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.

More Feathers, Hope

We spent today worrying about a female house sparrow in our  yard. She clearly has an injured wing and spent most of the day splayed on one of our feeders. Every time we tried to have a closer look, she would attempt, and fail, to fly away, usually just landing in a heap on the ground. By nightfall (when birds should be in their nests), there  were eight inches of snow on the ground - with just as much more forecast by morning - and she was still there, limply resting on the feeder. Knowing that she would freeze to death by morning, we placed a call to the wildlife rehabilitators up in Roanoke who helped  us with our baby squirrel situation earlier this summer, who gave us some suggestions about how to capture her and bring her inside. The suggestions were irrelevant;  in her exhausted state, she didn't even put up a fight. For tonight, at least, she is warm and safe with food and water in a cardboard box in our downstairs bathroom. We shall see how she is in the morning. The injury doesn't look life-threatening, and she doesn't appear to have any eye problems like the wildlife rehab person says they've seen with sparrows around here. The Preschooler was enthralled with this whole situation, watching her father capture her outside through the living room windows, and then insisting on having a look at her once she was moved inside. She's been asking a lot of existential questions lately about life and death, which are hard for anyone, harder for those of us with out-of-the-mainstream ideas and beliefs. We're hoping the sparrow makes it, so that we can avoid some of those Hard Questions for a while longer.

During all this bird-rescuing chaos, my father-in-law called and thought we were crazy for going to all this trouble to help a common bird. Certainly house sparrows don't get much love from me, as far as local birds go. They are ruthless in their role at displacing the disappearing Eastern bluebirds, and while they're not as horrible as say, cowbirds, they definitely aren't the kindest, gentlest species. Still, there was just nothing else we could have or would have done but this. Nothing at all.

Happy Ending Postscript:
House Sparrow seemed to be rejuvenated this morning, with no sign of any serious wing injury. So we all just released her into the yard, where she promptly flew away quickly and eagerly. Good thing, since it doesn't look like there's any bird rehabilitators within a two-hour drive of here!

I Am Not Ready, But the Color's Here

Gray, in anticipation of white. This rumpled landscape swathed in a colorless season. Darkness outweighs lightness for a few more hesitant weeks. A time when I have to push myself, stretch beyond self-imposed boundaries, the confines of warmth and comfort, go seeking sustenance in a still and quiet world. My least favorite time of year, when it is so hard to remember that this dormancy is temporary. In a momentary lull, I read for pleasure - how long has it been? - nourish my soul with language and metaphor and image:

I'm looking for summer, but I can't find how or where it begins. Is it a prick of light, the spark from a horseshoe striking rock as I ride into the mountains? Can it be found in the green eruption of a leaf? It's my obsession, you see, to seek origins...That's how summer is: no past or future but all present tense, long twilights like vandals, breaking into new days.

-Gretel Ehrlich, Islands, The Universe, Home

Z says: "You like to watch snow through the window."
I say:    "Yes. I like snow without the cold."

Until the light returns, I must ask myself this question, over and over, until I have accepted the answer: Isn't one's true abode any wild place, any fire storm or night of discontent?

The Return of Terrible Things

So I guess last year's truly epic battle with brown marmorated stink bugs was not an isolated incident. In the last few days, a literal brown blanket has appeared, covering the entire outside of our house, as these critters all try to find a way inside, a place to over-winter (turns out it is primarily the females who do so). And thus far, many of them have found a way in. This year, we've gotten a bit smarter after last year's experience and much research - air conditioning units are fully sealed and are running 24-hours-a-day (at least the fans, since we suspect that's one entry point). But this house is a crack-and-crevice nightmare; there are still so many other ways in. And in they will come. And since we were still seeing them in the house all the way till spring last  year, I can only imagine that it will be the same this season.

