As days get shorter

 I found this on the internet the other day and wanted to share:

A Special Kind of Stupid

Slowly, very slowly, the Christmas decorations are coming together. Daughter Person's birthday has been successfully celebrated. She and her Spouse and Daughter are safely back from a brief Disneyland vacation. Now we all need to buckle down and get some Christmas shopping done, but first I have to drop the two remaining Halloween pumpkins under the pear tree on the ridge behind the  house so the local deer can enjoy them.

It's been a month since the election and I'm finally starting to shake off my funk. The warmer temperatures we've had the past few days has helped, I'm sure. A little lot more sunshine would be appreciated too. Today was cloudy, cool, and dreary, with some dank thrown in, but better than single digit temperatures and bellow zero wind chills.

I'm already working on some New Year's resolutions: one is to simplify and organize my  life as much  as possible; another is to have gratitude for the good things in my life instead of always looking for more and / or better. I've asked Santa for a mild winter and early spring but I'm not sure he can do much about either. Maybe I better  follow up with a request for some toy I can play with in the  house this winter.

The Power of Hope Today

Gabrielle Marshall

Today’s hope is a flickering candle that dwells in a snow-dusted window, 
circulating the prayers of Christmas mornings. 
Today’s hope is the crisp daffodil in colorless photos,
containing the soul of a small 
child,
who only wishes and knows of 
peace and love.
Today’s hope is the sparkling eyes that
truly believe in achieving
anything to reach unity.
Today’s hope is the palm to palm connection
bracing each other for the climb neither expected,
but couldn’t abandon.
Today’s hope is peering
beyond
the lingering barrier,
but still recognizing the diversity in ourselves.
Today’s hope has been dimmed and tossed recklessly,
but still generously stays with us,
for we cannot help but come back
like wide eyed children to candy.
We are said to be weak to rely on such strength,
but we are only believers.
That spark 
That gives science a baffled case
And oceans an infinite plane,
is the eagle that dips 
and soars
and fights,
which stands for
the hope of 
today. 

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It’s BLOOMing Father’s Day

This year Father’s Day coincides with Bloomsday which, according to The Writer’s Almanac:

... James Joyce fans all over the world are celebrating. It commemorates the day on which the events of his novel Ulysses take place. Joyce chose June 16th, 1904, for the setting because it was the day of his first date with Nora Barnacle, his future wife. Even after the novel's success, Joyce himself did not call June 16th "Bloomsday." Nor did he really celebrate the day, though publisher Sylvia Beach organized a celebratory Parisian luncheon on June 16th, 1929 — years before the book was legal in the English-speaking world.

Much as I identify with my Irish heritage, today honoring my father, and all fathers, takes precedence. I do my best and hope my shoulders are broad and strong enough to do for my children and grandchild what my father did for me: teach me to care about and for others, and to think for myself. Today’s poem says it even better. If we’re not here to take care of each other and, especially, our children, why are we here?

Shoulders

Naomi Shihab Nye
1952 – 

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

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On a Poet Laureate’s project(s)

You can thank my Better Half for today’s posting. This morning she sent me a gift link to a Boston Globe article about the upcoming launch, this Friday, June 14, of Ada Limón’s You Are Here project at the Cape Cod National Seashore. We’ve been enjoying and sharing her poems for almost a decade now. We’ve already read the poetry anthology that’s also part of her poet laureate project, You Are Here, Poetry in the Natural World, and intend to reread it more carefully over the summer. I’m finding it challenging to relate some of the more creative poetry forms to my perspectives on nature and want to decide if the issue is with me, the poems, or the combination. I have a strong predilection for plain-spoke poetry and I think that may be the source of my discomfort with some of the selections.

You Are Here, Poetry in the Natural World

As an interesting aside, at least to me, none of the seven poems and poets selected to be installed on picnic tables at the seven National Parks are included in the anthology. Perhaps it’s a spread the wealth, broaden the awareness, strategy. I think I’m going to need to print each of the picnic table poems and add those pages to the back of the anthology. What perfectionist OCD? Me? Nah!

