Alexandersmap

    Category: Nature

    • Of Sharks and Auroras

      Some people are shark people. My bride is one. Shark people follow every shark sighting, have the Sharktivity app on their phones, watch Jaws every time it’s on and are completely locked in on Shark Week. The fact that there’s a week+ of programming dedicated to sharks tells you that there are a lot of shark people out there. I appreciate sharks, but I rarely think about them until the shark people mention them yet again. On Shark Week I sequester myself in the office with a good book.

      Some people are sky people. I’m one of them. I have a ritual of walking the dog after dinner and spend most of the time looking up to see what the sky is doing. And it’s always doing something interesting. I have an Aurora app notifying me at all times of night. My favorite movie is Local Hero (if you know you know). Like any self-respecting sky-gazer, I follow things like meteor showers and eclipses and the occasional comet. And naturally I closely monitor solar activity that offers opportunities to see the aurora borealis.

      We all have something we’re fascinated with. Call it a harmless pursuit of something that is larger than our particular niche. Those shark people are fascinated with the serial killers of the sea—mysterious creatures that emerge from the deep to challenge our belief that we are at the top of the food chain. Meanwhile, we sky people look up to the universe for perspective and enlightenment. Who’s to say which is the better pursuit? Do we draw inspiration from cold-blooded killers* or the heavens above?

      * Of course I’m just kidding. I appreciate sharks too. It’s the shark people I’m poking fun at.

      Aurora Borealis

    • See What Unfolds

      The Barred Owls have returned. There is a mating pair that moves through the trees, hooting it up to check in on each other while they each hunted in different places in the woods surrounding us. I’m told that Barred Owls hunt independent of each other, eat what they eat and catch up again later. “So how was work today?” “Fine, had hoped for a baby bunny but only caught a field mouse.” Romantic stuff.

      Also developing in the neighborhood, a large beaver has moved in to the stream, wading about just after dusk above the bridge. It’s been a few years since I’d seen a beaver in the stream, and I’m wondering if the drought had dried up its previous nest. Beaver will move on when their food source is used up, not unlike the owls. We’ve all got to eat. While the owls are big talkers, the beaver works in silence most of the time.

      We’re seeing yet another bumper crop of acorns this year, which explains the abundance of animals that feed on them moving back into the neighborhood (along with the animals that feed on the feeding animals). It’s been a hot dry summer after a wet spring. I wonder what that means for the fall foliage this autumn, but I don’t wonder enough to look it up. We all have the world at our fingertips, don’t we? We ought to let a few things simply unfold before us just to keep the magic in our lives.

      I’m finally reading a paperback version of Niels Lyhne by Jens Peter Jacobsen, based entirely on the recommendation of Rainer Maria Rilke, mind you. I’m at a point in my life when I look around and find most talking heads haven’t got much to add to the conversation, so I dig deeper. Don’t just stop with the work of an author or poet or artist—seek out the works that influenced them. What challenges and transforms us, collectively?

      Today’s world is unfolding exactly as I anticipated when the elections went the way they went a year ago. We are where we are because people believe what they want to believe, and feel emboldened to behave the way they behave because others do it so it must be okay. We too may choose how to react in such times. How do we want to navigate this world that we live in?

      My advice, since you’ve read this far, is to seek out the timeless over the trend whenever possible. Things will come and go in a lifetime. We mustn’t forget that the lifetime in question is ours. We must do the best we can with what unfolds before us. There is more to this world than the madness swirling noisily on the platforms of choice. Go deeper and see what unfolds.

    • Rest in the Grace

      When despair for the world grows in me
      and I wake in the night at the least sound
      in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
      I go and lie down where the wood drake
      rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
      I come into the peace of wild things
      who do not tax their lives with forethought
      of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
      And I feel above me the day-blind stars
      waiting with their light. For a time
      I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
      — Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things

      There is reassurance to be found in witnessing the dignity with which so many who, seeing the darkness in the world, have chosen light instead. There is calm to be discovered in poetry spun from words magically sorted together in clarifying and entrancing ways. And surely—even now—there are still wild places far from the noise of life where we may find stillness.

      If we are indeed what we consume, does it make sense to soak up the anger, fear and misery imposed by a world that wants us to buy in, or to shun it in favor of a more natural information diet? What liberates us from the shackles of a maddening world? With clarity and focus, we are better equipped to find what we seek. And even that which we aren’t fully aware we’re in need of. In moving away from the noise of the world, we may finally hear what was whispering for us all along.

