tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11052217233058219182024-02-18T18:33:40.428-08:00The Story of HereUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1105221723305821918.post-16924076720815466392013-10-22T15:28:00.004-07:002013-11-11T21:39:36.182-08:00After a long hiatus, I've resumed this conversation at a new location. Please <a href="http://www.alanraywartes.com/jb-journals.html">follow this link</a> to join in!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1105221723305821918.post-81938986761901091152011-02-14T13:23:00.000-08:002011-02-14T13:23:22.190-08:00Desperately seeking "hozho"<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">Fans of Tony Hillerman’s mystery novels, set among the red ochre mesas and dry sheep scrub of Navajo country in the American southwest, will recognize a Navajo word that shows up in many of his excellent stories: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hozho</i>. Though difficult to define in fewer than a hundred English words, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hozho</i> encompasses the Navajo ideal of living in harmony with all that is, of being in right relationship with the world. It is about balance; about personal and communal beauty that adds its voice to the whole blended ensemble of creation.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hozho</i> is about real-world harmony and balance in the trenches of life, not the weekend retreat, ”don’t-worry-be-happy varieties.” In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sacred Clowns</i>, Jim Chee—the fictional Navajo detective through whom Hillerman explores what it is like to be born among the Dine’ and live on the reservation—sums up <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hozho</i> this way:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">“This business of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hozho</i>…I’ll use an example. Terrible drought, crops dead, sheep dying. Spring dried out. No water. The Hopi, or the Christian, maybe the Moslem, they pray for rain. The Navajo has the proper ceremony done to restore himself to harmony with the drought. You see what I mean. The system is designed to recognize what’s beyond human power to change, and then to change the human’s attitude to be content with the inevitable.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hozho</i> says that harmony is a real and realistic destination in life, even when times are hard. But, to the Navajo, it is found only on the map of our <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inner</i> landscape—in the human heart and mind, in our beliefs and expectations. It advises that adjusting ourselves to reality is a much easier (less stressful) and more balanced way to live than trying to bully the world back in line with our program. It holds that harmony is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">choice</i> we must make in stormy weather, one that is not dependent on the return of clear skies. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">Most important of all, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hozho</i> enfolds a concept that we westerners vehemently and vocally reject: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inevitability</i>. We are the people of the fabled “fat lady”—nothing is over till she sings, and even then we hold out hope that game officials will reverse the call on further review and deliver a last-minute miraculous victory for our side. The idea that things just “are the way they are”, no matter what we do, goes against our ingrained, up-by-our-boot-straps belief that we are the masters of our fate. If something ain’t right it’s just because we haven’t fixed it yet. We only need to think harder, work longer, swear louder—and, by God, beat some balance back into this thing. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">We could call our way “anti<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">-hozho”.</i> Weaponized harmony. Industrial balance. An irresistible psychological force in search of an immovable object like, say, peak oil or climate change. Having cracked the vault of fossil energy a couple hundred years ago, we’ve been able to convince ourselves that anti-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hozho</i> actually works. That it always works, like gravity or electromagnetism, without any modifiers such as “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">if</i> we don’t destroy the environment” or “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">so long as</i> the oil holds out…”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">However, now we’ve entered the time when the “modifiers” we’ve hidden away like illegitimate children are showing up on the porch all at once, suitcases in hand, past-due bills pinned to their lapels, with hungry looks on gaunt and desperate faces. Every outsourced cost, every off-balance-sheet ledger entry is coming home now. As a way of life, anti-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hozho</i> has—literally—run out of gas. That won’t stop the true believers from piling out and pushing the rusting heap another mile or two; but there is no escaping reality: collapse is for real and it is here.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">The big trick is to resist anti-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hozho</i> dogma in all its forms—and they are plentiful, perverse, and pernicious. All your core beliefs about how the world works have been fertilized since the day you were born with the ripe manure of “infinite growth”, “creative accounting”, and jingles about how “you deserve a break today”. Your task is to think the unthinkable—that most of what you “know” is just plain wrong. That’s a hard, dry mouthful to swallow, but it has this going for it: it’s the truth. And truth always travels with a faithful sidekick, the real object of this essay—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hope</i>. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">Upton Sinclair once said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”And yet, understand we must; because today there is more at risk than Sinclair’s “salary”. Everything we depend on for life itself is on the line: food, water, shelter, transportation, health care. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hozho</i> is one way to describe the pathway through this harsh understanding to hope. To explain why, let’s add another English word to the basket we’ve already used to define it: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">flexibility</i>. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">Hozho teaches the art of creative yielding, of adapting to what is in time to survive—and even thrive—under radically new conditions. Do-or-die determination to defend the indefensible may make for exciting blockbuster movies, but it isn’t a good long-term survival strategy. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hozho</i> is. The Tao te Ching puts it like this:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">Nothing in the world</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">is as soft and yielding as water.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">nothing can surpass it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">The soft overcomes the hard;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">the gentle overcomes the rigid.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">Everyone knows this is true,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">but few can put it into practice.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">What does putting <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hozho</i> into practice look like in these times? First, accept that, from now on, the most important word in your vocabulary is “local”. Very, very local. Accept that responsibility for your basic needs, which our complex economy has allowed you to outsource to others, will most likely revert to you in the foreseeable future, with no chance of pardon or parole. Accept that your present habits, appetites, expectations, and entitlements are all rooted in a paradigm that will be defunct long before you are ready to stop breathing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">Acceptance isn’t about capitulation. It is about seeing what is, so that your work of preparation accrues interest in the world as it really is, and isn’t wasted chasing the figments of a vanishing past. Acceptance prepares the ground for another hallmark of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hozho</i>, and a key to its successful practice: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gratitude</i>. When we quit pining for what might have been, are eyes are suddenly opened to how much of what remains is truly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">good</i>. We see all the riches in a balanced life that are not vulnerable to collapse, unless we offer them up ourselves: friendship, shared labor and celebration, music, laughter, the pleasure of a good story well-told, warm sun on a spring day, the thrill of adventure and achievement, romance, a touch of Spirit in the darkness. There is true freedom and wealth in voluntarily letting go of the trappings of anti-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hozho</i>, most of which is illusory to begin with.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">As Annie Dillard wrote in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, </i>“If you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">An attitude of grateful, flexible acceptance is not everything. But <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hozho</i> says that it’s the only place to start if you want to keep your balance and live well, even in the worst of times.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1105221723305821918.post-84040328414060978602010-12-21T13:38:00.000-08:002010-12-21T13:38:46.232-08:00More Poems by Alan Wartes<h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Provocateur</span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">Come closer to know a secret.</div><div class="MsoNormal">The frog you hear at sunset</div><div class="MsoNormal">Telling his story to </div><div class="MsoNormal">Cattails and red-winged blackbirds</div><div class="MsoNormal">In that innocent bicycle-bell voice</div><div class="MsoNormal">Is no mere amphibian,</div><div class="MsoNormal">No more than Mozart</div><div class="MsoNormal">Was merely a primate.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">He is a spy, an <i>agent provocateur</i></div><div class="MsoNormal">Hidden in the muddy grasses.</div><div class="MsoNormal">His mission? To disseminate</div><div class="MsoNormal">Dangerous misinformation,</div><div class="MsoNormal">To sweetly sing there’s more to life</div><div class="MsoNormal">Than malls and mortgages,</div><div class="MsoNormal">More than profit and loss,</div><div class="MsoNormal">More than ever and ever more.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Beware. He will hint each evening</div><div class="MsoNormal">That magic is alive and well,</div><div class="MsoNormal">Glowing on the tips of dragonfly wings</div><div class="MsoNormal">And in the soft feet of possums</div><div class="MsoNormal">On pebbles at the water’s edge.</div><div class="MsoNormal">At noon under gathering cumulonimbus,</div><div class="MsoNormal">He will smile like a Hindu sage </div><div class="MsoNormal">And whisper “Life is good,” in your ear.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 32px; font-weight: bold;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Last Night’s Dinner Dishes</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">There is some beauty</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">In last night’s dinner dishes,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">The way the spoons</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">Recline at the edge of </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">Soup bowls like women</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">On porch steps after</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">The children are asleep.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">On a midnight blue salad plate</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">A smudge of dressing</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">Looks like the Milky Way.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">“You are here, and all is well.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">This crust of buttered bread</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">Proves the alchemists were right</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">To believe in transformation,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">While empty potato skins</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">Declare “We are what </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">We are – no more.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">The last sip of Burgundy</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">In that crystal glass</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">Is the color of conversation</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">And other precious jewels</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">We mined from deep shafts</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">Last night around</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">The noisy table.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Pulse Under My Fingers</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I feel it here, on my belly</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">In the grass under willows,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Where peppermint stirs</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Itself into the darkened</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Scent of soil,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The forest’s memory of</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Lost summers. I feel it</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">In the feet of bees</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Dancing on the willing flesh</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Of blue harebells dipping</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Their heads in</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Modest surrender, or in</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The reckless beetle diving</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Over twigs and</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Last year’s yarrow stalks,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Oblivious beneath his</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Blackened helmet.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">It is a pulse under</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">My searching fingers,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The earthworm who shrugs</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">As questions too large</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Pass through her</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Unanswered.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">What else could it be</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">When the flicker</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Taps a secret code on</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Branches over my head and </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">A treasure-filled vault</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Opens in my chest?</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Not dead and not lost,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">As was reported in the</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Victor’s history,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Magic is a wide river and</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I am a reed</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Bending in the current.</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div><o:p><br />