I found it silly,, how happy it made me, to be reading about the event scheduled for Provincetown this Friday. Cape Cod in general, and P’town in particular, are part of “home" to me. I only visited the city on a few occasions, but my friends and I regularly fished for stripers off of Race Point most summers for several years before I left New ENgland. Now, if you’ll pardon me, I’m going to go read some poems and wax nostalgic. You can take the boy out of the ocean but you can’t take the ocean out of the boy.

Miracle Fish

By Ada Limón

I used to pretend to believe in God. Mainly, I liked so much to talk to someone in the dark. Think of how far a voice must have to travel to go beyond the universe. How powerful that voice must be to get there. Once in a small chapel in Chimayo, New Mexico, I knelt in the dirt because I thought that’s what you were supposed to do. That was before I learned to harness that upward motion inside me, before I nested my head in the blood of my body. There was a sign and it said, This earth is blessed. Do not play in it. But I swear I will play on this blessed earth until I die. I relied on a Miracle Fish, once, in New York City, to tell me my fortune. That was before I knew it was my body’s water that moved it, that the massive ocean inside me was what made the fish swim.

Happy Earth Day!

 Let’s make every day Earth Day, shall we?

“Blue Marble,” our only home
NASA Photo ID AS17-148-22727

Earth Day

By Jane Yolen

I am the Earth

And the Earth is me.

Each blade of grass,

Each honey tree,

Each bit of mud,

And stick and stone

Is blood and muscle,

Skin and bone.

And just as I

Need every bit

Of me to make

My body fit,

So Earth needs

Grass and stone and tree

And things that grow here

Naturally.

That’s why we

Celebrate this day.

That’s why across

The world we say:

As long as life,

As dear, as free,

I am the Earth

And the Earth is me. 

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Return with us now...

Today is day fourteen of the 10 to 14 day germination period listed for the bergamot seeds we planted in two seed trays. There are minuscule signs of life in about 20% of the tray cells. We have our fingers crossed that more seeds will germinate over time since the trays have only had one day of warm sunshine for a couple of hours. Weather forecasts are threatening frost this weekend so... no planting yet. In fact, we’re not even ready to park the trays outside daily so seedlings can harden off. The wind has been gusting enough to blow over the trays. Plus, the “safety date” for frost is Memorial Day weekend. Welcome to spring in the North Country.

wild bergamot in bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

A pocket gopher has been creating mounds in the real back yard, not just out in the fields behind the house. We’ll see about setting some traps tomorrow or later, after the Soil and Water Conservation person has visited. We’re exploring the possibility of getting some funding to help turn our fields into wild prairie, helping create habitat for local pollinators. Maybe some of our bergamot seedlings will become a step in our prairie restoration?

The day lilies are coming along nicely. Maple buds have burst and their “shells” now cover the ground. The Better Half recently dug out some CDs from our [much] younger days, including early Judy Collins, Ani DiFranco + Utah Phillips, and Janis Joplin. I’m taking that music plus my rapidly growing frustration with today’s “culture” as a cue that it’s time to revert, not to a second childhood (there are some who would claim I never left my first) but to a second Hippie-hood. It feels like a wonderful way to spend the rest of the year, and maybe the rest of my life. At least I could make more sense of people’s actions and inactions way back when. Now, not so much. (If you’re not old enough to remember the Lone Ranger, the rest of the title goes “to those thrilling days of yesteryear.......”)

Back Up Quick They’re Hippies

By Lani O'Hanlon

That was the year we drove

into the commune in Cornwall.

“Jesus Jim,” mam said,

“back up quick they’re hippies.”

Through the car window,

tents, row after row, flaps open,

long-haired men and women

curled around each other like babies

and the babies themselves

wandered naked across the grass.

I reached for the handle, ready, almost,

to open the door, drop out and away

from my sister’s aggressive thighs,

Daddy’s slapping hands.

Back home in the Dandelion Market

I unlearnt the steps my mother taught,

bought a headband, an afghan coat,

a fringed skirt — leather skin.

Barefoot on common grass I lay down with kin.

