Alexandersmap

    Month: May 2019

    • Walden & High Agency

      The great thing about motivational quotes is they represent wisdom and offer insight for us in our own lives, conveniently boiled down from a pile of words.  The drawback, of course, is that you’re only reading a small part of whatever the quoted person was trying to say, usually twisted into some new meaning in its abbreviated form.  As I’ve re-read and re-discovered Walden, as you may expect many old, familiar quotes pop up.  This particular thread from the Conclusion chapter, takes on a much deeper meaning when you consume everything Thoreau wrote (the oft-quoted  words in bold):

      “I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there.  Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.  It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves…  The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels.  How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!”

      “I learned this, at least by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.  He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of things.  In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.  If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost, that is where they should be.  Now put the foundations under them.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      As romantic a notion as building castles in the air is, these words seem just a little too up with people for general consumption on their own.  Like one of those motivational posters you see in offices around the world.  But taken in the context of the rest of the paragraph, they become more meaningful.  Thoreau is reminding us that we all fall into routines as individuals, and also as societies, but if we only have the courage to break out of those routines in focused pursuit of loftier objectives, the universe aligns to support us in achieving these objectives.

      Reading Walden again, I’ve realized that I glazed over much of it the first time I read it as a teenager.  The words simply didn’t mean as much to me then as they do now.  But isn’t that the case with everything?  We all pick up a little wisdom as we move through life.  But we also pick up bad habits, assumptions and biases, and become the sum of the parts around us.  Choose your path, establish those tiny, sticky habits that move you towards your objective, surround yourself with the right people and you will pass that invisible boundary Thoreau describes.  Routines can build you into something much greater than you imagine, but they can also hold you down.  Get off the worn-down mental path and see the world in a new way.

      “The universe is bigger than our views of it.” – Henry David Thoreau

      Speaking of the universe, it seems to align with the way I’m thinking at a given moment.  I know that’s not entirely accurate, I just notice things more when I happen to be thinking about something related to it, like suddenly seeing white Honda Accords everywhere as soon as you start driving one.  So upon posting this article I scanned Twitter briefly and what do I find but George Mack’s Twitter thread about High Agency, which he heard about from a Tim Ferriss interview with Eric Weinstein:

      “High Agency is a sense that the story given to you by other people about what you can/cannot do is just that – a story.  [A] High Agency person looks to bend reality to their will.  They either find a way or they make a way.  [A] Low Agency person accepts the story that is given to them.  They never question it.  They are passive.  They outsource all their decision-making to other people.

      So a Low Agency person believes the world is as people say it is.  That’s just the way things are.  A High Agency person believes the universe is bigger than our view of it, as Thoreau so eloquently states it.  Be the change you want to see in the world. and what is more High Agency than “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost, that is where they should be.  Now put the foundations under them.”?

    • Downpours and Rainbows

      On Friday I drove through a downpour. A wall of water driving so hard to the ground that it looked like a thick fog as I drove into it. Rain so hard it creates whiteout conditions on your windshield. Cars around me reacted as I did by immediately slowing down, flipping the wipers to their fastest setting and a quick glance in the mirror to see what’s driving up on you. Some folks do better in this than others and like me keep going at a much reduced speed until it passes. Others, perhaps with vision problems or a less forgiving car pull over into the breakdown lane. Drive long enough and you’ll inevitably experience this a few times, and indeed I have.

      Ohio, 2015 driving a rental car from Columbus to Cincinnati I hit sustained rain so hard and steady that highway traffic came to a crawl. Worst I’d ever experienced. Even worse than Stockbridge 2011 on I-84 North approaching the Massachusetts border with intense, heavy sheets of rain pounding the windshield. I got to the rest area in Charlton and they were broadcasting tornado warnings. Sure enough one crossed I-84 shortly after I’d driven through that spot. I think back on my timing that day quite a lot, and look at where it crossed whenever I drive through.

