Nietzsche and his mental breakdown and death.  He was an insomniac and took morphine and chloral hydrate; he also had syphilis.  I thought of my brilliant father’s last 7 years living with Alzheimer’s.  What is it like to be separated from meaning?  Steve finds it frightening.  I imagine that it brings you closer to the state of an animal in the wild.  Do they have need of symbolic representations that are recognizable and repeatable?  Do they need meaning to live their lives?  We would probably find it impossible to function for a day without it.  Perhaps in meditation we suspend it for a time.  Is that what Enlightenment is?

Without the blinds covering my window, the maple leaves are golden and bright.

  They dance as solid dark figures when the veil is lowered.  Are they the same leaves?  Why do we attach different meanings to different states of being?  What if we didn’t?

Just wondering.

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My Biology, My Self

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There’s one question that keeps coming up, begging for my attention.  “Who am I?”  Perhaps this is a Socrates Cafe revolving door.

How much do you identify with your body?  Or your gender?  Or your ego?  How much do you identify with your Big ‘S’ Self?

What’s a Big ‘S’ Self as opposed to a small ‘s’ self (or what I call the Big Ass self)?  Steve describes it like the tip of a pyramid.  It has a base, but sits on top of a much, much bigger base –  The Big ‘S’ Self  – which is all about simply recognizing the world as it is without trying to impose any ego imprints on it.  My question today is “Where does my biology fit in?”  At almost 50 years of age, I certainly recognize how my biology has impacted life as I experience it.  It seems intrinsic to my being.  I couldn’t possibly imagine being a man.  My reproductive cycles, my hormonal moods, my childbirth experiences, my posture of surrender, my physical life and psychological attitudes that arise from that seem to be very much “me”.  And yet, all of that is in flux, changing all the time, even while The Change is looming in my not-too-distant future.  So maybe there’s a Big ‘S’ Self that isn’t affected by all that.  Would that be my soul?

How do I bring my Self and my self into a relationship?  How do I interact with someone else’s Self and self?

Sometimes it seems like it would be so much simpler just to have a body without such a brain dominating it.  Eat, sleep, have sex, die.  Nothing to philosophize about.  Sometimes it seems like I’m trying too hard to live well.  Morally.  Conscientiously.

Sigh.

Steve surprised me.  He bought me a picture book about a baby elephant.  It came in the mail today.  Sometimes the simplest thing is just to accept a gift….like life.

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Living on the Land – or a few feet above

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I am considering bird feeding options.  I would love to have some cardinals visit our small south yard this winter.  They do anyway, but I want to encourage them to linger a while and refresh themselves.  I stopped in at a wild bird and pet shop to look over some of the products.  I was pretty much appalled at the prices.  Suburban homeowners around here spend a lot of money on their yards.  I am only an unemployed renter, so I’m going the DIY route.  We have a weathered old wicker chair frame and a CD storage chest that have been sitting outside for a few seasons.  I’ve decided to try to build a feed station using them.  Recycling, don’t ya know. So I went online to read up on bird feeders and squirrels.  There seems to be a conflict among humans as to the desirability of squirrel activity in proximity to our dwellings.  They are amazing animals who don’t mind being observed.  They also have been known to move in with us humans and destroy property.  I see squirrels in the trees and in the garbage around the duplex, but so far there haven’t been any signs of them moving into the attic and eating books.  I want to keep it that way.  I don’t think the squirrels need any assistance in finding food around here, so I’d like to provide a food that’s not attractive to them but will be attractive to cardinals and other song birds.  I’ve read that safflower seeds may be just the thing.  So this is my goal: to construct a platform feeder using the chair and storage chest parts and buy safflower seed for the winter.  Then we’ll see what the birds and squirrels do.

Do these guys care about Game 7?

Might Itchy-Twitchy become tempted to move inside?

Even if I didn’ t do a thing, I’d still have cardinals and squirrels as my neighbors. I doubt my project is going to make a difference in their survival over the winter.  I don’t imagine that I have any role as a wildlife manager in this situation.  I could pat myself on the back and say I’m being wildlife friendly, in a way.  But it’s not that big a deal.  I’m really only doing it for my own amusement.  I often wonder at the decisions and efforts I’ve made to be eco-minded.  For example, the online petitions and letters to my congressional representatives urging them to take certain actions on various pieces of legislation.  Does that really make a difference?  So far, I’ve noticed that it only generates more junk mail from Republican officials who write to thank me for my input and inform me that they have no intention of doing what I suggest.  I could take the next step and send money to the originators of these petitions, but I have no income at this time and have therefore decided not to do that. I don’t know what effect that might have if I did.  I have moments when my idealism dares me to hope great things, and then I have moments when my realism admits the futility of my individual efforts.

Making ripples that travel in unknown directions.  Will we contribute to a tidal wave?  Will we send a blessing bobbing toward a distant shore?   We have no way to know.  I do my best to have good intentions.  I hope my Buddha smile makes the world a kinder place somehow.

 

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Wisconsin!

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Despite it’s governor, Wisconsin is a great state.  There’s biological diversity, geographical diversity, seasonal diversity, National Forests, and culture (and I don’t mean just cheese!).  It’s really a great place to live and explore.   Today, we climbed up to the top of the shrine at Holy Hill.  We had been there before, one January when there was a wedding going on.  The steeple tower was closed and the stairs were covered with ice, so we peeked into the chapel only and didn’t get the full view.  I’m glad we went back because this is worth the 178-plus steps!

Not far from the Hill is a county park with trails for hiking, cross country skiing, and snowmobiling.