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On Christmas Eve

Almost a decade ago we re-sided and re-shinglled the house. We also had some bracing added to the roof, to be sure it would hold a "miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.” The white stuff on the ground is called snow, which some years arrives in the North Country for Christmas. 

make sure your roof will hold Santa

Photo by J. Harrington

“‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” turns 200 this year

A Visit from St. Nicholas

By Clement Clarke Moore

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds;

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,

Gave a lustre of midday to objects below,

When what to my wondering eyes did appear,

But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer,

With a little old driver so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:

"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;

So up to the housetop the coursers they flew

With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too—

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.

His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath;

He had a broad face and a little round belly

That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,

And laying his finger aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight—

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

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Home territory?

As I’ve pondered my experiences in New England and Minnesota, trying to get a handle on why my affections for the former are so much stronger than those for the latter, it occurs to me that in Massachusetts, there was much more that I could do, close to where I lived, that I really enjoyed doing. In Minnesota, I can do many, but not all, of the same things but it involves much more travel.

One example that promptly comes to mind is that I could, with a half an hour’s drive, be wading a pond and fly-fishing for bluegills and small bass. Although I’ve spent a fair amount of time searching for a comparable location in Minnesota, there are few places (none I’ve found) to wade and fish a pond or lake. Things look much better if one has a boat or canoe, but that adds to the complexity of a quiet evening in the water.

Here’s one that I admit is unfair, but I could readily go clamming, fishing and duck hunting in several locations near my abode in Marshfield, Massachusetts. Minnesota doesn’t offer clamming, the goose hunting is better here but I have to drive most of the way across the state to enjoy that. Trout fishing back East was about as long a drive from home as it is in Minnesota. Turkey hunting when I lived back East was almost unheard of and only became viable in Minnesota several years after I arrived. These days I can hunt turkeys and deer in my back yard, but neither of those is a preferred outdoor activity. I’d rather be slightly more active than sitting in a blind or on a stand. Grouse hunting in both locations I’ve found to be pretty much comparable and about equally distant from home both places. 

some Minnesota trees

Photo by J. Harrington

The Better Half and I have enjoyed a number of vacations that involved some travel and trout fishing. The fishing part has been singularly unproductive. Maybe we should have hired a local guide. (Yes, I want it all: attractive surroundings and good sport.) At one point we lived somewhere that was about half an hour’s drive closer to a wonderful trout stream in Wisconsin. That was almost as good as the pond in Massachusetts, but I’m not sure about including Wisconsin in my assessment of Minnesota.

The purpose of the preceding is to compare, not criticize. I’m convinced that Minnesota, at least around the Twin Cities, has a much more active literary community than I ever found around Boston. I’m truly grateful for that. But overall, I find it much more challenging discovering a sense of place in Minnesota than I did back East. Could it be because I grew up with clam and corn chowder (chow dah) rather than tater tots? You may have noticed that I’ve not mentioned the people in either location. I have every reason to believe that New Englanders are no more or less insular than Minnesotans, but I was born there, not here, so I can’t really do that comparison. I was native to parts of New England and accepted as such. Others, not so much.

If you have any thoughts you want to share about becoming native to aa place, we’d love to see them in the comments.

Native Trees

By W. S. Merwin

Neither my father nor my mother knew

the names of the trees

where I was born

what is that

I asked and my

father and mother did not

hear they did not look where I pointed

surfaces of furniture held

the attention of their fingers

and across the room they could watch

walls they had forgotten

where there were no questions

no voices and no shade

Were there trees

where they were children

where I had not been

I asked

were there trees in those places

where my father and my mother were born

and in that time did

my father and my mother see them

and when they said yes it meant

they did not remember

What were they I asked what were they

but both my father and my mother

said they never knew

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Home away from home

Today’s weather, so far, on top of last night’s rain showers, is a treat. Blue skies, breeze, warm not hot. sunshine... maybe thunderstorms this evening, we’ll see. We’re definitely doing a lot better than Maui and Phoenix.