      Back to Friday, and I-88 westbound through Otego. Down below 45 MPH for a stretch with blinding truck spray making it all but impossible to see. Pressing on the rain abated enough to improve visibility and then I was through the other side. Intense sunshine from the late afternoon sun replaced the rain and I quickly put on my sunglasses. Knowing this combination well I glanced in the rear view mirror and sure enough there it was. I smiled at the timing of the Wells Bridge rest stop approaching I pulled in and took a quick photo.

      They say things are darkest before the dawn. Friday offered a new twist on that, with the rain hardest before Mother Nature rewarded us with a rainbow. I’d paid my penance for the view, while those heading eastbound had the reward (the better view) first only to drive into the storm afterwards. There’s probably an analogy to explore there, but it’s best to be on my way.

    • Robert Treman and the Gorges

      I’ve never regretted a morning when I got up early and got outside to exercise. Today I’m moving Emily home from college so that meant an Ithaca waterfall walk. Different hotel than last time I was here, but fortunately there’s a stunning waterfall seemingly on every corner in this town. Five minutes walk from the downtown Hilton Garden Inn is the lovely Cascadilla Gorge Trail. As with most gorges, this one has plenty of water.The lower part of the Cascadilla Gorge Trail begins Treman Triangle, a small triangular shaped park named after Robert H. Treman, a local gentleman and successful Ithaca businessman who, along with fellow trustee Henry Woodward Sackett donated this Gorge to Cornell University.  But Treman didn’t stop with this gorge.  He also donated the land around Buttermilk Falls State Park and the park named after him, the Robert H. Treman State Park.  This is the type of wealthy guy I admire: make a lot of money and then do something good with it.  These were his time capsules, preserving the things he loved about Ithaca so that they might be enjoyed by generations long after he’s gone.  He’s remembered far more for the land he donated than for his success in business.  Isn’t that a greater success story than what he had accumulated in his bank account?

      I started writing today’s post thinking I was writing about Cascadilla Gorge and my observations about it.  It’s truly beautiful, and walking alone through it at 6:15 AM I felt like I was up in the Adirondacks somewhere, not walking up from downtown Ithaca to the Cornell campus.  My step-father went to Cornell and Cascadilla Gorge has a special place in his heart. Walking it while the city slept I could feel it. There’s magic in solitude, especially magnified in a spot like this.  Lingering here felt appropriate, but I was approaching this as exercise and aside from taking some pictures along the way I tried to keep moving.  As with most places I try to know something about where I am, which led me to a greater appreciation for Robert Treman.

       

    • Time Capsules

      A couple of weeks ago I stopped at Rogers Island Visitor Center in Fort Edward, New York.  I knew the place wasn’t open but I wanted to at least stop for a moment, look around and give a nod to the legacy of Robert Rogers, who used this island as a launching place for much of the fighting his Rangers did during the French and Indian War to the north of this place.  Rogers Island is strategically situated on the Hudson River and well known to the Native American, French, British and Americans who travelled these waters to “The Great Carrying Place” where you’d need to portage your canoe or Bateau boat on your trek to Lake George and points north.

      Rogers Island is considered the birthplace of the US Army Special Forces and holds a special place in the hearts of US Army Rangers to this day.  I wasn’t in the Rangers myself, but recognize the significance of the tactics developed by Rogers.  They essentially mirrored the tactics used by Native American warriors and added a few wrinkles of their own.  That’s a post for another time.

      While walking around I spent a few minutes reading the historical signs placed around the property and considering the commemorative garden that was just starting to bud on the April day I visited.  My eye was naturally drawn to the monument dedicated to those who fought and died in wars engaged in by the United States and I walked up to better view it.  While there I noticed the tablet on the ground marking the time capsule commemorating the 250th anniversary of the French and Indian War.  This capsule is scheduled to be opened in the year 2055.

      Time capsules are a message to future generations.  Schools do these all the time, and add things that are meaningful to the people who are participating in the event.  But the funny thing about time capsules is that in all likelihood you won’t be around when they open it.  Sure, 50 years gives you a fighting chance, but life is full of twists and turns and there’s no guarantee of anything except death.  So burying the artifacts of life is akin to a message in a bottle thrown in the ocean.  You’ll likely never see it again, but you hope that someone will and whatever message you give to them will be meaningful in some way.