I really love the seasons here – yes, even winter.  It’s not like people in Wisconsin stay indoors for 6 months.  They go out anyway.  I just wish that fewer of them used gas-powered toys as part of their recreation.  These fall days, though, are almost too precious to bear.  The sun is still warming us enough to make hours out in the chilly air pleasant, and I hesitate to come inside at all.  Nights are coming on sooner and colder, though.  We go to bed earlier; we eat more.  We muse about hibernating like bats in their caves.  And we love the whole thing.  Change.  The Earth.  Being alive.  I am grateful for it all.

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The Sound of Silence

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I was at the Wehr Nature Center this morning with a group of 11 first graders, looking for ingredients to cook up a batch of soil.  Soil.  It’s one of the two most precious substances on this planet (along with water).  We wouldn’t have anything to eat if it weren’t for soil.  So why not teach first graders to appreciate it?  We went out on the trail to find the living and non-living ingredients in soil.  It’s been raining pretty heavily and steadily this week, so all the trails are soft with soggy wood chips and all the leaves are damp.  Suddenly, I noticed something: silence.  The cloud cover and the moisture and the dropping temperatures are keeping people away, I surmised.  After waving goodbye to the kids, I decided to spend an hour on the trails alone, relishing the quiet.

There is a graciousness to quiet.  It’s very hard to cultivate in an urban setting.  Noise pollution is ubiquitous, so mostly we deny it.  I am particularly aware of this functional denial because I employ it every moment.  I have a cyst on the arachnoid membrane beneath my skull.  I discovered this about 6 years ago when I went to the doctor with tinnitus and got an MRI.  My hearing was tested, and I got a follow-up image 6 months later.  Basically, the cyst has put some pressure on my auditory nerve and caused the ringing in my right ear.  It’s not growing, and I don’t get headaches, so I opted to leave it alone.  I have ringing in both ears now, but it’s not usually a recognizable tonal ringing, more of an ‘ocean sound’ that causes some hearing difficulties.  It’s very easy to ignore.  When is life ever so quiet that you’d hear the blood rushing in your ears?  The only time that it bothers me is when I am lured by the elusive possibility of complete silence.  Sort of like light pollution.  When does light bother you except when you are lured by the elusive possibility of a perfect starry night?  Or when you’re trying to fall asleep?  And when is it ever a good time to have elective brain surgery??  Certainly not while my husband was dying, and certainly not now when I don’t have medical insurance.  So I’ll skip it.

But stillness and quiet at the side of a pond is a magical gift.  I did startle some mallards who were hiding by the reeds.  Two flew away, but the other two just paddled a few feet out and then turned around.  I came quite close to a fat, male cardinal and a red-headed woodpecker.  I got the feeling that everything was in a subdued mode.  The colors were muted, the sounds were muted, animal activity was less raucous than usual.  A holy hush, perhaps.

The Lord is in his holy temple, let the all the earth be silent before him. (Hab. 2:20)

That reminds me of my Dad.  So did the cardinal.  Dad could whistle the cardinal’s song and used it to call us to attention.  I learned to do it, too.  (My kids probably hate the sound, but it works.)  Who do you think of in silent moments?  What calls to you out of silence?

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In Search of a Good Life

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I am reading a book called Back from the Land: How Young Americans Went to Nature in the 1970s, and Why They Came Back by Eleanor Agnew.  I am glad to have found this book at the beginning of my homesteading research.  Many of the reasons hippies started a “back-to-the-land movement” are the same reasons I have for being drawn to that kind of life in this decade.  I, too, am fed up with capitalism, the technologically-driven status quo, agri-business, election politics and the failure of progressive promises.  I have the desire for freedom, natural good health, self-sufficiency, community, sustainable living and a gentle relationship with the land.  If these motivators moved more than one million Americans in the 70s from urban lifestyles into homesteads, communes and small farms, why aren’t they still there?  “A study by the Stanford Research Institute estimated that ‘from four to five million adults were wholeheartedly committed to leading a simple life and that double that number adhered to and acted on some but not all of its basic tenets.”  Economic uncertainly fueled some survivalist rationales in that decade and could certainly be applicable today, right?  What happened in the “Me Generation” that brought these people back into the consumerist culture?

I’m only on Chapter 5, but I’m beginning to see the pendulum of privilege to poverty coming into play.  The homesteading hippies were largely white middle class folk who had no family experience of farming or living on the land.  The longer they stayed out there, the more “improvements” they began to incorporate into their lives.  The authors writes that she and her husband spent all of the capital they had on land ($1,000 for 62 acres in Maine!) and planned to heat their cabin with wood.  Their house in the city didn’t sell until late November, so it was December when they moved into the 34 x 24 foot log cabin heated with one wood stove.  The temperature inside the house was largely unaffected by the one stove, so they bought another stove and stayed with neighbors for 10 days until the thermometer hit 60 inside.

You could say that most of these folks were naive about the realities of nature.  Living more closely with natural surroundings means living more closely to natural processes.  Weather.  Change.  Unpredictable events.  Death.  I suppose being realistic would be to decide well in advance how you would prepare for certain conditions and how you would accept conditions for which you were not prepared.  And then to do the preparing you could do.  Am I prepared to be cold or injured or repulsed by sights, smells and sensations?  Am I prepared to be afraid?  Am I prepared to experience failures and setbacks on many levels?  Do I want the freedom of danger?

Is it all golden leaves and smiles?

There are also pages and pages of first hand accounts that assert that the years spent homesteading were the best years of life.  For many, the positives far outweighed any negative memories.  So the question for our next Summit Meeting is: How do you want to live?  And I want details as well as values.  Do we have electricity? Plumbing?  Do we slaughter animals?  How will we use money?  How will we build community?

I don’t want to say that somewhere out there is a perfect way of life.  I’m not sure that is true.  I want to say instead that in the discussions and efforts and experiences of this process, we will find ourselves living.  Let that be the epiphany we celebrate.