the morning river

Heading east in the early morning, winding along the Deerfield, everything is golden. The trees are encased in ice, crystalline, drops of diamonds arch elegantly over the water. There is a stretch of the river that is true flood plain, the river diverges and there is an island of marsh grass, it too coated and sparkling. And the river holds on to heat, the freezing morning air condenses the moisture and the whole, wide river is steaming. Each rising molecule catches sun.

And what comes to mind is easy brilliance. Simple ebullience. Something better than anything that took just about nothing. Like all colors, it is the changing conditions of atmosphere and light that make the content, the substance seem unbelievably altered. The temperature rises as the sun’s angle widens, and everything is altered again … greater contrast, less sparkle, more depth. A different picture.

These ticking mechanisms, day length and earth tilt and the trees each with a clock in its heartwood are a chorus. A kaleidoscope that stays still but flashes change moment to moment. If I am moving too it is a clacking cliché, but when I stand still after a climb in winter early in the day or towards the end of twilight I am struck. Especially if I can feel my heartbeat in my feet or stomach or wrists, that other precarious mechanism, I understand that absolutely nothing is ever the same. It is different two inches to the right, or left, and I feel glee and desperation when I think of all the scenes that go unseen, un-gulped, un-awed. There are perfect frames of composition and light that are struck like a gong, boldly, which are left to fade and darken as quickly as they appeared. Like it was no-thing.

And that itself is a pretty enough sound-picture, I think. Imagine hillsides and valleys and plains all ringing out, as the light hits them just exactly so. A chiming, shining world. Especially in winter.

on the urgency of climate change

The juncos are significantly rounder this morning, their white underparts puffed out, looking like tiny snowmen wearing a jacket and tails. It’s cold, finally – the weather that affords us New Englanders bragging rights. None of this forties business, yesterday it was one degree at nine o’clock. But the ice and snow doesn’t bring the resounding relief I’ve been wishing for. There’s still the eerie undertone, the understanding that the patterns we’ve attuned ourselves to, the old rhymes and country lore are fast becoming obsolete.

On one of the coldest days this year I went to a lecture on climate change given by the Nature Conservancy’s Climate Change Adaptation Leader for the Berkshire region. He was reporting on the organization’s prognosis after the Durban conference, which, not surprisingly, is dreary. Not the technology, not the possibility – we have astounding technology and resources to both arrest climate change and adapt to the effects already in place (like increased moisture due to warmer seas, resulting in more extreme storm events like Irene and the Halloween snowstorm). What’s dreary is the business of it all.

The good news out of Durban was that all involved agreed we need to address climate change, and significantly reduce carbon emissions. Hooray! A start. However, the amount by which emissions are to be reduced shall be decided by 2015, and not implemented until 2020. The greenhouse effect is not linear, it is a phenomenon of positive feedback. The longer we wait the more drastic our actions will have to be, and the greater the resistance there will be to implementing them. Blast.

Driving home, Aric, who works educating about sustainability and behavioral change in consumption and waste, wondered out loud, “we who work for the environment are just another one percent – how do we convince people to care? Everyone is trying to convince everyone else of the significance of their cause – whether it’s a product, an activity, a charity, a livelihood…” It’s a good question. And in the question lies the problem – “the environment” is not a cause.

It’s not another discipline. “Environmental Studies” is a worthy course of study, but its title is misleading. The phrase, “getting back to Nature” makes me seethe. We were never out of it. The fact that we think we are, at times, to me seems quite literally insane, as completely out of touch with reality. We can be more attuned to our surroundings, but we are never out of them. It may be a statement of the obvious to say we depend upon a healthy and generous environment, but for the most part we live as if we don’t.

We are porous, with ill-defined borders that embed our surrounding ecology within us, from food to breath. A constantly shifting and sifting system, that is not romance but fact. We have a hundred unseen systems within systems, as does every organism.

‘The environment’ is the canvas upon which every single action and breath is painted. From buying shoes to brushing my teeth, calling my mother, getting an oil change, breathing and dying. It is not a cause, it is the fundament of all causes. Many ills need to be addressed, not prioritized but addressed from all levels by all manner of people. But no one “doesn’t have time” for the environment; you are the environment.

Truly, truly, when we work to save and secure the environment we rely upon, we work to save and secure ourselves. The planet itself doesn’t care, it was still Earth when mostly sulfur and volcano and heat. Covered in ice is as “natural” as a verdant Eden. And all will fall away, eventually. Perhaps that is a reality we all need to contemplate. And no great work is ever sustained by guilt and fear, only by loving optimism and conviction.

But first we all must understand the urgency.

