Local Culture

Preschooler: Mommy, why do we all have to turn to bones someday?
Me: Well, because nothing on the planet lives forever and ever.
Preschooler: Except plastic.

I've been too busy this semester to post about the recent controversy over what to do about Radford's vulture populations, but it's clear that the mitigation plan imposed a few months ago was effective. And I'm still conflicted about it. The childcare center mentioned in the article is attended by both of The Girls. And really, their huge presence on the playground there had made a huge mess, probably a health hazard. But, despite its apparent success, I'm not sure this was the most humane approach. I miss seeing hundreds of them roosting in the trees in Wildwood Park. They are still here, though. It just takes more mindful attention to see them. I wonder, too, if Buttercup the Vulture is among them; one day a few months back, after years of being in rehabilitation, she saw a flock (is that the right term?) flying overhead and just took off. I like to think so. 

On the Nature of Blog Writing. And Me.

Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.

—Blaise Pascal

I have spent the summer and fall guiltily pretending to ignore the dozen or so started, but unpublished, entries here each time I log into Google. And I realize now that the reason the words remain unspoken is because brevity - inherent in the blog medium - is simply not among my repertoire of writerly skills. Never has been. Asked to write a "short-short" story for a fiction workshop a million years ago at Pima Community College in Tucson, I turned in a final piece that was barely contained in six pages. Like French philosopher Pascal, I lack the time - and also the mental processes - to write things short. My brain feels compelled to meditate, at length, wander, meander, until I've said everything I wanted to say. Everything. The idea of writing a piece that is under ten pages is largely inconceivable.

Funny thing is that I am a bit obsessed lately with flash nonfiction and would like to try it. At last summer's Chatham residency, after Lori Jakiela's wonderful reading, I told her: "I'm so jealous. I wish I could write 'funny.'" She replied (as closely as I can remember, anyway), "And I can't write 'pretty.'" A lovely compliment, and although I truly believe one is either funny or not - and can't learn to "write funny" - perhaps I can also learn to write 'short.' Because I also now realize that I must teach myself how to do this. Must learn to contain and condense and distill the ideas and thoughts. Or I just might never write anything ever again. Least until The Girls go off to college.

A New View

The dust, so much dust, of the last six weeks begins to settle and so do I. A new, smaller space, which is challenging. But apart from a Very Little Ant Problem (both in scale and in ant-size), all I can feel is relief at no longer having to share my living space with the mice, stinkbugs, black flies, box elder bugs, and mini-flock of European starlings. Hard to believe that life had become *normal* to us, having all those outside creatures inside, right alongside us. And I am trying to return to a normal Me, the one that conjures up sympathy and empathy for those other creatures, rather than resentment or contempt.

A few days ago, The Girls and I spent a long time observing together a lone carpenter ant which had found a dead-moth "treasure" (as they call everything that is found outdoors, leaves, sticks, acorns, berries). The backdrop of this shared moment was the lovely view of the Blue Ridge Mountains from our patio (seen in the photo). So nice to be able to enjoy the outside space without thinking about all the pests trying to get inside.

The one thing I do miss so far from the other house are the birds. Watching them. Looking them up in the field guide. Writing down all the species that frequented our yard. Particularly our (because after 2 years, we felt that they belonged to us somehow) pair of red-bellied woodpeckers. From the songs, there seems to be a great many more birds here (a great many more trees & fewer houses), yet none of them - beyond the mundane Little Brown Jobs - show any interest in the feeder we've put up. There is one in particular that has intrigued me. I'm terrible with identifying birdsongs - they all sound so much the same to me - but this one was unusual, a bird I'd never seen and one with a constant and distinctive song. We finally got a good look at it yesterday, saw a fledging baby and mother in the foliage outside the kitchen window: a mockingbird. We've noted it on our list and listen each evening for its calls. And to ameliorate my sadness at what we've lost, the Preschooler has drawn me a picture of the woodpeckers, which she says is for "whenever you are missing them."

Unquiet Spirit of a Flower

With our big across-town move less than a week away now, I'm thinking of things that I will not miss about this house: the stinkbugs, the box elder bugs, the colonies of wasps, the ants, the mice, the family of starlings living in the chimney - those are all within the house or just outside it. But one thing I will also not miss is the yard, also known not-so-affectionately as The Invasive Species Jungle. To use the term yard for this place is a misnomer, as it's more like a few rebel blades of grass battling it out with all manner of weeds and saplings and other scaries. Apart from its sheer size and the subsequent mowing challenges, I just don't really understand the American fascination with The Lawn.  The compulsion to have a pristine, manicured, tidy carpet of green. One that requires constant attention to keep it pristine. One that can't fully be enjoyed because of all the chemicals required to maintain that pristine-ness. I'm sure the neighbors see the 'for rent' sign out front and hope that some new tenants will remove the blight on the neighborhood landscape that is this yard. This has to be the Year of the Dandelion too, some strange convergence of the absolute right conditions for it to proliferate more than I ever thought possible.