      Time capsules are all around us, and you don’t have to bury some safe in the ground to make one.  My time capsules to future generations are the lilacs I planted along the property line, or the trees I planted out front.  They’re the bathroom I renovated in Pocasset and the words I’m writing now.  By this measure I look for similar offerings from those who came before me. Mostly my time capsule is the way I conduct myself and how that influences others for the better or worse as others continue to influence me.  I won’t be here forever but I hope my legacy will be positive beyond the generations who actually know me.  Time will tell, but it won’t tell me.

    • The Endpoints of the Day

      Winning the day starts with the morning. I’m pretty good with the morning now, but there are plenty of mornings where the evening gets in the way. Eat too much, stay up to late, have a few drinks and the morning routine is more challenging. So this ridiculously easy habit stack I have has bailed me out on a few mornings where I wasn’t feeling up to the challenge but did it anyway. If the morning is the angel on one shoulder, the evening can be the devil on the other; full of all kinds of triggers and temptations. Glass of wine? Why not? Bread with dinner? Why not?  I’ve been good today… Slippery slope.

      The morning represents a new hope for the day ahead.  You’ve got your whole day ahead of you!  So very much you can do today!  The evening has its own pleasures of course, but ultimately you’re left with a feeling that I’ve accomplished all I can today or I haven’t done what I needed to do today.  Either way it’s an end point.  Last call.  Give me beginnings.

      “We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass that confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already spring. In a pleasant morning all men’s sins are forgiven. Such a day is a truce to vice…. bless the new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy, and all… faults are forgotten.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      Thoreau pleads with us to live in the moment, but also to bless the new day and forget the past.  Sign me up…

      Also on the morning habit stack is reading, and this morning’s Daily Stoic entry made me chuckle after writing the title of this post: Carpe Diem. It featured this gem of a quote:

      “Let us therefore set out whole-heartedly, leaving aside our many distractions and exert ourselves in this single purpose, before we realize too late the swift and unstoppable flight of time and are left behind. As each day arises, welcome it as the very best day of all, and make it your own possession. We must seize what flees.” – Seneca, Moral Letters

      Seize what flees.  No matter the time.  This day…  this moment.

    • Seeing Green

      “As if the earth sent forth an inward heat to greet the returning sun; not yellow but green is the color of its flame; – the symbol of perpetual youth, the grass-blade, like a long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the summer, checked indeed by the frost, but anon pushing on again, lifting its spear of last year’s hay with the fresh life below…. so our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity.”                – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      It happens every spring anew, the world explodes in green and birdsong.  The endless winter is behind us, school is almost out for the colleges and U-Haul trucks and vans are commonplace, the roads and rest areas are getting more crowded with tourists, lawn mowers and leaf blowers roar back to life, and pools filters begin to hum again.  Spring in New England is here again.

      As Thoreau observed 120 years before I was born, the blades of grass begin to rise up once again, bringing welcome life to a lawn that was looking pretty pathetic just two weeks ago.  I’m grateful for its return and look for the bare spots that require re-seeding. When you live on the northern edge of the woods the lawn gets a lot of shade.  When you don’t invest in an irrigation system the lawn fights for a drink with the trees and shrubs that surround it.  When you don’t dump massive amounts of chemicals on your lawn you lose some gain to the insects who nibble on the roots, and the weeds that would gladly supplant the bluegrass and assorted other grasses that make up a lawn.

      Twenty years of maintaining this lawn, and in general it continues on perpetually.  A few troublesome spots where the microclimate doesn’t give the grass much of a chance.  These are the places that the natives take over and moss and dandelions and all the things listed on the bags of chemicals make a home.  These are the places where the tires from the mower wear down bare spots in the yard that harden over time.  Irrigation and chemicals would help in these spots.  Maybe a less aggressive mower too.  But to me these are minor considerations.  When you look at a lawn you know immediately if the homeowner prioritizes it.  My neighbors likely shake their heads at the contrast between my focus on the garden and my apparent disregard for the lawn.  So be it.  At my home low in the valley and snug up against the woods there’s a natural order to things, and moss tends to be more natural than grass.  But it has its own lovely shade of green this time of year.