</o:p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1105221723305821918.post-11135269222371894072010-12-12T15:02:00.000-08:002010-12-12T15:02:04.722-08:00A tale of two spoons<div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">A man once asked God to shed some light on the mystery of heaven and hell. God said, “Why not? First I’ll show you hell.”</div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">The man suddenly found himself in an elegant, well-lit dining room. Many people were seated around a table set with a mouthwatering feast. The man thought God had made a mistake. He must have meant to say this was heaven, not hell. Where was the fire and the tortured cries of the condemned? Surely hell would not resemble a five star restaurant. Then he noticed that, in spite of the abundance of food, everyone in attendance suffered from desperate hunger. Their pale skin hung on protruding bones like wet tissue paper. Eyes receded into their sockets, clouded with the faraway look of prolonged agony. The man turned to God with a confused expression on his face. </div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">“Keep looking,” was all the Creator said.</div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">Each person held a spoon with a handle long enough to reach any of the fabulous dishes spread out before them. However, since the handle was longer than their arms, they were unable to reach their mouths with any of the food. Now the man understood: People in hell were doomed to starve in the tormenting presence of enough food to last forever. Like the chain that Jacob Marley dragged into Ebenezer Scrooge’s bedroom in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”, these people must have forged for themselves—by their deeds in life—the horrible and useless spoons that would torture them in death.</div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">“Now I’ll show you heaven,” God said.</div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">Upon arriving there, the man was more confused than ever, for he stood in a dining room that was identical to the one he’d just left behind in hell. The table was spread with the same food, fine crystal, and silver—and everyone held the same long-handled spoons. Yet, one detail was strikingly different: Here, each person was well-fed. Their faces were radiant with health and happiness. Whereas hell had been draped with an atmosphere of despair, heaven was full of lively laughter and conversation.</div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">“I don’t understand,” the man said to God. “How can heaven and hell be the same and yet so different?”</div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">“Simple,” God said. “It isn’t the length of the spoon that matters, but how one chooses to use it. Here, each guest feeds someone else, not himself.”</div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">Christmas has always been a good time to acknowledge the cold and darkness of the Winter Solstice—but to remind ourselves of the far, far more powerful nature of light and love. You needn’t be a Christian to be touched by the story of hope in the form of a humble baby born to poor parents in troubled times. The message—Peace on Earth!—transcends every pretentious limit we would place on it. For our part, Christmastime is when we traditionally think about what is on someone else’s plate, or under someone else’s tree, not just our own. </div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">That point of view has rarely—if ever—been more necessary than it is now. In modern times, you’d have to go all the way back to 1941 to find a Christmas season as darkened by world events as this one. That year, the shock of Pearl Harbor was barely two weeks old. It was truly a liminal moment in the lives of millions around the world, a threshold of sweeping upheaval, change, and death. The fact that all-out war was imminent and unavoidable was obvious to all but the most accomplished optimists.</div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">Sixty-nine years later, Christmas once again arrives in the choppy wake of events that are at least equal in magnitude to the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Actually, it’s a simple matter to argue that today’s challenges exceed those of the “Greatest Generation” by a large margin.) These days it is self-evident to the informed that there are bombs ticking in every direction, but two of them in particular finally exploded in recent weeks. </div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">First, the International Energy Agency released the World Energy Outlook 2010, an annual report that analyzes energy trends in the coming years. In a stunning (and unapologetic) reversal of itself, the agency not only affirmed the existence of peak oil, it stated flatly that the peak of conventional oil production has already happened—four years ago, in 2006. That means that, from now on, the supply of oil that is easy to find, extract, and move to market will steadily decline—while prices inevitably rise. It is impossible to overstate the gravity of this assessment from an organization that has consistently placed peak oil—if it existed at all—decades into the future. For a more detailed analysis see <a href="http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-11-24/its-official-economy-set-starve">this</a> and <a href="http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-11-24/iea%E2%80%99s-new-peak">this.</a></div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">Second, the Federal Reserve finally bowed to pressure from the courts, and from Congress, and released a limited accounting of how much taxpayer money has gone into bailing out the world’s banking system—and who got what portion of the pie. Never mind that it shouldn’t have been necessary to force the data out of them, and what it means about the state of the republic that it was necessary, here is the number they grudgingly provided: $12.6 trillion in direct hand-outs and “other arrangements.” Twelve. Point. Six. Trillion—12.6 x 10<sup>12</sup> dollars. That is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eighteen times</i> the amount<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that Congress debated and authorized ($700 billion). Much of this Noah’s flood of your money went to foreign banks. All of it is irretrievably gone.</div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">Movie directors like to employ a camera trick that would come in handy right now to underscore this news. It is used to portray the wobbly-kneed vertigo a character feels when he or she suddenly realizes the jig is up, and the threat they face is orders of magnitude greater than previously feared. (Picture the demolitions expert called to defuse what he thinks is a homemade pipe bomb only to open the shoebox and find an encrypted ten-megaton warhead ticking down to zero.) On screen this is when the foreground races forward while the background recedes, and the world stretches sickeningly like spandex that is four sizes too small. </div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">Unfortunately, in real life there is no director telling you by visual cues that you’ve reached a turning point in the drama. You have to figure it out for yourself, and few people have bothered to keep up with events well enough to do so. If America still functioned as advertised, the ink would have hit the fan by now, as journalists took off like greyhounds after the mechanical bunny at the race track.</div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">Alas. That is not the world as it is. The main stream media have stridently ignored both of these detonations. So it is up to us to connect the dots. Here goes: a) Oil—the essential ingredient in all modern economic activity (including getting the family car to the grocery store and back)—is about to get much more expensive and difficult to come by; and b) any national treasure we might have spent to ease ourselves into these uncertain energy waters has been stolen in the night. Furthermore, the thieves have destroyed the dollar on their way out the door, making traditional recovery and replenishment on par with believing in pixie dust and perpetual bliss in Neverland.</div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">Happy Holidays.</div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">On Christmas Day, 1941, our grandparents couldn’t wish the Japanese bombs back into the air. A new reality presented itself that they had to face and act upon. Now it’s our turn. Like it or not, life, as we have grown accustomed to living it, is coming to a rapid end. Some things about our immediate future may be brutally hard no matter what we do. But, the truth is, the difference between full-blown hell ahead and shared hardship and mutual support will always be a matter of choice. As present day social arrangements collapse around us, we will be left with an economic infrastructure that functions about as well as an oversized spoon. Many who’ve recently lost jobs and homes, have already discovered this fact: This way of living <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">doesn’t work</i>. We can no longer feed (only) ourselves as we were taught to do.</div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">When I am asked what steps I recommend to be ready for what lies ahead, I always begin with the obvious: food, water, shelter, etc. It does no good to neglect personal preparedness while you pursue high-minded global change. In other words, if you can’t heat your own house in the winter of a crisis, the fact that you lobbied your utility company to buy some of its power from “green” sources doesn’t mean very much. That’s blunt, I know, but true. Make a list of the things you personally depend on, then under each one write the question: “What would I do if…” Don’t stop until you have answers for each one.</div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">Yet, sadly, many people mistakenly believe that this sort of nitty-gritty preparation is the whole journey, when it is, in fact, just the first step. Securing your own basic necessities is the very least you can do—must do—to prepare yourself for the coming Long Emergency.</div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">No, there is much more to preparedness than that. Next, you must set about making sure you have something vital to offer your community—not the one presently defined by political boundaries or tax districts, but the much smaller circle of actual people you live with or near. As John F. Kennedy once suggested, don’t think in terms of what your community can do for you. Imagine having to justify your inclusion in a clan of people when the burning political question of the day is how to fairly divide up the hardship of scarcity. Why should you get a share? What do you bring to the table that the community values and needs? Here’s a hint: It had better be something with a direct and measurable positive impact on collective survival, under conditions more challenging than anything you’ve ever seen. </div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">The key word here, of course, is “collective”—a badly discredited word after years of capitalist triumphalism. Nevertheless, by helping to feed (or clothe, or heal, or shelter) the people you live with, you will gain access to all that they can do for you as well, each of you leading the other away from hell, if not into heaven. Contrary to the fear mongering propaganda plastered all over the TV, most people want to contribute and belong to something larger than themselves , and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">would</i> if shown a viable vision of how it can work. </div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">Yes, there is serious trouble at our doorstep. Yes, society is undergoing dramatic convulsions of contraction and change—right now. But we will make things much worse on ourselves if we fail to factor into our calculations the welfare of others, not just our own. We are only as safe as the least secure of our neighbors--period. Some people respond to that idea by building deeper bunkers. What would happen if we reached out instead? Genuine community may not spring up overnight, but a single act of one-on-one kindness and inclusion can begin to undo years of isolation and fear. One gesture of hope and trust can inspire people to lower their weapons and tear down long-held defenses. From there we might discover that we’re all starving to death anyway, attempting to feed ourselves alone. What would it cost us to give cooperation a shot for a change?</div><div class="NormIndent" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">This Christmas it is no longer good enough to mouth a few empty words about “goodwill toward men”. It is time to start living it on purpose and out loud, learning to love and care for each other like our lives depend on it—because they very well may. After all, that’s what the baby from Bethlehem grew up to say.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1105221723305821918.post-18402622139433857222010-11-06T13:38:00.001-07:002010-11-07T13:44:55.345-08:00A world made by hand needn't wait<div class="MsoNormal">The “growing season” is over at New Leaf Gardens. Considering our location on the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains, at an elevation of nearly 6,000 feet, it is remarkable that temperatures have only just begun to occasionally dip below freezing. Most of the time we still enjoy lows in the 40s. But the few frosty nights we’ve had were enough to hang a closed sign on the last of the warm-loving plants. Fortunately we saw it coming and last week harvested the remaining zucchini, yellow squash, eggplant, green tomatoes, bell peppers, and jalapeños. The tough guys—broccoli, cabbage, carrots, spinach, and arugula—just shrugged off the cold. Fuhgeddaboutit. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Shorter days and less to do in autumn means more time for reading, and I just finished <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Witch of Hebron</i>, the wonderful sequel to James Howard Kunstler’s novel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World Made by Hand</i>. The story is set in Union Grove, once a rural bedroom community in upstate New York that had fallen prey, like everywhere else, to the faux culture of “happy motoring” suburbanization: strip malls, tract housing, big box retail, lots and lots of cars, and the roads they drive on. But when Kunstler begins his tale--“Sometime in the not-distant future…”—times have changed, a lot. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And then again, not so much.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Not long from now, the inevitable breakdown of globalized civilization has occurred. Kunstler wisely wastes no time explaining exactly how. Who cares? Plausible triggers abound. Pick one and pull it—and the result is the same: The web of everyday life goes from stretching half way around the world, connecting us to Saudi oil fields and Chinese sweat shops, to having strands no longer than a few miles from home. The word “local” takes on new meaning, carrying connotations that would never have occurred to our ancestors, for whom the word “global” would have meant little.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Kunstler sets himself apart from other writers who’ve tried to imagine such a world—and who usually populate it with cannibals, evil zombies, and a sky that will never be blue again—by remembering the creed of all good novelists: Fiction is folks. In other words, it’s about the people, stupid. Kunstler manages to portray the collapse of everything we presently regard as indispensible, while somehow leaving us with the idea that not all change is bad and not all people are evil. People are just people. Some of them will take from you if they can, but most will surprise you every time by their willingness to give of themselves for what is right. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A true prophet is one who warns of possible, and even unavoidable, dangers ahead, but who prefers to talk about the hope and healing potential that always travel in the company of hardship. With these books, Kunstler has demonstrated that he writes from that tradition, and is more than a mere merchant of fear. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Sure, the people of Union Grove must deal with challenges that modern society had appeared to banish over the horizon: law and order, local governance, health care, religious tolerance, food production, and so on. But far from being a prison of constant fear or drudgery, the life Kunstler imagines also includes beauty, tenderness, compassion, camaraderie, regained connection to the natural world, and even to the mystical side of the universe. Life goes on, Kunstler says, and while it will certainly be different—and really hard at times—it is also very, very good. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As I turned the last page, I must admit to feeling a kind of weird, forward-looking nostalgia. Frankly, most days I’d rather take my chances with ordinary bandits, like the ones the people of Union Grove must face, than to deal with those stalking us now—billionaire debt barons who work at a distance and behind a weak façade of respectability, but who rob us blind nonetheless. I’d rather brave the elements and work directly with the earth for my food, than to remain in the clutches of Monsanto, et al. I’d rather learn the hyper-local politics of getting along with my neighbors, than to ever again enter another voting booth to “choose” which soulless politician will have the right to sell me to the highest bidder in the upcoming term. I want the unbearable noise of this machine culture to stop so we can get on with life that is hard, but good too.