I have never, ever in my life been able to say that I *hate* another creature before. Until these bugs. And my hatred runs to a truly unfathomable depth. We have come to the unfortunate realization that there is just no other alternative - well, relocation, which given our lease, is not an option - except insecticides. J. has spent the entire day spraying every window, every crack and place outside where he sees them. That would be upsetting on its own, but coming on the heels of my having just finished Silent Spring (in entirety for the first time, shameful for a nature writer I know), I am conflicted to the point of going straight out of my head. I honestly don't think I would be quite so upset if I didn't have children to consider.

Four Months

That's all the time it took for the wolf to finally be removed from the Endangered Species List and for two states to declare a hunting season on them. I wonder what Barry Lopez would say.

What We Should Do

I've been thinking a lot since the weekend about some ideas that came out of one of the writing craft lectures at the Chatham residency. Some ideas that seem a bit problematic to me. I've been struggling to make sense of these thoughts. I realized yesterday that the term I've been reaching for, the idea that feels problematic to me, is atavism. In a social science context, atavism is used to discuss culture, the concept of modern people reverting to ways of thinking and acting that are throwbacks to a former time. And in this sense, that former time is usually looked on nostalgically, almost reverently. This seems to be a common thread in a lot of nature/environmental writing, especially in the contemporary works, given the urgent environmental crises we currently face. Writers who feel that we need to get back to basics, a simpler life and time, before technology and science mucked things up so badly.

What's been problematic to me about an atavistic attitude is that I'm just not sure it's such a great idea. I love many writers' absolute conviction that environmental issues are the single most critical thing we humans are facing, and I would also agree with that. I can even agree, to a certain extent, with the assertion that our advancements, our technologies, are the root causes of many (or most) of our social problems, especially environmental. But these writers too often also have what feels like an overly romanticized view of "nature." Maintaining what seems to me an idealized view of life as it used to be, the agrarian, close-to-the-land lifestyle, or the belief that we all, unilaterally, need to to aspire to return to that, to heal ourselves and the planet, is where I diverge. While I think that is a lovely, admirable goal, it's just not that realistic. And it idealizes a way of life that is impractical and perhaps impossible for a lot of people. It's a way of life I'm not sure I myself would want.

Sure, it would be nice to quit society and move to the country and live lightly, live off the grid. But unless everyone commits to that - which is unlikely - there are lots of people who can do really amazing environmental work within the society we've created, who can find ways to see, and help others see/find the "wildness" and "wilderness" (terms that get tossed around a lot by nature writers) in their own spaces and places, as they are now. I like to think that I can do that. People I know can do that. And that we too can make a difference.

On Feathers and Foreigners

I have realized that now that I no longer have a job where I sit in front of a computer all day long, to maintain this space as I have in the past, as I would like - which means long, meandering, thoughtful posts - is an impossibility. So I shall have to retrain my Blog Self, to write smaller things, less meandering but, I hope, not less thoughtful.

I am reconsidering my commitment to the birds here, the ones that visit our feeders, for purely selfish reasons, ones I feel most guilty about. Basically, it's economic. Daily I am astounded by just how expensive it has gotten to keep these birds - especially all the cardinals - sustained. Pesky squirrels aside, the birds themselves can literally empty a huge feeder in just a single day, if feeling motivated (which they are, always). With three of these feeders, we are spending a small fortune on this new hobby. When I complained about it to a friend the other day, she warned me that once I start, I really can't stop, especially not in winter when food becomes so scarce and they've come to rely on us for help. Probably we'll just keep buying it and keep filling them. But it's become not entirely a small burden.

As I predicted earlier this spring, the chopping down of the ailanthus forest in our yard has been futile. And if anything, culling them seems to only have hastened their propagation to a wild degree. I'm finding even more - which didn't seem possible - saplings, all over the yard now. In Pittsburgh, my foe was Japanese honeysuckle. And here, it is that ailanthus. But it's a battle I know I cannot possibly win. On my run this morning, I stopped to admire a mimosa tree, another pesty non-native species. It is a tree that, like the honeysuckle, has a scent that is so beautiful, almost intoxicating. I can understand why people brought them to a place where they don't belong.