The other day I once again started picking my way through a book titled Exploring a Sense of Place. A few years ago I began working through sections of the book but it never seemed to jell. After intermittently thinking about it, I believe I now know why. The places I feel most connected to are places where I was doing things I loved doing, especially hunting and fishing things. I’ve never felt comfortable enough with, or interested enough in, botany to be really good at foraging, never mind collecting mushrooms. Then again, I tried and didn’t persist in fly-tying, maybe because I didn’t get sufficiently interested in aquatic entomology?

We’ve lived in the same place for about a quarter century. I like the place but, especially in years like this one, wish it were more interesting. Not much grew in the back yard due to a droughty summer after a very wet spring and preceding winter. We’ve seen few whitetail fawns or wild turkey poults this year. It was interesting, and very disappointing, to discover late spring or early summer that a bear had destroyed one of the bluebird nesting boxes. As with much of life, most of the time very little happens day to day and then there’s a minor or major crisis. I believe the high point so far this season has been the sandhill crane visit, and they haven’t been back.

recent visitors to the back yard

Photo by J. Harrington

I think what I’m fussing about today is I don’t seem to be able to find a satisfying balance between learning and doing and thinking and the rest of living. Uncooperative weather patterns has something to do with that. Aging in a less than graceful manner is a coconspirator. (Lots of effort goes into teaching children to to grow and become productive, but precious little to teaching us how to age gracefully, as if we were born knowing that.)

Back to my lack of a sense of place. While I acknowledge the truths of Heraclitus’ [via Plutarch] metaphor “It is not possible to step into the same river twice,” perhaps I’m past due to read Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home. For some time I’ve been haunted by the line from Neil Diamond’s I am I said: But nowadays, I'm lost between two shores. Duluth is not Boston and Lake Superior isn’t the Atlantic ocean. Maybe I need to discover familiar home waters where I am to complement those where I was. 

Lines Written at Castle Island, Lake Superior

Jane Johnston Schoolcraft
1800 – 1842

^{translated from the Anishinaabemowin}

Here in my native inland sea 
From pain and sickness would I flee
And from its shores and island bright
Gather a store of sweet delight.
Lone island of the saltless sea! 
How wide, how sweet, how fresh and free
How all transporting—is the view 
Of rocks and skies and waters blue
Uniting, as a song’s sweet strains 
To tell, here nature only reigns. 
Ah, nature! here forever sway 
Far from the haunts of men away
For here, there are no sordid fears, 
No crimes, no misery, no tears
No pride of wealth; the heart to fill, 
No laws to treat my people ill. 

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Home, again?

A week from tomorrow is July 4. Where I come from [Boston, MA], that’s deep into Summer. June is wending along the same path as Spring, into memory land. Greens are deepening, as we get some rain. More types of butterflies are showing up almost daily. We’ve already more than halfway to the average number of days we reach 90℉ [9 so far, 13 is average]. We’ll have to wait and see how it goes from here. Cooler and wetter, but not too much, would be nice.

I’m noticing that spending less time checking newspapers and social media usually puts me in a better mood and gives me more time to devote to things I can actually do something about and/or things I enjoy doing. I’ve been reading more and more about Traditional Ecological Knowledge [TEK] and that’s slowly helping me to shift bits and pieces of my world view. I’m involved, as a volunteer, in a project for which I’d like to find at least one way to integrate TEK, similar to the Wakan Tipi Center at the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary in St. Paul. 

Water of the Dodem Spirits

Photo by J. Harrington

I grew up learning about the American Revolution, the Minutemen, and the “shot heard round the world.” I have been much slower, as I grow older, learning about those who lived here before “settlers” arrived, before the fur trade changed the economy and the relationships among those living here. We can’t go back, but we can do a much better job of restoring not only the environment on which we depend for food, clean air and water, and our relationship to that environment plus our relationship with those who lived here before US and are still here.

Dakota Homecoming

By Gwen Nell Westerman

We are so honored that

              you are here, they said.

We know that this is

             your homeland, they said.

The admission price

             is five dollars, they said.

Here is your button

             for the event, they said.

It means so much to us that

             you are here, they said.

We want to write

             an apology letter, they said.

Tell us what to say.