      I hired someone to mow the lawn several years ago.  That decision has trickled down to my dwindling overall focus on the state of the lawn, which in turn trickles down to my focus on edging and weeding the beds.  The neighbors must look with perplexion towards the flower garden and pots that I meticulously tend every season.  I’m a fickle gardener, and perhaps I need to tend to the rest of the yard once again.  Or perhaps not, and continue my adventures elsewhere.  After all, spring is in the air.

    • Asking for Directions

      Driving back home after getting my car serviced my trip was detoured for road construction.  Orange signs directed me to a new route, which of course I knew already having lived in the town for 25 years.  During this adventure it occurred to me that I haven’t been asked for directions in years.  The reason is obvious of course; everyone carries directions with them in their pocket.  GPS apps like Waze get you where you need to go, and tell you how much time you have left to your destination.  Where once we asked a person for directions, now this information is readily available.

      I stopped at a rest area a few weeks ago in Vermont.  The rest area attendant and I got to talking a bit about local historical landmarks.  I mentioned I was driving to a meeting near Lake George, had stopped at the Hubbardton Battlefield Memorial and was going to check out the fort when I got to Lake George.  He mentioned the tablet marking the location of the Battler of Fort Anne at Battle Hill, and gave me specific directions on what to look for as I was speeding along at highway speed.  I didn’t ask for directions, but they sure came in handy in spotting the tablet.  There are some things better left to humans to explain.

    • Iceberg Season

      This morning I was thinking about icebergs.  It’s iceberg season in Newfoundland, with more than 1200 released from sea ice and parading past the ruggedly beautiful eastern coast.  Icebergs are big business as tourists flock to see them, much as tourists flock to see Great White sharks now on Cape Cod.  The world has a curiosity about icebergs that goes back to the day the Titanic sank.  There’s something mystical and romantic about these roaming islands of ice marching from their icy prison in the north where they’ve been locked away for millennia to southern waters where they reunite with the blended waters of the world.  Romantic until you run into one anyway.

      Scanning the iceberg sightings this year made me think about my time on Signal Hill in December of 2017.  Signal Hill is impressive without the draw of icebergs floating by you, I can imagine the crowds there on a Saturday with an iceberg floating by.  My time there, documented early in this blog’s history, was memorable but certainly not crowded.  Little did I know at the time that I wouldn’t be back there again any time soon.  It remains on my short list of places I’d love to get back to.

      Environment and Climate Change Canada tracks iceberg activity and states that most of the icebergs that you see in the North Atlantic are calving from glaciers in Western Greenland, with between 10,000 and 40,000 icebergs annually.  I had no idea there were that many in a season.  To be categorized as an iceberg the ice has to be at least 5 meters above the sea level.  That’s the starting point, and icebergs get much bigger from there.  Those that miss the 5 meter cut are still navigation hazards.

      So icebergs triggered my wanderlust affliction, which is always lingering just below the surface.  Surely a trip to Labrador and Newfoundland in April would be a great mix of Aurora Borealis and icebergs.  Frankly I wonder why I haven’t done this trip already.  So much to see and do in this world, and two things I’ve always wanted to see are just out of reach this season.

    • Thoreau Never Worried About Dryer Lint

      Henry David Thoreau describes in wonderful detail his day-to-day life during his time at Walden.  In building his cabin, he obtained used brick to build a fireplace and eventually put in a stove for more efficient cooking.  And he dug a root cellar for storing his food, describing some of the foot lost to moles and other rodents in the matter-of-fact way someone who fully expects some percentage of their food stores to be eaten by rodents.