A few resources:

http://change.nature.org

http://www.ipcc.ch/

http://ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com/

The Deerfield in Winter

I went down to the Deerfield the other day, one of the coldest of the season. The hemlocks were frosted, drooping over the river, fishing the mist. Amidst the relative quiet of winter it is startling, always, to walk beside a river. It never ceases, year round, to rush and roar. I rather felt like knitting my eyebrows and tsking it, asking it if it had any concern at all for the turtles and muskrats deep in its banks and beds. But its thrilling rush won’t be stopped, and its inhabitants are happy for the oxygen.

In the pinkish cold the water takes on a green, a jade, eery and evocative. Its boulders throw up sprays of froth, reminding me of the prints of Mount Fuji. The river seemed to hold fury of a sort, but alongside its banks the rocks were wearing petticoats.

They had ice tiers, three layers each, all exactly level, reflecting a gray-blue sky. Their bodies seemed languid, a herd of half-dressed sea lions sprawled in their preparation. Jewels were scattered about, pebbles frosted with spray. The Deerfield is dammed, and the levels rise systematically, allowing perfectly measured rings of ice to form along its banks. In one area full sheets of layered glass had formed, three or so inches between each layer, enough for a careful hand. I wonder if the operator knew such delicate, exacting work had occurred. It was inadvertent Andy Goldsworthy.

I knelt to get my eyes level, and with my hands squeezed in my pockets I could feel the bones of hips bend. I wanted to crawl in. As I looked up and down the bank, I notice my surroundings have greened, and seem relatively lush. A distinctly different light, here – not the stark pallet of needled ground and gray-brown bark, but something full and round. And here there is not the destruction, or not as much, from the hurricane. No trees upturned, gathering rubbish and debris. And then I realized, mountain laurel!

Somewhere between bonsai and wild grape, or like hophornbeam wrung, thinned, and twisted. It seems hearty, but also sculpted and delicate. Its flowers are a cluster of cup-crowns, and its leaves waxy and evergreen. In my mind it’s our most notable member of ericaceae, the broad-leaf evergreens. They are plentiful out west, salal and Oregon grapes and kinnickinnick carpeting the coniferous floor – there is even the great twisting tree, the madrone, who belongs to ericaceae. But here it’s the mountain laurel, and until I saw its effect along the bank I hadn’t appreciated its resilience.

The flood waters of hurricane Irene ripped through roads and toppled enormous sycamores, tore out street lamps and miles of bank. And surely there were other factors that lessened its effect along this stretch of bank, but one had to be the laurels. Their leaves still clung tenaciously, undisturbed, though they had gathered masses of sticks and leaves and sand, still pointing downstream as if in mid-flow. I crawled up under one and felt I was in some eagle’s aerie. They must have lessened the water’s velocity immensely, and their slim trunks and roots must have held fast. This is quite unlike areas populated by the invasive Japanese knotweed – those banks are ripped and eroded.

So I’m bolstered by laurels, as is a lucky stretch of the Deerfield. In winter they give warmth, cover, contrast, and in the spring they’ll be awash with pink and white. While the river roars.

waiting to understand

This day breaks cold and clear, the sky a pale golden pink. The juncos are here with the flurries, though it’s hard to tell who chases which. The wind makes the feeder on the sugar maple outside my window sway, and I find myself wondering if a grouse has just landed for a snack. The jays sing their short, tremolo song – a raspy bell. There seems an air of both urgency and patience outdoors, a chill rush with the acceptance of a long wait. And I am thinking about singularity and knowing.

We identify. Isn’t that the rush? That’s Sam Peabody, like I wrote before. The confirming label that seems to acknowledge both the thing pointed at and the one whose finger is doing the pointing. ‘There you are, so here I am,’ and the like. Quite together. This is knowledge, perhaps, but it’s quite short of understanding. Most authorities on birding beg the novice to put the guide book down, as long as you’re actually looking at or listening to a bird. When you see a flash of yellow, a blotch of black at its head – keep looking. Suppress, for a moment, the urge to call it “Yellowthroat” or “Goldfinch.” Let it be one bird, itself, living, just right now. As soon as your mind plays back recording after recording in the wild attempt to remember the one who sings a chiming waterfall, you’ve stopped listening. You’ve made it “A Veery” instead of “this singular small thing, who is right now in a tree above me in these woods on this afternoon and it smells like mud and my what a lovely voice you have, what are you saying?”

When we identify, we begin to know, perhaps. I am the first to rush to claim what I have seen or heard. And no wonder, it’s been our cultural inheritance since Adam. But it is an impoverished knowledge without understanding. How do we understand a bird, a tree? We stand under them, a gesture of humble waiting. We set ourselves aside, and look. We let the individual speak, or sway, or grow. And then we can go back in and say “I have been with,” instead of merely, “I have identified.”