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As the sand plain blooms

As noted numerous times in prior postings, we live on the eastern edge of the Anoka Sand Plain. This morning plants that survive on our sandy, well drained soils are beginning to come into flower. We saw hoary puccoon and think we saw spiderwort (we didn’t walk close enough to get a good look).

hoary puccoon (Lithospermum canescens)

Photo by J. Harrington

For good measure we’ll add this picture of the dame’s rocket we were going to post yesterday when blogger and Google were harassing us about not uploading pictures unless we allowed them to track us through cookies here.

dame's rocket (Hesperis matronalis)

Photo by J. Harrington

It was a strange day because we also encountered a similar message and needed to re-log-into Skype. I have no idea what was going on on or around the internets. The world in which I try to function has become dysfunctional enough that I’m now determined to become more mellow, even if it kills me. (In case any of you are familiar with the serenity prayer, an executive summary of that prayer is "screw it!” or a four letter version of that verb. We expect to be muttering it more frequently this summer.)

In a Disused Graveyard

By Robert Frost

The living come with grassy tread

To read the gravestones on the hill;

The graveyard draws the living still,

But never any more the dead.

 

The verses in it say and say:

‘The ones who living come today

To read the stones and go away

Tomorrow dead will come to stay.’

 

So sure of death the marbles rhyme,

Yet can’t help marking all the time

How no one dead will seem to come.

What is it men are shrinking from?

 

It would be easy to be clever

And tell the stones: Men hate to die

And have stopped dying now forever.

I think they would believe the lie.

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It’s only 350 days ’til next Christmas

The Christmas tree has been denuded. Brittle, pointy, holly clusters are in the trash. Memories of younger days before empty nester time are floating rampant, like the ghosts of Christmas past, which they are! This year’s deconstruction went pretty smoothly with limited cursing by the man of the house as ornaments refused to be removed from branches. One of the all-time better Christmas albums, Mary Chapin Carpenter’s Come Darkness, Come Light: Twelve Songs of Christmas, lent an appropriate background to the day’s activities.

all gone goodbye for now

Photo by J. Harrington

Between now and Valentine’s we’ll celebrate MLK day and groundhog day and, with luck, an extended January thaw. But, for a few days, the magic of Christmas will be conspicuous by its absence, unless we learn to keep the feeling of Christmas in our hearts all year round. How hard could that be?

carrying the light of Christmas to Valentine's

Photo by J. Harrington

We had advent and Yule candles this year and we’re going to carry over two of them, the red ones in the hurricane lamps, until Valentine's. The cheery flames at dinner will serve as reminders of yule time and help warm our hearts through the cold days ahead. It’s not everything, but it’s a start.

Taking Down the Tree

By Jane Kenyon

"Give me some light!" cries Hamlet's

uncle midway through the murder

of Gonzago. "Light! Light!" cry scattering

courtesans. Here, as in Denmark,

it's dark at four, and even the moon

shines with only half a heart.

The ornaments go down into the box:

the silver spaniel, My Darling

on its collar, from Mother's childhood

in Illinois; the balsa jumping jack

my brother and I fought over,

pulling limb from limb. Mother

drew it together again with thread

while I watched, feeling depraved

at the age of ten.

With something more than caution

I handle them, and the lights, with their

tin star-shaped reflectors, brought along

from house to house, their pasteboard

toy suitcases increasingly flimsy.

Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop.

By suppertime all that remains is the scent

of balsam fir. If it's darkness

we're having, let it be extravagant.

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Home for the holidays

This morning, as we drove north  on Hwy 65, we saw a couple of large flocks of geese while we were passing through Isanti. I have no idea where they’re finding any open water, if they are, but it was a treat to see them. The Better Half also saw some swans that I didn't because traffic and I was driving. Under this rapidly aging exterior, the heart of a waterfowler still beats strong.

Last night I began rereading Donald Hall’s Christmas at Eagle Pond. This season is a wonderful time to luxuriate in nostalgia. I miss New England a lot at Christmas season, especially since Massachusetts rarely, if ever, got as cold as is typical in Minnesota in winter. This morning’s 12℉ as we pulled out of the driveway was a shock to our systems until the Jeep warmed up. Then, again, there’s the message on one of my all time favorite tree ornaments that tempers my desires to “return home” to New England. 