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Then it hit me: A world made by hand needn’t wait for the collapse of anything. It is not so much a state of world affairs as it is a state of the heart and the mind—backed up by the labor of my hands. It is the world I’m already helping to create in partnership with my family and neighbors. New Leaf Gardens—our half-acre urban farm—is not an agricultural anachronism —it is a prototype of things to come. By “mapping the geography of home” in these pages, I have already begun to settle in to the landscape here, to feel the rhythms under my feet, to bring the world here and now within reach of my hands to be made anew. We’ve begun to choose on purpose and (slightly) ahead of time, to let go of our belief in the “cult of growth” that Kunstler’s characters had ripped from them forcibly by distant events.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">People who have caught on to the magnitude of the changes humanity faces in coming years typically describe their process of reaction as “preparation.” That is an adequate word, but incomplete, because it implies only a future focus. Preparation always looks forward, even when it takes appropriate action in the present. The danger is that this can lead to a life that is forever deferred, waiting for a signal from some external source that it’s time to actually have what you have prepared yourself for. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I resolve to be more mindful of the kind of life I want today. If I choose a world made by hand in the small moments of daily life, then when the future arrives I’ll be ready for it. Who knows? Maybe the people around me will be inspired to do the same—and we may not even remember what all those other novelists told us—that we’re supposed to be terrified and claw each other’s eyes out for survival.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">That choice is likely to look quite ordinary--maybe something like this:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">With the growing season behind us at the farm, now the “tucking in” season begins. Soon we’ll take the dried leaves, stalks, and vines from the ground where they’ve served so well and send them on the next leg of their journey: to the compost pile. There, we’ll turn things over to the silent alchemists who routinely turn a summer’s remains into gold—black gold. With the right mixture of manure begged from nearby horse owners, unused and rotting vegetables from the church food bank, bags and bags of raked up leaves the neighbors donate, the husks of this season’s garden, and an enthusiastic crew of recycling organisms, we will spend the dark winter by the fire, while the compost pile effortlessly grows food for our food.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Some of the above ingredients will go directly into our sleepy vegetable beds in the next few weeks, where they’ll lie under a cover of leaves and straw, composting <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in situ</i>—which is a fancy way of saying, “where we want it, so we don’t have to move it again in the spring.” Oh, and it bears mentioning that we will do our best to work with a mindset of gratitude and love for the Unfathomable, the One who decreed that from the death of one season will arise nourishing food for the next—a living perpetual motion machine that takes your breath away when you stop to ponder the debt we owe to its workings. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Back in the kitchen, the “preserving season” is still going strong. My wife, Issa, Queen of the Realm, and Wise Woman of Food, labors each day to fill the shelves in the basement cold room with every imaginable store against the winter. In addition to putting up the last of the straggling veggies from the farm, she recently transformed 150 pounds of apples (that we picked from the trees of an elderly neighbor who can no longer deal with the harvest herself) into jars and jars of apples sauce, apple butter, canned apple pie filling, and dried apples. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In the process she has also done most of our Christmas shopping for the year. Six weeks from now, when others can’t find a parking place at the mall, we’ll be sitting at the dining table with a cup of mint tea listening to Amy Grant sing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Emmanuel </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Breath of Heaven </i>on the stereo and putting ribbons on jars and loaves of pumpkin or zucchini bread.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">By hand, day by day, we’re discovering an alternative to sinking madness around us. What do you know? It’s not so hard after all.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1105221723305821918.post-72307226065430531332010-10-15T12:01:00.000-07:002010-10-15T12:01:55.946-07:00Three poems<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">On Windy October Nights</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">On windy October nights</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">Composers refrain from </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">Rising blue-green crescendos.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">They lay aside bright sound-shapes</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">Of water chasing itself to the sea,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">Or thousand-voice choirs</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">In sunny meadows.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">On the dark side of equinox</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">Flutes rest, and strings voice only</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">Cold wind on fence wire.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">Now comes the percussionist:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">Dry bones clacking in treetops,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">Beggars’ fingers tugging at heaven</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">For one more day.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">Forgotten fields shush in thrashing wind</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">Like sea waves returning to shore alone</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">To empty a widow’s heart of any hope</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">In spring’s return.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">This is the music of <i>los Muertos</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">Played with cold hands against </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">The breath-thin veil between worlds,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;">Tracing lost faces in shadow.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.75in;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Rainbow Green Blessings</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The skinny young woman on the bus</div><div class="MsoNormal">is talking softly on her phone.</div><div class="MsoNormal">She speaks in tones</div><div class="MsoNormal">that only foreshadow words,</div><div class="MsoNormal">whole notes of vaguely musical breath.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It is right to call her skinny.</div><div class="MsoNormal">Shoulder bones hold her jacket up</div><div class="MsoNormal">like slacking tent poles. </div><div class="MsoNormal">Something inside shies away from </div><div class="MsoNormal">skin and sinks toward a</div><div class="MsoNormal">vanishing point in her belly,</div><div class="MsoNormal">near her waiting womb.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There is still a trace of little girl left</div><div class="MsoNormal">in the way honeyed hair strays </div><div class="MsoNormal">from the clip at the back of her head—</div><div class="MsoNormal">faintly bright with weary exuberance.</div><div class="MsoNormal">Her hand wanders upward to</div><div class="MsoNormal">lazily tame it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">She sits with her legs drawn up and in,</div><div class="MsoNormal">the toes of her shoes</div><div class="MsoNormal">her only contact with the ground,</div><div class="MsoNormal">as if the world were covered in water</div><div class="MsoNormal">far too cold for a deep plunge.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I want to take her home,</div><div class="MsoNormal">to feed her a meal of handmade hope</div><div class="MsoNormal">then recline for hours by the fire </div><div class="MsoNormal">playing Go Fish, laughing and </div><div class="MsoNormal">pointing to the schools of </div><div class="MsoNormal">rainbow green blessings </div><div class="MsoNormal">darting around us still.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Fallen</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I know a man who thinks</div><div class="MsoNormal">Life is hard.</div><div class="MsoNormal">It is a hook he swallowed </div><div class="MsoNormal">In school and now</div><div class="MsoNormal">He can't remember</div><div class="MsoNormal">What the still water </div><div class="MsoNormal">Tastes like under roots</div><div class="MsoNormal">Near the lazy bank.</div><div class="MsoNormal">All day and all night he faces into</div><div class="MsoNormal">The swiftest current and feels</div><div class="MsoNormal">Sharp rocks on his belly,</div><div class="MsoNormal">Afraid to move, afraid to turn</div><div class="MsoNormal">And look into the black mouth</div><div class="MsoNormal">Behind him.</div><div class="MsoNormal">Life is hard, he thinks,</div><div class="MsoNormal">A prison of solitude and lack,</div><div class="MsoNormal">All fallen, man and earth.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Nearby, a fawn steps with reed legs</div><div class="MsoNormal">Into the singing river,</div><div class="MsoNormal">Lowers her head</div><div class="MsoNormal">And drinks.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 27.0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1105221723305821918.post-2354071061324250762010-10-07T21:33:00.000-07:002010-10-08T08:18:07.005-07:00Time travel on Clear Creek<div class="MsoNormal"><b><br />
</b></div><div class="MsoNormal">I set out this morning to walk two miles south, to visit Clear Creek. These days it’s just another neglected urban waterway, but in the heyday of westward expansion, this little creek had everything: gold and silver boom towns, a railroad racing to beat rivals over the continental divide, outlaws and lawmen, Indians and the pioneer pilgrims who displaced them like water out of a tub. Today I’m headed for the stretch of Clear Creek that runs through an out-of-the-way county park called Twin Lakes. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">On the e-map provided by Google, a slash of monochromatic blue (the creek) cuts through a swatch of empty grey (the park). Apparently there is nothing there worth mentioning, nothing as interesting as, say, the Swiss Tire Automotive Service Station that, according to the map, is conveniently located nearby at the corner of 70<sup>th</sup> and Broadway. Next door you’ll find Denver County Custom Choppers, a motorcycle shop where you can accessorize your obnoxious hog with endless variations on the black leather and chrome theme. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Across 70th to the north, lie acres of bathed and polished Toyotas waiting expectantly for new owners to give them a home. To the east, Mickey’s Top Sirloin serves a wicked steak and lots of Jack Daniels to wash it down with. After dinner you can visit a gone-to-seed building in the shadow of Interstate 25 with a neon “Psychic” sign in the window. Southbound Broadway is flanked by a strip center of light industrial and retail space. It obscures Twin Lakes Park entirely, leaving the impression there’s nothing more to see in any direction, so conduct your business and move on. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Go a couple hundred yards farther south and you will drive, or walk, (let’s face it, mostly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">drive</i>) over Clear Creek. It takes three seconds flat. If you should happen to glance out the car window during that precious time, you’ll see what one Wikipedia article about Clear Creek calls, “largely an ignored urban stream, with an undeveloped flood plain. Part of the creek path forms a wooded park with bicycle/foot path.” </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Excellent. That’s the part I’ve come to explore. Keep the bicycle path. I want to see the “ignored” and “undeveloped” part. I want to know if the creek has retained even the slightest trace of its former self, before it was Shanghaied, along with Sitting Bull, into Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Before the 1859 Gold Rush turned it into a yellow brick road leading fledgling capitalists to the Promised Land. Before arsenic-laced mine tailings overflowed their ill-suited holding ponds, poisoning the creek. Before loggers harvesting railroad ties denuded whole mountains, dumped the trees in the creek channel, and waited for spring runoff to carry them to market (a brutal bottle brush that scoured everything in its path). Before there were concrete plants, Interstate highways, storm water spiked with Roundup, heavy metals and motor oil, before Coors brewery straddled the creek up in Golden and began turning the water into something resembling beer. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Throughout deep time, before anyone was around to give Clear Creek a name, it told the story of here very well. It sighed and rested lazily in this place after its long tumble down the mountains to the west—over granite boulders and beaver dams. Plants clinging to these banks tasted high country snow and pines and blue columbines in the silt. Raccoons, beaver, skunks, coyotes, muskrats, deer and elk all drank water here touched with the scent of heavenly fish the color of rainbows. Great stands of cottonwoods faithfully followed the creek as it meandered across the plains, where it joined the South Platte River, seeking company for a long and leisurely trip to the sea.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Now, the water and sediment tell a new story to a demanding new crop of spectators bent on seeing themselves reflected back everywhere they go.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Today I walk past the “lakes”, which are really only pools of water gathered in an apron of freshly mown lawn. The water reflects blue sky, giving no hint of its own color. A handful of Canada geese waddle around the fringes, picking at the grass. The red-wing blackbirds have left already, looking for warmer times over the horizon. A sign declares “No swimming or boating. Surface ice is never safe.” Another warns me that coyotes are about, and that they are dangerously accustomed to the presence of humans. I should carry a stick, it says. And watch my pets. My kids too, I presume. The tuna sandwich I brought for lunch definitely isn’t safe.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A ditch filled with diverted creek water runs alongside the path. Somewhere downstream there is a landowner with “rights” to this water. If we are lucky he’s a farmer who will use it to grow organic vegetables, or to raise hay for his goats—and provide milk and meat for his kids (and maybe mine). If we are not lucky, this slice of Clear Creek is headed for a golf course surrounded by a gated community.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"> I’m happy to see that the ditch is overgrown with dense grasses, wild roses, water hemlock, and horsetail—a shadow and a memory of what I came here to find. I stop to examine a plant I’ve never seen before, one with red berries dangling in a line along the stalk like Chinese lanterns. I reach for it and startle a garter snake lying beneath it—green, brown, and yellow along its back, blended like a watercolor landscape of wooded creek beds. It lurches forward only a few inches, leaving its tail exposed. I search for the other end, but lose the curvature of its body in the tangle of grass and stalks and leaves.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I walk on, keeping to the path a while, sharing it with bicyclists moving at high speed. I sympathize with their need for haste. Maybe they have to squeeze the ride into a lunch hour, or between sales calls offering cleaning products to Mickey’s and Swiss Tire. I also feel sorry for them, having missed out on the garter snake and the woodpecker now tapping out a woodland code on the enormous cottonwood trunks above our heads, perhaps calling back the long-gone buffalo herds that came here once upon a time.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The farther I walk, the more muted the city noises become. The wind blows in the trees and shushes the traffic to a whisper. Time to get off the trail, I think. The underbrush is thick here, but I choose my route carefully and descend onto the floodplain. I am instantly plunged into another dimension, like a priest of Avalon parting the mist and leaving the contemporary world behind. A distant train whistle blows, but suddenly the sound is only a rumor that filters in along with the sunlight, softened by the caress of many branches and leaves.