    • Illusions of Permanence

      Each of us has a reckoning with illusions of permanence. Things come and go from our lives with regularity. This is most obvious when we live in a place that faces a building boom. The field down the street or the woods that line the road are leveled for a development. The old farmhouse and barn are torn down and a building pops up in its place. The quiet country road is now lined with cars commuting through, and soon the road is widened and strung with traffic lights. And we mourn what was lost.

      It’s similar when a friend we’ve bonded with becomes radically different from us politically. What we believed to be forever turned out to be nothing but an illusion of permanence. The person I thought you were is not who you turned out to be, and you think the same of me. Yet, like that field and stand of trees on that quiet country road, we each have memories of what one was. We each miss the person we thought the other was.

      A plot of land might be viewed as an investment in the future of the community, but some folks feel that investment is conservation land and some think it’s a new hospital, grocery store and housing development. Both have value for a community to thrive, and both ought to be fought for. But we ought to consider carefully what will be forever lost when completing the transaction to make the change.

      Some relationships are better as transactional. We can put aside our differences and work side-by-side with a teammate or a coworker, focused on the common goal. And we can nurture a deep bond built on common beliefs and a feeling that each person in the relationship is integral to the other. Consider the circle of trust and who we might want within it, and who should remain outside. Often it comes down to who will grow with us and who will erode the essence of who we are for want of some company. We should beware the company we keep, but when the right company is found invest deeply in keeping it.

      The thing is, nothing is permanent, but some things have staying power. Everything will disappear one day, but we have agency in keeping that stand of trees or that person we care about in our lives. Or we can use that agency to drift away to do other things that feel important to us, expecting that what we remembered will still be there for us when we return. When we see the fragility of everything on our journey, we begin to prioritize the things that have staying power simply because we take the time to make them so. Ultimately, our legacy is built on what we took the time to care for beyond ourselves.

    • Time to Step Out

      House on fire
      Leave it all behind you
      Dark as night
      Let the lightning guide you
      Step outside, time to step outside
      Time to step out
      — José González, Step Out

      Yesterday was one of those epic days we’ll remember for the rest of our days. I picked up my daughter from a red eye flight, which meant I was up quite early myself, and capped the evening with the northern lights dancing brilliantly overhead late into the evening. Why does anyone stay inside when the universe wants to play with us just out the door? Just what call are we listening for instead?

      Every other time I’ve chased the aurora borealis I’ve gone somewhere other than home. Most of the time I’ve come up empty. Scotland, Iceland, Maine, and northern New Hampshire have largely mocked me with overcast or a fickle aurora. But there’s something to that Cheryl Strayed quote about putting ourselves in the way of beauty that continues to whisper to me. Step out! Be patient…

      What we seek often comes to us if we simply get out of our own way and put ourselves in the way of it. Last night I opted to stay put and see if Norðurljós wanted to dance. It turned out she did, and what a performance!

      The thing is, we get wrapped up in what we miss, instead of simply stepping out of ourselves to find what is often right in front of us. Something like the northern lights is out of our control most of the time, but what is in our control is a willingness to dance with whatever comes our way. Amor fati: Love of fate. Fate brought my daughter home and a visit from Norðurljós in one memorable day.

      Photo credit to my daughter for this one
      Visible to the naked eye, but incredibly bright in night mode

    • The Penance of Autumn

      O hushed October morning mild,
      Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
      Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
      Should waste them all.
      The crows above the forest call;
      Tomorrow they may form and go.
      O hushed October morning mild,
      Begin the hours of this day slow.
      Make the day seem to us less brief.
      Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
      Beguile us in the way you know.
      Release one leaf at break of day;
      At noon release another leaf;
      One from our trees, one far away.
      Retard the sun with gentle mist;
      Enchant the land with amethyst.
      Slow, slow!
      For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
      Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
      Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
      For the grapes’ sake along the wall.
      — Robert Frost, October

      As this is published on the 1st of October, the foggy world outside makes me feel I’m living in Frost’s poem. Small wonder, as he wrote it just up the road a bit. The aroma of ripe grapes is fading now, but we can still smell them on evening walks. Acorns rain from the trees, crashing through the canopy and thumping to the ground. This is another bumper crop year for the oaks, and the acorn performance follows just after the hickory nuts. To live amongst the trees in this time is to risk all. Only the foolhardy would stroll barefoot now.

      With the nuts come the collectors. Squirrels and deer, wild turkey and chipmunks work the harvest. Some in turn become the harvest as the hawks, owls and fox move amongst the trees looking for an easy mark. The pup works to chase all intruders from the yard, but it’s like trying to hold back the tide. In a few weeks it will all be over, acorns stored for winter by the rodents and the rest raked up ahead of the leaves. This is the penance of autumn in the woods of New Hampshire.