Home is where  your  dog lives.

Photo by J. Harrington

Over the years we’ve developed a family tradition of Dad (that’s me) buying  a Christmas story book each year. This year’s was the Yule Tomte we mentioned a day or so ago. The Daughter Person has made sure the  Granddaughter got a letter explaining about Tomtes and Christmas and magic. Now we just need enough of each generation to get over colds and/or whatever folks have been trading so we can all get together again without infecting each other. Fingers crossed for a fully recuperative weekend.

Yesterday’s posting noted some frustrations and complexities about the tractor, diesel fuel and additives and dealing with snow and winter. Today progress has been made, we think. There’s fresh fuel in the tractor’s tank. The fuel has stabilizer added and all seemed to run fairly well, but we promise to not complain if we don’t need to use the tractor to clear the drive all winter.  We’d even leave Santa some extra cookies if he  delivered on that.

Cold Poem

by Mary Oliver

Cold now.
Close to the edge. Almost
unbearable. Clouds
bunch up and boil down
from the north of the white bear.
This tree-splitting morning
I dream of his fat tracks,
the lifesaving suet.

I think of summer with its luminous fruit,
blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,
handfuls of grain.

Maybe what cold is, is the time
we measure the love we have always had, secretly,
for our own bones, the hard knife-edged love
for the warm river of the I, beyond all else; maybe

that is what it means the beauty
of the blue shark cruising toward the tumbling seals.

In the season of snow,
in the immeasurable cold,
we grow cruel but honest; we keep
ourselves alive,
if we can, taking one after another
the necessary bodies of others, the many
crushed red flowers.

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How can we harvest honorably?

Three books have had a disproportionate influence on me in both my professional and my personal life. They are Ian McHarg’s Design with Nature; Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac; and, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. Today’s posting explores a section of the third book because I’m in  the process of deciding if I can figure out how, and how much, of the principles of an honorable harvest can actually be applied in today’s world.

deer eat the bushes, birds the berries, we harvest what’s left

Photo by J. Harrington

Here are the principles under consideration:

The Honorable Harvest, a practice both ancient and urgent, applies to every exchange between people and the Earth. Its protocol is not written down, but if it were, it would look something like this:

Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.
Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life.
Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
Never take the first. Never take the last.
Take only what you need.
Take only that which is given.
Never take more than half. Leave some for others.
Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.
Share.
Give thanks for what you have been given.
Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have been given.
Sustain the ones who sustain you, and the Earth will last forever.

There are several versions of these principles in publication, but they all convey essentially the same message. As I read them, many, perhaps all of these principles fit much better in a foraging or hunter-gatherer culture than one which depends on industrialized agriculture. But, many (most?) can be applied to small scale agriculture (know your farmer) and foraging and home gardening. (Do any farms have kitchen gardens anymore?) Here are the ones that look to me as if, in one way or another, we could readily do a much better job of respecting:

Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.
[ecosystem services and biodiversity]
Take only what you need.
Harvest in a way that minimizes harm. 
Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.
Share.
Give thanks for what you have been given.
Sustain the ones who sustain you, and the Earth will last forever.
[ecosystem services and biodiversity]

The adaptation isn’t perfect but it does represent a profound transformation in attitude and perspective. It may, or may not, offer an alternative to the Gordian knot of using legalistic standards such as “organic” food and regenerative farming. I’m reminded of a very true assessment in a book I recently finished reading. One cannot force another to love them. If we all do much, much better at learning to love and respect the Earth, we may need fewer regulations and have a better chance of lasting forever.

One final observation for today. Notice that the Honorable Harvest protocol is not written down. Now note that Aldo Leopold informs us that:

“I have purposely presented the land ethic as a product of social evolution because nothing so important as an ethic is ever ‘written’… It evolves in the minds of a thinking community.” The Land Ethic, A Sand County Almanac.

We could stand to do a lot more these days to (re?)create “a thinking community.” to help figure out how to harvest honorably, right?