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Just ahead the cattails are so thick and tall, I think I’ve entered a swamp and will have to turn back. The ground is a sponge of horsetail and moss, but firm. I press on through a tunnel in the brush, a game trail, I assume. Birds chatter all around. Soon I emerge in a thicket of willows taller than I am. Here, the going gets tougher. I must sound like a bull elephant cracking my way through the dead branches that interlace with more supple living ones. They grasp at my backpack and scratch my bare legs.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Finally I emerge on the bank of the Creek, just where a tiny tributary joins in. I’ve travelled barely a hundred yards from the path, but if the distance were measured in years, I’d say it was a century or so. I turn and look back the way I came. From this vantage point I can see no power lines, no rooftops, no billboards, no eighteen wheel trucks. I look up. Remarkably, there are presently no airplanes or jet trails in the sky. The wind has picked up so that I hear nothing but tree chatter and the “amen” of dry grasses. Oh yes, and katydids and cicadas clacking and humming along.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Most of the flowers are done for the season—except for a hardy purple daisy hanging on in the early fall. I see dry mullein stalks and wild asparagus, giant thistles that have already turned as brown as a paper bag. A pair of ether blue dragon flies skim the slow moving water. A few yards away a circular ripple appears on the surface, where a fish has risen to sip up a bug. I go looking for a glimpse of who is dining, expecting to see a frenetic fingerling of some kind. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But no. As my eyes adjust to the slightly murky depths, what comes into focus is a huge carp—nearly two feet long—patrolling the water, unhurried. Prehistoric, I think. This entire place is a time capsule preserved in the most unlikely of locations. I know there is a harsh urban world all around, but just now I find it increasingly difficult to believe in traffic signals and office buildings. Yet I also know I am not the discoverer of someplace unique and exotic. There are “ignored and undeveloped” spots in every neighborhood in nearly every city in America. These are the places we build around, rush past, overlook, and disdain, until they might as well not exist at all. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This is where I’d like to bring the college students who wear polar bear suits on downtown sidewalks, to cajole me into loving the earth by donating money to Greenpeace. I’d like to show them that “the earth”—truly in need of so much love—is not nearly as far away as we think. It is here, right under our busy little feet. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Suddenly the spell of my thoughts is broken by the sound of heavy machinery in the distance. Annoyed, I turn and look toward the south bank. In my state of awe I hadn’t noticed that the ridgeline above the creek in that direction is lined by a chain link fence. It is covered in a netting designed to block my view. But the late afternoon sunlight works against it and I can see what is on the other side in silhouette. I quickly realize it is a graveyard for worn out cars, where spare parts are cannibalized and sold. The jarring sound comes from a front end loader carrying the corpse of some late 80s sedan, from the look of it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I laugh out loud. I sit down beside the creek and savor the image of a massive and contented carp—indeed, dozens of them—alive and well, against all odds, juxtaposed against that of a deceased automobile being carried unceremoniously to an ugly and forgotten “rusting” place. It is powerful and poetic; meaningful, like something in a lucid dream. Gaia versus Hydrocarbon Man. Not much of a match, really.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">All this makes me wonder if I have made a mistake to come here looking for the past. The present is marvelous enough, for anyone willing to get off the trail and look for it. As for the future…who knows? Maybe this is it: a bunch of dead cars and life going on, wherever it can.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1105221723305821918.post-46379993169242685072010-09-30T12:43:00.000-07:002010-09-30T12:54:15.923-07:00Short story: The GravestoneOccasionally, I will share a bit of original short fiction or poetry in this space, instead of my regular column. I hope you enjoy it.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">******</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif; line-height: 32px;"> </span></div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">The Gravestone<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">By<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">Alan Wartes<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
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<div style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">Whenever we visited Grandma’s house she insisted on a trip to the cemetery, as if the sight of the living made her miss the dead more than ever. We’d barely have all the luggage stacked in her spare bedroom when she would tie a silky scarf around her thinning, beauty parlor hair and put on the same threadbare cardigan, with the same dusty wads of Kleenex in the pockets, that each year hung a little looser on her shoulders.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">“I want to go see Mama,” she would say, as if her mother still lived in the run down duplex across town where she died just after I was born. I’d never seen her mama, except in black and white photographs that made it hard to tell if they were taken before or after she died. But her things were all over Grandma’s house: her hairbrush, her dust pan, her doilies under every lamp. Grandma was like the curator of one of those ragged little pioneer museums in western towns that the Interstate went around. New stuff we gave her every Christmas was still in the box under her bed. Waiting for us to die, I guess. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">I didn’t mind trips to the cemetery, and I agreed with Grandma that Great Grandma’s ghost was still around. I felt her when I sat in the rocking chair in the hall, or when I stood at the back of the closet where some of her dresses hung. She was at the cemetery, too. Sometimes I thought she might be in her marble headstone, in the angular script that held her vast life like bookends: Ida Sue Leevey, AUG 1861-DEC 1955. Or maybe she lived in the dandelion puffs, or down the snake hole in the ditch across the fence, where I spent most of my time on those visits. Daddy once said if she was anywhere at all she was in the sticker patch at the edge of the dirt road where we parked the car.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">This year Daddy told Grandma he wasn’t going to go the very minute he walked in the door after eight hours in the car from San Antonio. He was going to stretch his legs and eat a sandwich and be around alive people a bit first. Every time we visited he tried to get her to load some of the dead people’s stuff into the car and take it to Goodwill. He said we weren’t Japanese and didn’t need shrines to our ancestors in the bathroom medicine chest.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">Besides, he said that day, there was a storm coming if she’d care to look out the window. Just then, as if every frontier ghost from every forgotten grave jumped out of the ground at once to punish him, a blast of sandy wind hit the house and shook it until it creaked and popped. The windows filled up with the red darkness of a scouring West Texas dust storm.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">“Herman passed two years ago next week,” Grandma shouted, beginning to cry, which usually didn’t happen until we were within sight of the cemetery. Herman was Grandma’s third husband. The coins and key chain he took from his pockets the day he died were still on Grandma’s dresser top where he left them. Grandma took out a tattered tissue, found a corner big enough to wrap over her nose, and blew. I could hear it even over the gale outside. Then she picked up her shiny black purse and sat down in the arm chair by the door. My parents had fought for a lot of miles on the way back home after these trips about whether Daddy had any backbone when it came to standing up to Grandma.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">“She’s worse than a kid,” Mama would say. “She plays you like a honky-tonk juke box.” <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">“Oh, and I suppose you think you’re any different,” Daddy usually replied. “Your high society folks come to visit and I don’t understand a single word you say for days.” He’d imitate the way Mama’s dad, a retired lawyer from Dallas, used fancy words just to say good morning, like he was making a speech for the jury. Mama usually sounded just like him by the end of the visit. Sometimes those arguments went on all the way to the Dairy Queen half way home, where we always ate lunch.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">This time, though, Daddy was determined. He looked at Grandma sniffling into her Kleenex and said, “Two years, huh? Well, then, I guess he’s good and settled in. I expect he’ll still be there when we arrive.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">Daddy never liked Herman, a brooding barber who always smelled of Brill Cream and the blue sanitizer he soaked his scissors in. He spent all day talking to his customers about everything in creation, and by the time he got home at night, all he wanted to do was watch TV. I wouldn’t have minded that, except he only liked news and ball games; baseball, basketball, football, tennis, golf </span><span style="font-family: Symbol;">-</span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;"> anything with a ball in it. At least he brought me handfuls of bubble gum from the shop, the kind with comics inside. Once he did a magic trick where he pulled a half dollar piece out of my ear. I got to keep the half dollar.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">The dust storm blew for more than an hour and then turned the reins over to lightning and thunder and a deafening downpour of rain that sounded like all the fans stomping their feet on the bleachers at a Friday night football game. I sat by the window and watched the parched yard turn into a swamp and the street into a hurried muddy river. A few times the flash and boom came holding hands and the window panes rattled. Grandma kept her scarf on and never let go of her purse, but she did move to the kitchen table where she could listen to the radio for news of tornadoes. Mama tried to distract her with questions about all the relatives, usually guaranteed to produce more conversation than you bargained for, but this time it was too one-sided, so Mama just flipped through magazines and clipped out recipes. Daddy took a nap in Herman’s fraying old La-Z-Boy, with a two-year old TV Guide still in the pocket on the side.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">Then, suddenly, the rain stopped, and even before the little rivlets of water had finished draining off the window glass, the sun came out like the whole thing was just a big joke. But the river in the street had annexed the sidewalk and part of the yard.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">“I want to see Herman,” Grandma said by the door, loudly enough to wake Daddy. He sat up slowly and pulled the handle to put the footrest back under the chair. His hair was sticking up in the back and his lips were tight, the same look he got whenever the car wouldn’t start, or when I’d borrowed one of his tools without putting it back.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">“He passed on two years ago next week, and the least you can do is pay him a visit once a year when you can tear yourself away to come see us,” Grandma said, tightening her scarf.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">“Us? Us?” Daddy said. “You got a roommate I don’t know about? Herman is dead, Mama. He’s dead. There ain’t no ‘us.’”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">That’s when Grandma went and got in the car.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">And that’s how we came to be driving under the big iron gate that spelled out “Rosewood Cemetery” in an arch. The road was low there so the water, which was the color of rusty hot chocolate, came almost to the tops of the tires on our car. Grandma sat beside me in the backseat dabbing tears out of her eyes like the funeral was today. The southern sky was filled with the rumpled backside of the storm, now orange and flame yellow in the early evening sun.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">Rosewood was like most West Texas cemeteries where there wasn’t enough water or enough money to make them into English parks with bright green grass and shrubs and armless statues everywhere. There weren’t any marble benches where you could contemplate anything, just gravestones and barbed wire, which kept out the cows and tried to make the big emptiness hold more meaning than cotton fields could convey. Some of the gravestones stood higher than the fence posts, which practically made them Egyptian monoliths in country as flat as a chalk board. Others hunkered down low to the earth like everything else that still had a memory of buffalo hooves and bobcats. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Grandma began to wail as we turned down a muddy track that led to Herman’s grave. She leaned forward and pounded on Daddy’s shoulder as he stopped the car. “Oh, sweet Jesus, what have you done?” she cried.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">“Okay, okay, it’ll be okay,” Daddy said, noticing whatever she saw long before I did. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">“Ohhh!” she moaned and rocked in her seat, front to back. Daddy got out of the car and walked toward the grave. I opened my door to follow him.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">“You stay here, Daniel” Mama said, as she reached back over the seat to take Grandma’s hand. But I pretended not to hear and ran after Daddy. Then I saw what the commotion was about. There, tucked in the corner of the fence, was Herman’s gravestone right where it always was, except this time it was leaning half over on its side, nearly submerged in sticky red mud. A big sink hole, more than a foot deep, had opened up right over where Herman’s chest would be, and extended all the way over into the spot where Grandma always said she expected to be buried before our next visit. Daddy walked around the mess a little, testing the ground with his weight, then went back to the car.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">“It’s not so bad,” he said through Grandma’s window, which she had rolled down. “The ground’s more solid than it looks. Come on, I’ll help you.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">“I don’t want to go over there! Herman is all washed away! I’m all washed away, too!”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">I was used to Grandma’s theatrical flair, but this was different. I saw real fear on her face as she strained to look past my dad to the ruined graves. Her eyes flashed all around us as if she expected to see Herman’s muddy body lying on the ground somewhere, or maybe like she felt him just behind her, reaching out to touch her shoulder.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">“It’s just a little mud, Mama,” Daddy said. “The gravediggers’ll get out here tomorrow and fix it right up.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">“No, no, no!” she yelled. “I’m all washed away with Herman!”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">“Oh for cryin’ out loud, Mama, Herman is gone,” Daddy shouted back with more emotion in his voice than I’d ever heard, even when he was at his maddest. “Your mama’s gone. They</span><span style="font-family: Symbol;">-</span><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">” he swung is arm out wide around him. “They’re all gone. You are <i>here</i>, and I am here. Did you notice that Mama, huh, did you?” Daddy clutched the shirt on his chest and pulled it so hard I thought the buttons would pop. “Did you notice that I’m standing right in front of you?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">“Oh, dear, sweet Jesus!” Grandma sobbed and looked past him toward the listing gravestone.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">He turned and kicked the nearest stone, which belonged to Felix Norwood, January 22, 1901-June 7, 1967. Grandma wailed.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">“Stop dying, Mama,” Daddy said with the veins standing out on his forehead. “Stop it. The only thing that washed away today was a little good for nothin’ dirt. It’s clean out here, and alive!” He lifted his arms up over his head. I couldn’t tell whether he was surrendering or celebrating. He walked away from the car and went over to lean on the fence, breathing hard, looking far out toward the horizon. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">I noticed a snake near the fence, lying dead-still in the mud, and I thought Daddy was wrong about nothing getting washed out by the storm. I went to move its body over into the ditch where it had a chance to rest in peace. The green scales on its back shimmered in the setting sun like wind-waves in tall grass. Just as my fingers touched its cold head, it sprang forward, whipping away through the mud-stained weeds under the fence and into its hole. Before long the snake’s head reappeared, so deep in the darkness that I could only see little hints of sunlight in its black eyes and the ghostly shape of its head.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua', serif;">I stood there a long time, until Daddy started the car and honked the horn for me. I was thinking about things that live down holes too deep or too narrow for me to enter, and about what is really gone and what is not.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1105221723305821918.post-18503012225727551812010-09-24T17:39:00.000-07:002010-09-24T17:40:26.835-07:00The Tao of Farming<div class="MsoNormal">I have officially given up on the green beans at New Leaf Gardens. This year it was their turn to remind me that farming is nearly always an exercise in letting go. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We like to think that modern life has been made entirely mathematical, reduced to a predictable algebraic equation. In Math World most functions are linear and most variables can be boiled down to a single letter of the alphabet. If you want a good harvest of X just plug in a value for Y and solve for Z. Simple. If you get the wrong answer it’s your own fault—probably something to do with the order of operations. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If this is indeed a rule (a questionable premise), then let’s just say that farming is an exception. Take our green beans for instance.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">The vines came up, deep green and gorgeous, as they always do. They put on radiant, flirtatious blossoms, as hopeful as teenagers at a school dance. A handful of them did more than flirt, and they grew up overnight into respectable beans. I hoped the rest would follow along; but they are stubbornly content to tease and titter and wait till next year. They look good, but it seems that’s the only satisfaction we’re going to get.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Why? Who knows? A paucity of pollinators? Perhaps, but unlikely. Our own bee hives are a mere block away, and I know of several others in the neighborhood as well. Not enough water? Too much? Soil pH not to their liking? The porridge was too hot? Too cold? You can drive yourself crazy wondering where the sweet spot of “just right” lies from one year to the next. Taking too much responsibility is not only foolish, it’s arrogant.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Sometimes plants simply wake up on the wrong side of the bed, and nothing you can say or do will brighten their sulking mood. That’s not what the chemical sales rep or the county extension agent wants you to hear—but it’s the truth.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Sure, there is a science to farming that is important. You ignore the factors listed above at your peril. But there is also an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">art</i> to it that is nothing short of mystical--Taoist, in fact. As Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao te Ching says, "Governing a country (or tending a farm) is like frying a small fish. You spoil it with too much poking." </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">To let go of the outcome and avoid excessive "poking" requires us to accept that we don’t “manufacture” our food; we facilitate its arrival. As any good midwife will tell you, the best birth is one in which she does what is prudent—and then gets the hell out of the way. The baby is coming (or not), is healthy (or not) largely under its own steam. The outcome is not ours to “guarantee”—only to influence as best we can. For all our big-brained expertise, at the end of the day we are all carried along, just like every other creature on earth, by a great current of Invisible Mystery. It’s nothing personal—just the way things are.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This is the knowledge that awaits us as peak oil, and the financial contractions that inevitably follow, begins to take hold and to shrink our world: We aren’t in control. Some of the things we try, in an effort to re-localize our lives, will yield a bumper crop. Some will put on lots of leaves but no fruit. Others will refuse to germinate at all, no matter what we do. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">That’s why diversity is so bloody important, mono-culturists be damned. This winter when I go to the root cellar I will mourn the lack of green beans on the shelf. Then I’ll shrug and reach for a jar of beets instead; or corn, cabbage, sauerkraut, black-eyed peas (yes, my roots are in the South), tomatoes, pickles, eggplant, chard, Brussel sprouts, squash, sweet peas, spinach, sweet potatoes, red potatoes, okra, onions, peppers. For every failure, there are usually a dozen successes, for those who bother to plant the seeds. That’s the mystery of it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Had we planted nothing but beans, we’d be in big trouble now. Likewise, if we put all our time and resources into one version of “preparation” for the coming storms, we could get lucky, I suppose. But odds are better that we’d live to regret a lack of well-developed options. I learned a long time ago, navigating the back alley shops of Seoul, Korea, that there is no such thing as a “one-size-fits-all” shirt.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Having drawn a ten-mile circle around my home to define my world, I fervently hope there are many others like me out there getting to know their neighbors, resurrecting community, and working on the practical problems of doing for themselves. I also hope they aren’t carbon copies of each other. We need each other’s unique contributions like never before. </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1105221723305821918.post-70037731487695645612010-09-02T17:44:00.000-07:002010-09-02T18:37:04.319-07:00Resilience: A Way of Life<div class="MsoNormal">Today I am pruning tomatoes and attempting to give them some backbone—by re-tying the sagging, fruit-laden vines to their wooden stake. Tomatoes are undisciplined. Left to themselves they will sprawl everywhere like teenagers on the family sofa. It is tempting for the gardener to let them be, and, like a besieged parent, to go sit somewhere else. That’s a mistake. You only wind up with shaggy, unproductive offspring that now want the La-Z-Boy as well.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Training tomatoes is tedious and time consuming work. It requires patience and a soft touch. Pull a vine the wrong way and it will snap off—not so bad, I suppose. If you don’t mind fried green tomatoes. This measured, careful pace also means this is good work for thinking.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">This morning I am pulling on the ends of two threads that have come loose in my mind. The first was suggested by Jim Kunstler in his <a href="http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/08/one-lump-or-two.html">blog</a> this week. In typical incisive fashion (think incisors, as in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">teeth</i>), Mr. Kunstler lamented what he sees as a dangerous drift in American politics. Specifically, he wondered how it ever came to be that Glenn Beck, of all people, could pass for a political leader, presuming to speak to and for large numbers of Americans; how eighty-seven thousand people could gather in the shadow of the Washington monument—on the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr’s famous “I have a dream” speech, no less—to listen to “corn pone Nazis” like Beck and “badly educated, child-like, war-mongering” Sarah Palin.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Now, it is not my purpose here to take up that argument one way or another, though there is a ring of truth in Kunstler’s assessment: </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote>“<span class="apple-style-span">Of course, what has allowed Beck to occupy center stage is the failure of rational political figures to articulate the terms of the convulsion that American society faces, brought about not by communists and other John Bircher hobgoblins but by the forces of history. The failure at the political center is a conscious one of nerve and will, of elected officials in both major parties playing desperately for advantage in defiance of the truth -- this truth being that the USA went broke trying to swindle itself into prosperity. Add to this the failure of the law to go after the swindlers, which has undermined the fundamental belief in the rule of law that enabled this society to function as well as it did previously.”</span></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black;">What really caught my eye, and sent me off to prune tomatoes with a splinter in my mind, came at the very end of the column:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote>“The bigger mystery in all this…is: what happened to reasonable, rational, educated people of purpose in this country to drive them into such burrow of cowardice that they can't speak the truth, or act decisively, or even defend themselves against such a host of vicious morons in a time of troubles?”</blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal">Not a bad question. But I’ll let it lie for a moment while we pick up the second nagging thread. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">That is, the ongoing debate between two excellent “power down” thinkers, John Michael Greer, of <a href="http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/">The Archdruid Report</a>, and Rob Hopkins, founder of the <a href="http://transitionculture.org/">Transition Town</a> movement. Without drowning the unsuspecting reader in detail, let me summarize the conflict like this: Is it better to prepare for the changes we see coming at a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">collective</i> level, and in cooperation with local and regional government (Transition)? Or should we focus our efforts on finding <i>individual</i> solutions, to have them ready if and when the need for personal action goes mainstream (Greer’s “Green Wizard” approach)?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The obvious answer, of course, is “both”. Solutions that don’t work for real people, living in real neighborhoods, on real income levels, aren’t solutions at all. So having a cadre of people working out the kinks in things like local food production, alternative health care, post-oil transportation, etc., can’t possibly be a bad thing. On the other hand, some of those solutions might be suited to wider application, so long as somebody is willing to attend planning commission meetings and lobby local officials to enact them.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There is a practical side to the argument, however, which brings me back to my farm, where I am presently kneeling, pruning clippers in hand, trying to make a bunch of unruly romas behave. People on both sides tend to present their ideas as items in a bullet list of “things you can do.” </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><ul><li>Grow some or all of your own food.</li>
<li>Get to know your neighbors.</li>
<li>Take responsibility for your own health care.</li>
<li>Walk as much as possible.</li>
<li>Barter.</li>
</ul><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">It looks so tidy on paper. So easy. But the truth is, if you plan to do more than just play around at any one of those items, you’re in for a shock. Take it from me; these are not hobbies that you tack on to an otherwise pedal-to-the-metal lifestyle. These things <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are</i> a lifestyle in themselves. “Preparation” is a simple enough word, but is extremely messy and labor intensive in practice.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Sitting in meetings, making master plans, and getting the county commissioners to issue proclamations is excellent work. But sooner or later, those well-meaning activists had better be taking care of business at home. Therein lies the rub. When you commit to grow your own food, the pool of available time for day-long hearings inevitably dries up. You either let it do so, or it will be your vegetables that dry up, choke on weeds, go to seed, or enter the food chain in the stomach of a rabbit or squirrel. Getting to know your neighbors means being <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">present</i> when they knock to ask for a favor. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Earlier this week I was a member of a panel of local food-growers after an “eat local” film screening. Organized by Transition Boulder, it was a wonderful evening of discussion about what the word “organic” really means. My wife and I met new people and heard new ideas. We probably could have talked all night—about GMO seeds, unfair labor practices on farms that call themselves organic, the presence of feedlot poop in “organic” packaged compost, and so on. But after the sun went down, we had only one thing on our minds: Getting home to shut the chicken coop door before the skunks came out to play for the night. (Skunks will kill a chicken just for fun). Individual responsibility trumped collective brainstorming—and, for us, probably always will.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Which brings me to Jim Kunstler’s question: Where the hell are all the “<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black;">reasonable, rational, educated people of purpose in this country”? Well, some of us are at home tending chickens and pruning tomatoes. Some of us have realized that we can’t be everywhere at once and have made a choice. We may not be making front page headlines in daring acts of activism; but having organized marches down main street in my time, I can tell you that nothing has ever brought my community together more effectively than putting a shovel in the ground and growing vegetables in plain sight.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><o:p>*** </o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p><br />
</o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There was a touch of fall in the air this morning. Overnight, it seems, the earth has tilted her head ever so slightly toward the coming winter, as if keeping an eye out for a visitor not due to arrive just yet. The sunlight is softer, with a bit more yellow in the mix. While we’ve been busy at the farm surviving summer heat—and an unusually hot season it has been—shadows have stretched out and lost their shape, like knitted sweaters hung out to dry on a clothesline.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The birds feel it too. Now the starlings travel exclusively in flocks, leaping in great black clouds from place to place. I imagine they’re brushing up on the close quarter drills they’ll use to get everyone safely south when the time comes. Robins stick closer together, as well, as if not daring to lose sight of each other for fear of being left behind. The bees in my backyard hives have taken to sleeping in longer each morning. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And, just like every year, it all seems so premature to me. After all, the harvest we’ve played midwife to since May is finally here in force. Sure, the ripening orange pumpkins already forecast Halloween, but there are plenty of the red, green, and yellow vegetables left to gather in first: tomatoes, pole beans, squashes, peppers, cucumbers, cabbages. Carrot tops are still vibrant and green. How can the equinox really be less than three weeks away? </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Well, I suppose that’s just the way things work on a round planet, spinning around a round star, itself traveling a circular pathway through the galaxy. Nothing ever stands still. There are no discreet, linear beginnings and endings; we might as well get used to it. The stage curtain always rises a little before the players are all in place, and starts falling before the last act is over. Everything is done in transition to something else, something new, or even something old that has come round again. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1105221723305821918.post-50128240616043304112010-08-26T16:39:00.000-07:002010-08-26T16:39:21.424-07:00To Walk is Human<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">Some days all I really want to do is this: pull on my most comfortable shoes; change out of jeans into loose-fitting pants—made of linen, perhaps—that flow in a breeze like wind waves on a wheat field; put on my straw hat, seasoned over the years to the shape of my head; throw a handmade bag over my shoulder, with a bottle of water inside, something for lunch, and a notebook for writing in—and walk. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Just walk, that’s all.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Notice, I didn’t say “walk <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">away</i>”. This is not about escape. I have an improbably excellent life. It is excellent because I’m blessed with: a one of a kind wife, children, and other loving people; satisfying labor on the farm and at my writing desk; the will to help leave behind a better world than I found, and enough hope to sustain me when that work grows hard. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It is “improbable” because I routinely break the great social taboo of our time—that is, nothing about my excellent existence makes very much money. If the edge of an ordinary knife is a precarious place to balance a life, think of us as living on the high, thin ridge of an upturned scalpel. As a consequence, I’m not expected to describe my life in positive terms. I am supposed to feel poor and hang my head like a proper “failure” should. Going around like that for a while is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">supposed</i> to motivate me to settle down and live responsibly. But, I might as well confess: it’s not going to happen. At 50, I’ve claim the right to borrow a line from the great American poet, Robert Bly: “This is my life, just shut up if you don’t understand it” (from “The Russian”, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Morning Poems</i>). In fact, I’ve developed the annoying habit (from the point of view of people made uncomfortable by my choices) of being quite happy anyway, in spite of my financial disabilities. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">For instance, to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">walk</i> makes me happy. To walk<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>my little circle of earth, here, now. This is how one dictionary defines it: “to move or travel on legs and feet, alternately putting one foot a comfortable distance in front of, or sometimes behind, the other, and usually proceeding at a moderate pace. When walking, as opposed to running, one of the feet is always in contact with the ground, the one being put down as or before the other is lifted.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I love the simplicity and the hidden wisdom in this description: </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">To move or travel on legs and feet</i>.” No machines needed. No license, no certification, or college degree. Walking doesn’t violate Thoreau’s warning to “beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” It’s low-tech and low-budget. If you’ve got legs and feet, you’re ready to go. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Putting one foot a comfortable distance in front of, or sometimes behind, the other,</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">usually proceeding at a moderate pace.</i>” A comfortable, moderate pace. Anything more and you aren’t walking any longer, you are running. Walking is, by definition, counter-cultural, since speed in all things (food, sex, communication, entertainment, work) is the new normal. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“One of the feet is always in contact with the ground.”</i> Grounded. In contact. Connected. Aware. Hmm. Sounds pretty good in a disintegrating world. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">xxx</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Among people who are aware of peak oil, climate change, and the myriad limits to perpetual “growth”, there is little disagreement that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">something’s</i> got to give. We understand the need to “power down” our civilization thoughtfully and systematically, as Richard Heinberg suggests; and to “transition” to a saner way of living, á la Rob Hopkins. We know the stakes and appreciate the sense of urgency. What sometimes escapes us, however, especially those of us new to the conversation, is knowing where to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">start</i>. What to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i>? </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">One typical response is to look where we’ve always looked in modern times—to the future, and to some <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">new</i> set of emerging ideas or technologies. I have no crystal ball, but I suspect that this particular treasure chest is all but empty. These days, every new innovation, however well conceived, is saddled with the sandbags of “peak everything” right out of the starting gate. That’s the very nature of our predicament. And, as Einstein said, we are unlikely to solve our problem using the same thinking that created it in the first place.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">On the other hand, I’m not a big fan of Little House on the Prairie nostalgia, either. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anything</i> we do to power down can be called “new” because, in all of history, nothing like it has ever been done before—has never been necessary before. What worked for our ancestors simply won’t do for us, if for no other reason than there are now nearly seven billion of us (and counting). And yet, it’s impossible for me to shake the feeling that there are answers for us in what is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">old</i> about human life. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Very</i> old. Things so foundational that exploring them might constitute a reset button for the mind, a pathway back to a time before our thinking became so prone to creating more problems than we can solve.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Where to start? How about remembering the things that have been with us since we first stood up out of the African grasses and became human? How about learning how to walk again?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">xxx</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Of all the “first-time” milestones in a baby’s life—first tooth, first word, first haircut—there is only one with the power to instantly stop traffic and command our undivided attention. To witness it is a miracle; to miss it, a tragedy. Who knows how much money Kodak has made over the decades, and how many long distance minutes AT&T has racked up, helping young parents capture and celebrate this seminal moment in their child’s life: his or her<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> first steps</i>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Even the startled toddler seems to know the importance of the landmark she’s just passed. Moving around on all fours, she has had more in common with the family dog than with her parents and siblings. Now, rising like a monarch on coronation day, she literally moves up in the world. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She enters society as a self-motivating member.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her hands are free to discover (all the breakable things Mom hasn’t yet moved to safety), to create unique sounds (on kitchen pots and pans), and to reorder the world to her liking (by pulling all the books off the shelf in the living room). Crawling, she might as well have been in handcuffs. Walking—well, it’s a whole new world. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Let’s be honest: To walk is the essence of “human-ness”. It is what we do—or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">did</i>, rather, prior to the 20<sup>th</sup> century. It’s what we are built for, and a big part of what distinguishes us from the rest of the primates. The motion of walking is circular, not linear, seen clearly in the movement of hands and feet. This establishes a rhythm to living that can’t be rushed or avoided, and one that is attuned to universal oscillations of sun and moon and stars. In times past, we’d put one foot in front of the other, at a comfortable, moderate pace, for our whole lives. If you wanted to get there, or return, you walked. And in the process, you took your place—and proved you belonged—in the dance of creation. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Now days, we take our first ecstatic steps and promptly sit back down. Parents clap and cheer and take a few snaps, then slap us in a car seat; a stroller; an airplane; a medieval torture device now known as a school desk; and of course, an easy chair in front of the TV or computer. It is a sitting, riding life now, one we no longer question—“just the way things are”. We don’t walk unless we have to, or it is a symptom of mental or emotional distress. Don’t believe me? Try this: casually announce to your friends and neighbors that you plan to walk farther than the distance to your mailbox. Watch how fast they offer you a ride, assuming—of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">course</i>—the only logical explanation is that your car is in the shop. Refuse the ride, and watch how fast they start asking if everything is okay with you—the other options being marital difficulty, mental breakdown, midlife crisis, etc. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">xxx</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It has been said that all politics is local. This means, I suppose, that elections always boil down to single votes and the relative satisfaction of single voters. If you are a politician, hobnob with well-heeled lobbyists all you want, but in the end you’d better make sure you’ve taken care of the home crowd. The same could be said of all aspects of the coming descent and eventual collapse of our present way of life—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">it’s all local</i>. We can stay up all night long, like would-be emperors engrossed in a high stakes game of Risk, debating the fate of nations, and why civilizations always seem to collapse at the peak of power. We can convene another Continental Congress to resuscitate the constitution with rhetoric of the highest caliber. But at the end of the day, if we don’t know our neighbors; if we don’t know where our food is coming from in a pinch; if water is something that just magically appears in the pipe; if we haven’t got a clue what is within walking distance of our homes—well, you get the idea. All that global thinking will be worth exactly nothing.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In other words, to prepare for a local collapse requires me to know what’s here in my local part of the world. The most reliable way to do that—here comes my point—is to get out of your car and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">walk</i> your neighborhood from time to time. I’m not talking about a Gandhi-esque march to the sea. Just a commitment to put one foot in front of the other at a comfortable and moderate pace once in a while. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Think of it this way. If you drive down a street in your neighborhood, and then I ask you what is there, you’ll probably say, “A bunch of houses, some parked cars, a couple of kids blocking the street throwing a football.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Try it again, on foot. This time (so long as you go with an attitude of curiosity and engagement) you will notice Richard watering his front-yard tomato plants. You admire them and find that he is eager to talk. He’s eighty-seven (but doesn’t look more than 75) and he’s lived in that house since it was built in 1956. He points to three other houses still occupied by original owners. He lost his wife to cancer and his son to a heart attack. But he still has his garden.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As you move on, one of the kids in the street overthrows a pass right into your arms. His name is Ernesto—and it was a hell of throw. He hopes to play quarterback in high school in a couple years, then, who knows what could happen? His friend, Daniel, would rather play football on the Wii, but his mom made him come outside. You toss the ball a few times and keep walking. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In an open garage you see a young woman with spiked hair and baggy pants. She is busy at work on an astonishing, large format painting of a tropical waterfall with a Technicolor parrot in the foreground—using ordinary spray paint cans. You stop in and ask how she learned to paint like that? “On the side of railroad cars,” she answers. But she doesn’t do that shit any more.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Betsy, a local librarian, is out walking her Pomeranian dogs. Several peach trees are almost ready to harvest. Some young kids have set a sprinkler on their trampoline, throwing water over half the street every time they bounce. A rabbit nibbles grass in the shade of a grape arbor.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Not in a thousand drive-bys would you see as much. Walking is how we belong to the world. It’s how we belong to each other. It’s how we see best what’s coming—for us, not for people half-way across the country or the world—and how we know what to do about it. It’s how we begin tuning ourselves to the frequency of a post-oil world. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There’s more to say, but it’s time to stop talking about it—and go take a walk.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1105221723305821918.post-50916991398207066652010-08-19T16:26:00.000-07:002010-08-20T07:39:51.338-07:00Up Water Tower Hill<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><div class="MsoNormal">The climb to the top of Water Tower Hill, near my house, begins at the bottom of Elmwood Street in the neighborhood loosely known as Sherrelwood Estates. Though, to tell the truth, the words “climb” and “hill” overdo things a bit in this context. It is really just a walk up a steep street, followed by a few more steps on a path that is a little steeper. I like walking there as much as arriving, because I pass by a tangled Fangorn Forest of juniper bushes that conceal a whole village of amber and black foxes. They wander the streets at night, but always look out of place against a backdrop of trash cans and parked cars. Here, in a tiny pocket of accidental wildness, it is possible to convince myself that I am on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">their</i> turf, not the other way round. If the time of day is right (early morning or late evening), I frequently catch glimpses of them catching glimpses of me. <br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">When I’ve ascended the hill as far as I can, the path levels out on the “summit” and traces the shape of a doughnut around a large, tan, cylindrical water tank. A barbed wire-topped chain link fence (with motion sensors inside) bravely guards the sides of the tank from local graffiti artists, who have to settle for decorating neighborhood traffic signs and privacy fences instead. There is one small tree beside the path on top. It recently put on new growth again after a prolonged illness of unknown origin; loneliness, perhaps.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">The huge tank more closely resembles an oil storage facility than the quaint Mayberry image of a proper tower on legs, with the name of the town painted on the side, along with the high school football team mascot, and “Class of (whoever is next in line to graduate)”. That tower belongs in a real community. This one is a foreign object. I’m pretty sure it actually stores water, though there are no visible pipes above ground to offer clues, so that’s just an assumption. It’s one of many assumptions I routinely make about things in my environment—complicated power relays; strange-looking antennas; cameras on top of traffic signal poles; random little non-descript buildings with gray metal doors and no windows. Who knows how these things work, or even what they really do, for that matter? (For all I know—really <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">know</i>—the water tank is actually a UFO exit ramp on a subterranean highway leading all the way to Area 51 in Nevada.) Apart from a handful of technicians and people who store up esoteric facts for entertainment, very few of us could explain how our highly complex way of life works, much less fix it if it started to fail. It makes me wonder if techno-specialization really is a step <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">up</i> on the evolutionary scale, as most futurists insist, or a dizzy, death-defying experiment in collective tight rope walking without a net. I suspect society is poised to find out which. Shortly. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">So, if this isn’t a climb, and it isn’t a hill, and it doesn’t really look like a water tower, what’s the point of naming this essay as I did? Because within the circle I drew on my map at home (with a radius of ten miles; enclosing 314 square miles) this is the closest thing we’ve got to a hill worth climbing—that I know of so far, anyway. Besides, Water Tower Hill has no other name that I can find, so I exercised my first-in-line right to make one up. It will do as well as any other. The knob probably had a better name for much of its brief contact with human beings, back when the Cheyenne were the party in power in these parts. Maybe it was something mystical suggested by the spirits who used to live here, and who might consider returning if we made them the right offer. Or maybe it was simply called, “Where-My-Horse-Went-Lame-That-Time Hill”. Who knows? </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Nobody who lives here now, that’s for sure. Now it is just an unremarkable, unnoticed high spot among a bunch of mostly unremarkable, brick houses built when Eisenhower was president. Now it’s where teenagers go to smoke Camels, drink Pabst Blue Ribbon, talk trash about their parents, and make out. It’s a place to throw out a blanket on the Fourth of July and watch the fireworks displays over the city. The hill’s flank does make for some wicked fast sledding in winter. Oh, and it’s a pretty good place for wanderers like me to come and walk in circles around the tank and think about things.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Which is why I’ve climbed it today. That, and to take in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">view</i>—a 3-D panoramic picture window onto my world. There are the Fruited Plains to the east, Purple Mountain Majesty in the west, and the bar graph outline of downtown Denver to the south. Sixty miles farther south is legendary Pikes Peak (visible on clear days). North, well, the topography rises gently a few miles out obscuring what would otherwise be a clear shot to Wyoming and then all the way to the North Pole via Canada.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Truth is, this little hill is among the vanguard of the Continental Divide. This is where a blind person walking westward from Kansas would begin to get the idea that something different was about to happen. In many ways, I am that person and have stumbled blindly forward through my life to land here, forced at last to face the fact that something different—very different—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> about to happen here. The plodding life we lived on the plains of prosperity all these years is coming to an end. All of us have arrived at a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">crossroads</i> and a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">transition</i> in human history of monumental magnitude—arguably the most significant we’ve ever faced. (Die hard “doomers” will object to such dainty descriptive words. They prefer “crash”, “collapse”, “the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it”. I can get there too, when I really start thinking about things. But, those words aren’t the ones evoked by the view from Water Tower Hill. Not just yet, anyway, so for now I’ll stick with less flammable ones.)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m in the right place, because this little spot on the planet is the very embodiment of transitions and crossroads. For instance, I am standing exactly between two world-class geographic features: the Great Plains, a vast continental ocean of flat farmland and prairie, and the Rocky Mountains, a range that stretches 3,000 miles from Canada to Mexico, with fifty-two peaks in excess of 14,000 feet in Colorado alone. This is where The American West truly begins, a topographic moment of truth where pioneers once smacked into the enormity of their decision to leave behind the well-behaved woods and farms of Colonial America in search of a new life. A new life awaited them, alright—if it didn’t kill them first.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Also, about three miles from here, I can see the crossroads of two great interstate highways: I-25 and I-70. The former lies south to north like an uncoiled rope, from Las Cruces, New Mexico (just a few miles north of Juarez, now the most dangerous city on earth, they say) past Albuquerque, and “chic” Santa Fe, over Raton Pass, along the western-most edge of the Great Plains through Colorado, all the way to bustling Buffalo, Wyoming, where it joins up with I-90 east of the Bighorn National Forest. I-70 sprouts from the back streets of Baltimore on the Atlantic coast, ducks south of Pittsburgh, but then threads the needle of Columbus, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Denver, before petering out in the Utah desert without so much as a lemonade stand present to witness its confluence with I-15.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">These highways are like giant concrete wormholes tunneling through space and time, hurling goods and people across vast distances at hyperspeed, with little or no friction (interaction) with the surrounding countryside. And they intersect right here, within the boundaries of my circular, walkable world! What an honor for all who live here, really—to bear witness every day to a surging river of plastic, glass, rubber, and metal, shaped into cars and trucks of every ilk; buses; motor homes; Harley Davidsons and other two-wheelers running in packs; and, above all, eighteen-wheel tractor trailers hauling an unfathomable inventory of stuff from anywhere stuff is made to anywhere stuff is sold. They haul massive and indecipherable machinery-stuff from here to yonder and back again (more things no one understands). The constant noise of these Anthropocene river rapids washes up the sides of my hill, like a tide that only comes in, never goes out again. I hate to even consider the not-so-good-for-you fumes riding in on those waves as well. Let’s just say they are visible in the air on days when Pikes Peak is not.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">But, of course, that line of thought leads directly to the Founder of the whole dystopian feast, without which this spot would still be a grassy hill where pronghorn antelope graze, instead of an earthen table top for an ugly water tank; without which I’d be looking at a woven cord of cottonwood trees along the meandering South Platte River, and short grass prairie beyond, instead of a vista only a Captain of Industry could truly appreciate; without which the human world would be still “made by hand”—by (fewer) people who never stopped travelling by foot—theirs or ones belonging to a helpful animal.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In “The Story of Here Begins” I asked myself the question: Setting aside the issues of the wide world for a second, who and what are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">right here</i> under my nose? Well, from the top of Water Tower Hill, one answer is abundantly clear: My little ten-mile world is filled with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cars</i>. Lots and lots and lots—a god king hell of a lot—of cars. A large slice of the blame for a century’s worth of wrong turns can be laid at the feet of this one invention. More than any other single toy in the playroom of technology, it has enabled us to go completely crazy—and to get there in air conditioned comfort and style! </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">But as potent as this automotive crazy-maker is, it still isn’t the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">real</i> spike in the punch. No, the enabler has an enabler of its own. I’m talking about Oil. Gasoline. Diesel. Cars have only managed to clog the arteries of my world because we’ve gorged ourselves on cheap, easy oil. We are greased up one side and slicked down the other. It is in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">everything</i> we depend on for our really swell (non-negotiable) lifestyle. The list of products (including food) that owe their existence to a barrel of crude would go on for pages (and others have compiled it already). For now, let’s restrict our discussion to the oil devoted to moving people and stuff around. Most of what I can see from Water Tower Hill depends in one way or another on the energy stored in this magic carpet. If I could press a button and simultaneously combust all the liquid petroleum products stashed in all the gas tanks, gas stations, gas trucks, and gas cans presently within my sight, the force of the explosion might well alter the orbit of the earth around the sun. (Not really, all you physicists tempted to show me the error in my calculations. It’s hyperbole, to make a point.)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">As if to underscore that point further, I look southeast, about four miles away, and have no trouble locating the Suncor Energy oil refinery. It’s a puny little thing compared to the sprawling monster refineries along the Gulf Coast, but, hey, it’s ours. Trains loaded with tanker cars deliver the crude at all hours. Alchemists turn the goo into gas, and then other locomotive drivers pull in with other, empty, tanker cars and say “Fill ‘er up!” When I come here at night, I can easily spot the gas flares—towers that look like flame throwers pointed at heaven—disposing of unwanted methane by burning it. When the wind is just right (or wrong) I can smell the poisonous sulfur dioxide venting into the atmosphere. Today the sun glints off the incomprehensible tangle of tanks and conduits that looks to me like an unmelodious pipe organ built by extraterrestrials to remind them of home. All this—cars, pollution, noise, and eyesore refineries—so I can sit down, turn a key, and levitate (nearly for free!) to any destination I choose. Never have to walk again! Powerful magic, for sure. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">But in this case it is literally <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">black</i> magic. Black gold. Texas Tea. It promised to free us, once and for all, from the straightjacket of physical limits to the good life. But science tells us that nothing is ever created out of thin air. E=mc<sup>2</sup> means energy and matter simply rearrange themselves, changing from one to the other and back again, as needed. In other words, there is no such thing as a free magical lunch. You’ve got to pay for your adventures in Godhood. Every so-called advancement comes with a price tag pinned to its sleeve, payable in unintended consequences and hidden traps that grow tighter the higher you reach for more. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Today, I’m looking at one of those price tags—the bloated concrete and steel corpus of Hydrocarbon Man. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">There is much more to see from Water Tower Hill, and I’ll be back again. I’m sure the ugliness is not the only thing I’ll find when I walk the land down there as humans were meant to do, one step at a time. Even mistakes as large as ours can be forgiven and put right when we make up our minds to back up and try again. I have the feeling there are people everywhere doing just that—creating sanity and beauty in the most unlikely places. But I’ve had enough for now. I head down the hill again (no sociable foxes today). Ten minutes later I arrive at the gate of New Leaf Gardens, the urban farm oasis belonging to my family. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">I look across the half-acre of greenery and marvel at the sheer extravagance of it. There is more “green” contained in sunlight than any other color. And there is more unbridled, unconditional generosity in green things than any other creature on earth. Pick a green bean today, and tomorrow the plant will shower you with five more. Behead a broccoli? No hard feelings; try again in a few days. Eggplants balloon one after another, like deep purple soap bubbles. Tomatoes blush at the thought of loving hands, reaching, softly pressing, pulling them free, so ready to surrender their sweet, tangy flesh to you. (No wonder farmers can be such a lusty bunch!)<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">I can still hear the faint rush of traffic on nearby highways and streets; a distant police siren; a motorcycle in need of a muffler. I am comforted to think there are plentiful reasons to believe a quieter, less mobile season is upon us. And then the same thought makes me uneasy. How will we adjust? What new arrangements will we make for ourselves in a much smaller, walkable world? I don’t know. But I do know the answers are far more likely to be found in a garden—tucked under a cabbage leaf, or hiding among the cucumbers—than in places humans usually run to when faced with scary change: fear, conflict, crazed competition. For one thing, once peak oil has fully settled in and the hydrocarbon vault is functionally emptied (that is, what’s left is finally unaffordable or inaccessible), the plants—who live quite comfortably on a fixed solar income—can remind us how to stop writing bad checks, balance our energy budget, and live within our means again. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">I can hear them now: “Have some dinner. Then we’ll talk.” </div></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1105221723305821918.post-25135484271035191602010-08-13T18:43:00.000-07:002010-08-13T18:43:32.291-07:00Picking up friends for the trip<div class="MsoNormal">Well then! The very first post (available below) in my journey to tell The Story of Here has already attracted quite a few fellow travelers. Welcome! </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">First, Pete wrote to answer my question about how streets are named: “Why should Kipling and Wadsworth be followed by a street named for a general: Sheridan?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“These are all names of great English authors.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">You got me, Pete. Richard Brinsley <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sheridan</i>: eighteenth century playwright and member of the British House of Commons. Buried in Westminster Abbey. (Maybe you can explain the next two streets in the sequence as well: Federal and Pecos.) </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Paul Wayne, friend and fellow explorer wrote: “<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Your mission, your garden ... as usual my brother, you have a way of beginning that which needs to be begun. Would you be up for being cloned? The world could use several millions of ya.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Well, that’s the idea—to use the DNA of words and ideas to create a new world.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My favorite response by far came from Kate in Bellingham, WA:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote>“I love your article on mapping! I am part of Transition Whatcom and am starting a smaller Transition group in my neighborhood, and mapping it like you describe sounds like great fun! I feel like a kid again- we were the true explorers. </blockquote><blockquote> </blockquote><blockquote>We knew where the creek went and where you could find the most tadpoles, who had a funny statue that peed into a little pond, who had a trampoline and when they were not home, we could sneak under shrubbery to find out who was rich and who drank beer out on their porch, we knew where the scary dogs were and how to go around them, which fence to climb to get wild blackberries, which old lady had adopted a one-eyed cat and gave out candies if you listened to her stories a while, and of course, where the best sledding was. </blockquote><blockquote> </blockquote><blockquote>Yay!! My bike beckons!”</blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">That’s the spirit!<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Finally, I’d like to welcome all the readers who reach The Story of Here via Transition Boulder’s fabulous website <a href="http://www.eatlocalguide.com/bouldercounty/">eatlocalguide.com</a>. I hope you enjoy the ride as much as I do.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">More soon…<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Peace!<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1105221723305821918.post-33134100457080853412010-08-12T13:42:00.000-07:002010-08-12T16:02:16.133-07:00The Story of Here Begins<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">The day’s work is done at New Leaf Gardens, the half-acre urban farm my family nurtures and tends in Colorado. We have worked since early morning, watering and weeding. The sun is nowhere near the horizon, but today is unusually hot; we’ll sit out the mid-afternoon heat indoors. It is early August and the harvest will crescendo soon—hitting a high, green note the plants will sustain through September; well into October, if we are lucky. At this altitude (5,400 feet) anything can happen after the equinox. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">But, for now, an expectant gathering of green tomatoes grows heavy, tipping toward a cascade of red. Pole bean vines strain skyward, clothed in brand new white and yellow blossoms; slender, crisp beans are only a few days away. Cucumbers, peppers, squashes, cabbages, onions, carrots, beets, cantaloupes, pumpkins, eggplant, Brussel sprouts, potatoes—all are queued up for their turn, a dramatic entrance foreshadowed since Spring.