      Thoreau writes of the ice men who would come to Walden every winter to cut the ice to ship near and far for cooling deep into the summer.  Before refrigerators root cellars and ice houses were the norm, and blocks of ice were the preserving savior of many a family’s harvest.  Root cellars were generally disconnected from the main house, just as outhouses were.  Not having an outhouse in your home makes sense, and really it makes sense for the root cellar as well.  It’s meant to be a cold space, and the food stored there would naturally attract rodents.  Best to have that disconnected from the house.

      Not many people have an ice pick today, but it was so commonplace before refrigeration that it’s immediately thought of as a murder weapon in a mystery.  Casually walking out to the root cellar and grabbing an ice pick to chop off a few chunks of ice for your mixed drink is foreign to us but the concept of using the same tool in a murder mystery makes perfect sense.

      Today as I moved the laundry forward from washer to dryer to laundry basket to closet, I casually pulled the dryer lint from the filter.  For all the modern comforts technology has brought to us, the lint filter is likely low on the list.  But Thoreau would have marveled at it for all that it represented. We are all living a shared experience today with our modern conveniences, just as Thoreau shared similar experiences living in Concord. Most people today would be lost trying to use a wood stove for baking, just as HDT would be lost trying to figure out a microwave. It’s only when you step out into the wilderness that we share the experience of Thoreau in the 1840’s. For it’s there that we become closest to those who lived here before us.

    • Sisyphus the Homeowner

      It’s May 4th and Spring is officially here in New England.  Still a danger of frost, mind you, but the world is blooming.  I’ve been away from home for five full days and as with any extended trip I take a moment to take stock of the house, the pets, the yard and the pool to see what’s changed.  With Bodhi aging I started with him, and sure enough his overall well-being is much worse than it was on Monday.  He’s reaching his time, and we all know it.  For now I wanted to get him outside so he could relieve himself with dignity and I carried him down the deck stairs to the backyard.

      First thing I noticed was the sound of the pool filter making a strange sound and a quick glance at the pool betrayed the reason; the water level was eight inches lower than when I left on Monday morning.  Big problem.  I quickly shut off the filter (thinking the damage is done to the pump) and walked around the pool looking for the source of the leak.  As I write this I still don’t know, but for that much water to be drained from the pool it must be mechanical.  I cursed the timing as this would have been something I would have noticed had I been home.  Kris doesn’t focus on things like this, especially with an aging dog crapping all over the house while she’s at work.

      Beyond the dog and the pool, I noticed the many other changes that occur when you’re away for any time.  The world is constant change, and especially in early spring.  The grass is growing again, which is encouraging given the many bare spots that revealed themselves when the snow melted.  Several shrubs have significant winter kill, which is discouraging given the hope with which I planted many of them just a year ago.  Yet even these show signs of life.  Patient monitoring and maintenance may be enough to bring them back.

      Being a homeowner who travels requires a commitment to maintenance.  You’re signing up for lawn care, housework, mechanical troubleshooting, home decor changes, and ongoing financial outlay to fix or replace things that go astray.  These things ground you when you want to immerse yourself in this world.  Or they handcuff you as you look to the world outside.  It’s a state of mind, really.

      Today I need to roll up my sleeves and get to work maintaining that world we signed up for twenty years ago.  Like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill only to see it roll down to be pushed up again for eternity, being a homeowner means you’re doomed to repeat the same tasks for eternity.  Last year it was the hot tub (still is), this year it’s the pool.  Last year I re-seeded parts of the lawn, this year I’ll be re-seeding parts of the lawn.  Such is the fate of the homeowner.

      There’s a calculation that every homeowner goes through in their heads; is the ROI on this worth the effort?  As an empty nester with a serious wanderlust trait, at what point does it make sense to sell the place and gift these Sisyphean, perpetual tasks to others?  Alas, the answer is… not yet.  For all the maintenance headaches, I love having a pool.  For all the weeding and re-seeding and winterkill, I love having a garden.  For all the sadness of watching your dog age, I love having him around as long as he’s not suffering.  And so it goes, around and around.