      To live here amongst the trees is to forever be a servant to the detritus they drop. They were here well before I was, they remind me, and they’ll be here until I one day leave this place, I remind them. That was our bargain, but they do love to abuse the current resident. To live life as a poem is not simply watching sunsets capping the days while whispering sweet nothings to our lovely copilot, it’s to apply sweat equity in the seasons with faith that it will be a good harvest that we may be blessed with another. We may not all be farmers now, but we still work the land.

      They say that Robert Frost wasn’t much of a farmer, but he gave it a go anyway. His farm produced timeless poetry instead of produce, so maybe he was a better farmer than he was credited for. Eventually Frost moved away from the farm to find inspiration elsewhere. I can relate to that too, even as I reconcile myself to a few more seasons raking acorns off the lawn and tossing them into the woods. The land is good and the season generous, and all along I’ve been harvesting here too.

    • Mount Etna

      “Mount Etna is renowned for its exceptional level of volcanic activity, and the documentation of its activity over at least 2,700 years. Its notoriety, scientific importance, and cultural and educational value are of global significance.” — UNESCO

      Visiting Mount Etna is relatively easy. It simply involves driving serpentine narrow roads filled with cars, motorcycles and large tour buses nudging the limits of the suggested speed. Once you arrive at the lower crater, you’re greeted by hundreds of people, souvenir shops and restaurants. Some hike or gondola further up to the higher craters and summit, others linger where the views are good enough, thank you. Personally, I’d have hiked ip given the opportunity. But there’s only so much time.

      The thing about a volcano is it doesn’t particularly care about your feelings, or about time. Volcanoes, like the ocean and stars and timeless principles, are of the eternal universe. so visiting an active volcano informs, not just about the planet, but about our fragile hold on this moment we’re here to witness it. When you’re dancing with eternity, you can’t help but feel awed and agape. Which is exactly why we made the pilgrimage there ourselves. Tourist shops aside.

    • Between the Natural and the Divine

      “It is the morning of the first day of the great peace, the peace of the heart, which comes with surrender. I never knew the meaning of peace until I arrived at Epidaurus. Like everybody I had used the word all my life, without once realizing that I was using a counterfeit. Peace is not the opposite of war any more than death is the opposite of life. The poverty of language, which is to say the poverty of man’s imagination or the poverty of his inner life, has created an ambivalence which is absolutely false. I am talking of course of the peace which passeth all understanding. There is no other kind. The peace which most of us know is merely a cessation of hostilities, a truce, an interregnum, a lull, a respite, which is negative. The peace of the heart is positive and invincible, demanding no conditions requiring no protection. It just is. If it is a victory it is a peculiar one because it is based entirely on surrender, a voluntary surrender, to be sure. There is no mystery in my mind as to the nature of the cures which were wrought at this great therapeutic center of the ancient world. Here the healer himself was healed, first and most important step in the development of the art, which is not medical but religious. Second, the patient was healed before ever he received the cure. The great physicians have always spoken of Nature as being the great healer. That is only partially true. Nature alone can do nothing. Nature can cure only when man recognizes his place in the world, which is not in Nature, as with the animal, but in the human kingdom, the link between the natural and the divine.” — Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi

      I know: I’m breaking every rule of compelling writing. But this blog was never going to be The New Yorker. It’s a collection of observations and picked up pieces along the way. The writing isn’t the end game, merely an aspiration in a life full of aspirations. Yes, I began with a long quote from Miller, to be sure, but I didn’t have the heart to omit any one part of it. His thought process reminded me of Henry David Thoreau, his observations reminded me of Anthony de Mello.

      Enough justification: Let’s get to the point already. We are all links between the natural and the divine, the problem is that most of us live a life completely distracted and unaware of our essential position. When we reach awareness life makes more sense, our place in the universe is clear, and we live in the moment. This is the peace Miller talks of, a place we immediately understand when we’ve arrived there ourselves.

      “You and I were trained to be dissatisfied with ourselves. That’s where the evil comes from psychologically. We’re always dissatisfied, we’re always discontented, we’re always pushing. Go on, put out more effort, more and more effort. But there’s always that conflict inside; there’s very little understanding.” — Anthony de Mello, Awareness

      I write this blog not as a wise old sage, but as someone who has seen the light and struggles to linger with it. It’s not as if I don’t hear the email notifications poking at me, or feel the frustration of heavy traffic after a long week of travel, but I do put them in a place where they don’t rise to a prominent place in the moment. Peace isn’t a cessation, it’s an arrival. I know I won’t accomplish everything I want to accomplish in a lifetime, but I’m happy with where the journey is taking me. Let the lists of unvisited places be damned: I’ll do what I can in this lifetime.