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">I close the gate behind me, tired and satisfied. Until this year, weeds and gravel had ruled this ordinary corner lot—though, on paper, the deed assigns ownership to the Valley Vista United Methodist Church. Through the years the space has been used as a part-time parking lot; makeshift baseball field for neighborhood kids; convenient turnaround and storage yard for county paving equipment when the streets needed maintenance; a shortcut for pedestrians headed for the library across the street, or to the post office two blocks away. It was a place to drive by or pass through, certainly nothing to look at.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6LsYmRZ_lMGCMimIvjom5hvURDyRwL0_nq9nXA7GRulME9nrkWQ25pfuG8kf9OBp8pefmyt7out0kqN7UCXlgu-_xlzSYC9N6F5CyZOJrveHWP1_5SbcxwHdJpdNPof8VImbRBzP35Khb/s1600/image+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6LsYmRZ_lMGCMimIvjom5hvURDyRwL0_nq9nXA7GRulME9nrkWQ25pfuG8kf9OBp8pefmyt7out0kqN7UCXlgu-_xlzSYC9N6F5CyZOJrveHWP1_5SbcxwHdJpdNPof8VImbRBzP35Khb/s320/image+3.jpg" /></a></div><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">Not anymore. Last November my wife and I sat around the dining table with our adult children to discuss a brave new family venture: Neighborhood Supported Agriculture. Outside, an early snow was falling; inside, winter had already begun to melt as we warmed to the possibilities of spring. For years we had grown an astonishing amount of food in our own yard. Now we felt ready to kick things up a notch. We tossed around ideas for asking the neighbors (none of whom we knew well) to let us plant in the unused corners of their property, in exchange for a share of the vegetables. As successful as that approach can be, all evening long an alternative image kept forming in my mind of the empty, disregarded little square of church land, just a block away from the kitchen where we’d gathered. Wouldn’t it be fun to put all that food in one place—in the open, where neighbors might be drawn to it? Could this be the elusive nucleus around which local community might form? </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">In December, I approached the leaders of the church with a proposal. In January we signed a three-year lease for a modest sum. In March we got to work—building a fence and creating raised beds on top of the less-than-suitable native soil. Sure enough, within a few days curious neighbors began stopping by to see what was up. In just weeks we went from knowing virtually no one nearby to forming friendships with a couple dozen people (and counting). The neighborhood that had once looked like an impenetrable wall of drawn shades and locked doors was filling up with smiling people, each with a story to tell, each enthusiastic about our project. They’ve offered us tools, labor, encouragement, grass clippings and kitchen scraps for the compost pile, even pitchers of lemonade on hot days. In a variety of small ways the project began to belong to all of us. Now, in steadily increasing numbers, these neighbors come and buy produce every Saturday morning at a stand we’ve set up just outside the fence. Many of them <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">walk</i> from home to shop for fresh organic vegetables—in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">America</i>! For them, there is no mystery about where the food comes from, or how it is grown. The farm is an open book. Compared with petroleum-soaked industrial agriculture, the carbon footprint of this food would fit many times on the head of a pin.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">Farming by hand can be a meditative occupation. If I allow it, my mind and body begin to synchronize with sun and earth time. Ordinarily, the wavelength of change in maturing plants is imperceptible to modern people raised on restlessness. In a garden, nothing discernable to human senses happens in an hour or a day, much less within our ever shrinking attention span. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">That’s a shame, because the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">amplitude</i> of this slow moving, verdant wave—that is, its capacity to carry creative energy and information—is enormous, practically limitless. To someone whose internal clock is set to Play Station time, this sounds ridiculous. Stand still in a garden; what do you see? Nothing much. The only motion comes from an occasional breeze; the only sound from drunken honey bees. Yet, to beets and onions slowly swelling beneath the soil, the human habit of measuring things in gigahertz—a cycle that completes itself a billion times a second—is pure science fiction. “Miles per hour” is an absurdity. All is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">here</i>. Everything is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">now</i>. No need for a high speed chase through existence. The attentive and willing farmer begins to know this too.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">But, today I must reluctantly admit that my mind has been elsewhere. As I head for home on foot, I am aware of how preoccupied I’ve been with the usual scary events “out there”: Wall Street oligarchs and their ruthless power plays; environmental catastrophe; rumblings of war (and not just the “little” kind we’ve grown used to. Big, capital “W”, War). I have spent the day worrying about the fate of the Gulf of Mexico; the state of the Greek economy; the deployment of warships in the Persian Gulf; oil field depletion rates in Saudi Arabia and what they mean for the future of civilization. If thoughts were made of lead, these would be heavy enough to sink a battleship. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"> I keep walking toward home, still thinking, still tired—and, with each step, growing more tired of thinking. Looking up, I notice for the first time the cumulonimbus cloud throwing its skirts up and out over the mountains in the west. The sky has grown dark enough to promise rain, but not so much as to threaten hail or tornadoes. The breeze quickens, cooler than it has been all day. I lift my hot and sweaty face and breathe deep. My step feels a little lighter.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">I pass by Claudia and Vern’s house (two of my newfound farm friends) and it occurs to me that I haven’t seen Vern for three weeks now. They are past retirement age; an extended absence might well be bad news. Why didn’t I notice sooner? I make a mental note to drop by tomorrow. Just then a young boy, nine or ten years old, whom I’ve seen often since starting to make this daily walk to and from the farm, zooms past me on his black and red bicycle. He turns off the street into a driveway and, without slowing, runs his front tire into the weathered fence beside the house. “Yeah!” he says with gusto, after barely avoiding becoming a crash dummy. Clearly, a soul bent on adventure.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">I am nearing the corner now, where I’ll cross another street to my house. Before I do, I see a young woman, mid-thirties perhaps, sitting on the concrete steps of her front porch, smoking a cigarette. She wears loose fitting gym shorts and a baggy T-shirt. Not that her clothes are far too big; she is too thin. Her shoulders sag forward as if she has run out of reasons to sit upright. She suddenly speaks, her voice a weary drone, and I realize she is cradling a cell phone under her limp blonde hair. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I just got back from the hospital</i>, she says. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My husband’s leg is infected. They told us he has severe diabetes. It’s bad.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">By the time I reach my front door, the tectonic plates in my mind have begun to shift. I remember an anecdote I once heard describing this idea: Whatever we concentrate our attention upon is what we will see—is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i> we will see, no matter what else is present. In the illustration, a man is driving a car through paradise, surrounded by magnificent landscapes. He is nevertheless convinced the world is a dangerous and dirty place—all because his eyes are fixed, not on the breathtaking beauty beyond the glass, but on the car’s dusty and bug-stained windshield. He is focused on things that, though they may be equally “real” (bug guts, road grime, and other global issues), they are not equally <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">important</i> to local life. They are two-dimensional and inert, signifying nothing about life where he actually <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i>. Here’s the lesson for me: If the world appears hopelessly flawed, maybe it is only an illusion, created when global problems too large to grasp are superimposed over local life. Perception trumps reality. In the here and now, real trouble (usually) comes in more manageable, less overwhelming sizes. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">Compared to the average American, I am well informed. I have spent a lot of time educating myself about current affairs. I know what mortgage backed securities and credit default swaps are, and why they spell big economic trouble for the foreseeable future (no matter what anyone says about “green shoots”). I understand what geologist M. King Hubbert predicted in the 1950s about the inevitable decline of world oil production, and can cite plenty of current evidence to suggest he was absolutely right. I can talk geopolitics with you long into the night. I am well versed in the science of climate change. I know that Arctic sea ice is shrinking; the oceans’ phytoplankton are disappearing; methane is outgassing by the ton from melting permafrost. I am generally aware of humanitarian conditions in the Gaza strip; Sudan; Congo. I know how much Bill Clinton is planning to spend on Chelsea’s wedding cake (though I wish I didn’t).</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">What I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">don’t</i> know is the name of the obviously frightened woman who lives a stone’s throw from my house, or what her family needs to survive her husband’s illness. I know a lot about “foreclosures” in America, but nothing about the “foreclosed” who live (or who used to live) nearby. I can tell you about the effects of globalization on Ethiopian coffee farmers, but I have no idea who or what was here before this place was “developed” in the 1950s and joined to that amorphous geographic entity called the “suburbs”. I know Mexico is melting under the withering heat of drug violence and economic stress, but I can’t tell you my next door neighbors’ story—except that his name is Juan and he speaks little or no English.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">In other words, for all my work as a community activist, helping to create New Leaf Gardens and bring affordable, locally grown, organic food to my neck of the woods, at heart I’ve been a “windshield” kind of guy. How disappointing. Something’s got to change</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">But wait. All those seemingly distant global problems <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are</i> real. They truly are likely to erupt like stirring volcanoes and to dramatically alter the landscape of our lives. Ignorance of the world is never a wise strategy. To be informed is a prerequisite to good citizenship. Some of the informed argue that the signs “out there” point to a fast crash of life as we have known it. Vulnerability to sudden catastrophe, they argue, is hardwired into complex systems, an inevitable price of technological advancement. Others believe that entropy—the tendency of all things, civilizations included, to move toward disorder and lower states of energy—drags on complexity like friction, assuring us of a slow and grinding deceleration, what author James Howard Kunstler calls “The Long Emergency”. I’ve spent a lot of my adult life swinging between these two poles, trying to discern the truth of the matter.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">Today, I realize something new and startling: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It doesn’t really matter</i>. Why? Because when the dust of the fast crash settles, or the grind of steady decline has finally reached a standstill—either way—my world will have <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shrunk</i> radically and irrevocably. “Collapse”, it turns out, is an apt word, because it implies that what was large and expansive (globalized) will soon be small and immediate (localized). In any scenario you care to spin up, the end result is the same: The frontier of daily life moves much, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">much</i> closer to home. Food, water, politics, security, health care, even information and entertainment—all of the basics of life—will come from places nearby, or not at all. Not only will riots in Paris have no power to help or harm anyone in my neighborhood, we may well lose our ability to know they ever even happened.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">Here is the stark truth of it: In a “powered down” future—the one almost certain to follow the end of the era of “Hydrocarbon Man”—the practical size of my collapsed world (and yours) could well be defined like this: How far can we walk away from home and back again in a single day?</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">My own answer? About ten miles. And that’s optimistic.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">With this thought in mind, I go into my office, take out a map of Denver and tack it to the wall. I stare a long time at the tangle of abstract lines and the shapes they form. Areas administered by the county I live in are white. Municipalities are blue, pink, yellow, and tan. Numbered streets run east and west; boulevards with other names, north and south. I search for patterns in the naming, but am usually stymied: Why should Kipling and Wadsworth be followed by a street named for a general: Sheridan? Symbols logically pinpoint schools, churches, fire stations—but why cemeteries? Where are the gardens? Where are the shops still owned by people who live here? Where do the geese nest in spring? Where is the best hill for sledding in winter? Where are the subversive poets gathering tonight? </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">I look for meaning in the map, for an answer to the questions growing larger in my mind by the minute: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Where in the world am I? What and who shares this place with me, right here, right now?</i> Of course, for this purpose the map is useless. If you need to know how to get “there” a map is just the thing. If you want to know what’s there that is worth getting to, you are on your own. I am on my own.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">So be it. I put a pin in the precise location of New Leaf Gardens. From now on it will mark the center of the world. I draw a circle, centered on the pin, with a radius of ten miles—the new size of my world. Territories beyond still exist, of course. But I will now give their goings on the same attention I presently devote to the current cost of coffee in Constantinople. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">So much for the easy part.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">Now comes the real work, the true turning point in the drama. This is the pivotal moment when the story of my life officially becomes the story of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">place.</i> I’m astonished to realize what a large area my circle encloses (roughly 314 square miles). I’ve driven through some of it, flown over it once or twice. But after living here six years, it is shocking to discover how little of it I truly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">know</i>. Now, like a nineteenth century anthropologist, I will set out to explore this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">terra incognita</i>—and to do it, as much as possible, on foot. What I seek will never be found out the window of speeding car.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">The purpose of this chronicle is to report back what I find—people; places; Earth, Air, Fire, Water—and the fifth element, Spirit; plain sight ugliness and hidden beauty (and vice versa); the artist and the artless; angels and demons; what works, what doesn’t; yesterday’s waste and tomorrow’s raw material; backrooms where God has left His fingerprints on everything, and others where He hasn’t been seen for a while. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">What do you know? I don’t feel tired anymore. Outside, a gentle rain has started to fall, refreshing the air and watering the earth. Inside, I’m all charged up, ready to get going. Purpose will revive you like nothing else can. Here’s mine: to find and tell <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Story of Here: Mapping the Geography of Home</i>. Join me.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">Next week I’ll climb “water tower hill” near my house and survey the lay of the land before us.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8