Here I feel much kinship with Robert Wright in his recent blog post from the New York Times. And I am remembering back to one particular composition course at Iowa State, when we read Michael Pollan's wonderful essay, "Why Mow?" (also from the NYT). For some reason, this one piece engaged students more than any other that I have ever taught. For their assignment that week, they were asked to write an argument against Pollan, one in favor of the lawn. The responses were creative and generally pretty amazing. One student wrote his entire piece from the perspective of the lawn itself. Another employed Jonathan Swift-like satire successfully. After all these years, I still have copies of some of their pieces. But I still wonder what exactly it is about the idea of a lawn that inspired them so, what touched such a nerve by Pollan's suggestion that maybe we don't need lawns.

Me, I'm looking forward to having the tiniest slip of grass, one that will take minutes instead of hours to take care of. And I won't miss you one bit, you jungle masquerading as a yard. Though The Girls will miss it, at least all the dandelions. Because to them, this jungle is a sea of beautiful *flowers* just waiting to be picked.

Today, Contemplative

It would seem logical to post something in honor of today, Earth Day. And maybe it's just the residue of all the nature rants we've read this semester. Or the fact that being stuck at home with a sick toddler meant that I didn't spend a single minute outdoors today, as I had hoped to do. Or maybe it's just that I find myself nodding in agreement, more than a little bit, with this writer of the piece, "Why I Hate Earth Day." Yes, really this day should be celebrated, the Earth celebrated. But how much more meaningful if we all lived as if Earth Day was just every day?

On Placelessness

"We don't stand much chance of perpetuating ourselves as a culture, or restoring and sustaining the health of our land, unless we can outgrow our boomer adolescence and mature into stickers, or nesters - human beings willing to take on the responsibilities of living in communities rooted in place, conserving nature as we conserve ourselves."

—John Daniel, from "A Word in Favor of Rootlessness"

A friend's status update today on Facebook asked this question, inspired by the knowledge that we're both currently packing to move (her across the state, me across town): How many times have you moved? Is it normal to be a gypsy?  We worked together in Sequoia and both spent many years living an itinerant life. In response, I made a list, one that surprises - and perhaps stuns - even me. The final count (and there may be others I've missed) is: in my lifetime, I've lived in 16 different/unique places, and within those have moved 40 different times. Interesting that about 2/3 of those occurred in a 9-year period, between the ages of 19 and 28. I'm not sure what to think about all that, am still thinking about it. But it helps me understand a little, maybe not the source or motivation of that almost-compulsive movement, how it is that I find myself unable to connect with place and landscape. 

Lines Written with a Slate Pencil

Things, life, have certainly gotten in the way of the words this winter, this semester. More so than any other season I can remember in the recent past. These things and life are not much different in the literal sense, but for some reason, I've spent these last few months unable to fully - no, even partially - surface. Most unpleasant, the sensation of constant breathlessness. Maybe I can convince myself of the possibility that words themselves hibernate, enter into a period of seasonal dormancy. One that only now they begin to emerge from. Still, it's impossible to think that I will return to any of the almost-dozen or so begun-but-never-finished entries spread out over the last four months. So I delete them all, swiftly and before I get too attached to their intended meaning. Starting over, the clichéd clean slate, one that corresponds perfectly with the present.

And in that present, I can now fully believe in spring. The eastern redbud trees are a lilac horizon, the evening stillness is interrupted by the cacophony of spring peepers in a nearby pond, clouds of citrine pollen settle on everything and everyone, the pair of European starlings have begun their yearly child-rearing in the chimney again, and looking out the kitchen window to the mountains all is more green than not. Through the winter, I've come to realize that this landscape may necessarily have to be mine for a good, long time. Indefinitely. And with that understanding I must travel to a kind of settledness. Or perhaps an unfolding of equilibrium. The last several years I had mostly believed were temporary, a pause on the path to a Place I'd Really Like to Be. And through that, there has been resistance, much. A familiar pattern to me by now, so many places merely lived in, superficially, because it's all just too much to truly learn a place which is only yours for a while. And patterns become habits (habit: recurrent, often unconscious pattern of behavior that is acquired through frequent repetition), become constitution. A way of being. The way of being.

And I'm just not sure I know any other way. An old friend finds herself in the position, for the first time ever, of being completely unfettered, without a single tie to any place or person. Able to just pick up and go anywhere in search of that Place to Really Be, trying them all on until one fits. I am nostalgically envious, remembering what that is like. In mid-February, in the 20 degrees and snow (so out of my character, voluntarily participating in winter), I spent two hours with a small group of people watching and listening to the local birdlife in the woods. A few weeks ago, I ventured into those same woods for the purpose of finding and learning about wildflowers. Last night, I listened to Appalachian writers discuss and read from their work. I have no idea if I will be able to learn to see, live deeply in, and love this landscape. None of these things, birds, wildflowers, local literature has much resonated with me before. But here I am trying to find a new way, something that will connect and ground and contain, something to transform constitution into the seeds of something native.

Going Or Coming Back

We will start with a single blue dwarf  iris

Appearing as a purple dot on a hairstreak

Butterfly seen in a distant pine barrens and proceed

Until we end with a single point of purple spiraling

Like an invisible wing in the center of the flower

Making fact.

—Pattiann Rogers, from "Reaching the Audience"

Today I am looking forward to the start of another Nature & Environmental Writing journey, to meeting both the people and revisiting the writers. I have made quite a lot of changes this time, deleted things that didn't work, pared away (as much as possible - such a huge genre with so many wonderful writers!), added in some new works. And I am hoping that this semester, I will be able to commit myself more to keeping up here, particularly with regular place-based entries.