      “Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past. Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barnyard within our horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly reminds us that we are growing rusty and antique in our employments and habits of thoughts. His philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours. There is something suggested by it that is a newer testament,—the gospel according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has got up early and kept up early, and to be where he is is to be in season, in the foremost rank of time.”
      — Henry David Thoreau, Walking

      Between the natural and the divine is where we reside. We navigate living in a world filled with the walking dead: those afraid to truly see the game for what it is. It’s always been about now. It’s always been about the quiet connection with our fellow travelers. To be where we are in the season, firmly in the moment. We overthink the present, feeling it ought be more complicated than it really is. Sometimes it’s as simple as walking away from a partially-written blog post to play fetch with a pup we haven’t seen in a few days, that we may get reacquainted with why we’re here in the first place. It’s surrendering to the moment and truly being at peace with where we are.

    • A Moment with Eugene’s Birds

      Nay, I will; that’s flat:
      He said he would not ransom Mortimer;
      Forbad my tongue to speak of Mortimer; 555
      But I will find him when he lies asleep,
      And in his ear I’ll holla ‘Mortimer!’
      Nay,
      I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak
      Nothing but ‘Mortimer,’ and give it him 560
      To keep his anger still in motion.
      — William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1

      In 1890, a man named Eugene Schieffelin brought European starlings to the United States. According to The New York Times, his motive apparently was to have all the bird species mentioned by William Shakespeare in America. So I have Eugene and a single name drop by Shakespeare in Henry IV to thank for the mess that starlings leave in their wake when they come to the bird feeders in my backyard. We ought to be more careful introducing invasive species to places where they never existed, but when has common sense ever directed anything that humans do?

      You learn a lot about the local bird population when you put the right variety of food out for them. I lived in my home for almost twenty years before I saw bluebirds visit the feeders, largely inspired by putting food they’d actually eat in the feeders. From that point on I’ve had an abundance of bluebirds. The starlings were never invited to the party, but they’re masters at crashing it anyway. Perhaps that’s why they call them invasive.

      This winter I brought the feeders back close the house, that we may enjoy the view of wild birds just outside the window. I forget sometimes the mess that comes with feeders in the form of bird droppings and seed shells, but it’s the uninvited guests like starlings, squirrels and rodents that make me question my sanity. But the birds are worth it. Even the squirrels are entertaining, and I give them just enough of a head start before I let the dog out that they stand a chance of escaping (there are some messes I don’t want to deal with).

      Winter isn’t what it once was, but we do have snow again. The bird feeders become very popular when the ground is coated in snow. The buffet is open for business, and as the movie line goes, build it and they will come. And really, that’s the point. When I go into the kitchen for a cup of coffee or tea, I look out in the yard and see life. Life in turns inspires me to be more lively myself, and the work benefits from my time with the birds. I suppose that’s worth a bit of mess from a couple of uninvited guests.

    • These Bare November Days

      My sorrow, when she’s here with me,
      Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
      Are beautiful as days can be;
      She loves the bare, the withered tree;
      She walks the sodden pasture lane.

      Her pleasure will not let me stay.
      She talks and I am fain to list:
      She’s glad the birds are gone away,
      She’s glad her simple worsted grey
      Is silver now with clinging mist.

      The desolate, deserted trees,
      The faded earth, the heavy sky,
      The beauties she so truly sees,
      She thinks I have no eye for these,
      And vexes me for reason why.

      Not yesterday I learned to know
      The love of bare November days
      Before the coming of the snow,
      But it were vain to tell her so,
      And they are better for her praise.
      — Robert Frost, My November Guest

      Stick season in New Hampshire. Sleet and rain greet me as I bring the pup out for her morning relief. These are darker days, surely, for the days are shorter than they were yesterday and the day before. The earth turns a cold shoulder on the warmth of the sun, and we are left to work with the light that’s left for us.

      I don’t struggle with seasonal depression, but I certainly understand where it comes from. The trick is to get outdoors anyway and greet the day no matter how dismal her response or cold her shoulder. We navigate through our days, rain or shine. That’s not naive optimism, it’s awareness of the conditions around and within. Dress accordingly.

      Frost was a New Hampshire resident, just up the road a bit from where I call home. He lived through his own share of dark Novembers and naked trees. He turned his days into poetry. I wonder sometimes, especially on cold, wet and dark November mornings, what are we doing with our own?

      As the sleet accumulated on the walk, the pup delighted in this new world of snow cone bliss. She ran about, licking up this unexpected abundance of icy treats, tail wagging furiously in her excitement at this previously unimagined experience. When you treat whatever the universe throws at you with such wonder, how can you do anything but love these bare November days?