Praise the Rain

By Joy Harjo

Praise the rain; the seagull dive

The curl of plant, the raven talk—

Praise the hurt, the house slack

The stand of trees, the dignity—

Praise the dark, the moon cradle

The sky fall, the bear sleep—

Praise the mist, the warrior name

The earth eclipse, the fired leap—

Praise the backwards, upward sky

The baby cry, the spirit food—

Praise canoe, the fish rush

The hole for frog, the upside-down—

Praise the day, the cloud cup

The mind flat, forget it all—

Praise crazy. Praise sad.

Praise the path on which we're led.

Praise the roads on earth and water.

Praise the eater and the eaten.

Praise beginnings; praise the end.

Praise the song and praise the singer.

Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

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The Welsh have a word for it

On my way to vote this morning, I noticed lots more purple loosestrife flowers than I have in prior years. At the rate it’s spreading, I suspect and fear that loosestrife will dominate much of the Sunrise river marshes in a few years.

Back at the house, I noticed several purple finches at the feeder. Migration beginning already?

Today’s weather was/is about as good as it gets in the North Country during summer time.

Much of the afternoon was spent online in a workshop titled “Writing with Water,” offered by the Dakota County library as part of the We Are Water MN exhibit. It’s been too long since I wrote anything except what gets posted here so the change of pace was enjoyable and motivating. It also fit very nicely with a book review I read in The Guardian the morning: Rivers brought me heart-shattering loss - then gave me a home. That review, in turn, led me to another Welsh word that, I believe, helps explain why I still consider New England “home” despite living most of my life in Minnesota.

CYNEFIN

(Pr. ‘kuh-neh-vin’)

The word ‘cynefin’ itself is swaddled in layers of meaning – a Welsh noun with no direct equivalent in English, its origins lie in a farming term used to describe the habitual tracks and trails worn by animals in hillsides. The word has since morphed and deepened to conjure a very personal sense of place, belonging and familiarity. The artist Kyffin Williams describes it as:

‘that relationship: the place of your birth and of your upbringing, the environment in which you live and to which you are naturally acclimatised.’

All in all, today has been one of the more pleasant and satisfying I’ve enjoyed in awhile. I hope yours was at least as good.

Mississippi River at Stone Arch Bridge

Photo by J. Harrington

De Wakpa Taŋka Odowaŋ / Song for the Mississippi River

By Gwen Nell Westerman

20 September 2018

 

Long before Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man.
            Before Ol’ Man River.
            Before Wade in the Water.
Long before Schoolcraft and verItascaput.
            Before Father Hennepin and St. Anthony,
            Before Misi Ziibi.
Long before Hernando de Soto.
Otakaheya
In the beginning,
De Dakota Makoce
This was a Dakota place.
The water was pure.
The water was wakaŋ.
Sacred.
mni
pejuta tokaheya heca.
Water was
Water is
our first medicine.
The water was part of the land.
And therefore part of the people.
And in this place,
We flourished.
From Bdote,
where the Mni Sota Wakpa joins
the Wakpa Taŋka,
We followed the rivers,
interconnected waterways,
interconnected lifeways,
Itokaġa
southward to ḢeMniCaŋ and
Bde Iṡtamni, the “Lake of Tears.”
Waziyata
Northward the Big River
took us to Owamniyomni
the whirlpool created by ḢaḢa Wakpa
the curling waters of the falls.
We knew the river’s rise and fall,
channels and gorges,
every meander, every floodplain,
from Bde Wakaŋ to Mniti
Mille Lacs to the Lake of the Woods,
Rainy Lake to Thunder Bay,
where our burial mounds remain.
Wiyoḣpeyata
Westward to Saskatchewan
the head of the Churchill River,
along the Ballantyne River,
named Puatsipi by the Cree—
            Dakota River.
To Bdote, the beginning
of the Mississippi of the North
and the Little Minnesota.
These were our waterways
and our lifeways.
Our medicine.
And we, too, want to sing
a song for the water,
a song for wakpa taŋka
so we listen
we listen
listen
and then
on the edge of a dream
the songs come.
Condensed from the fog
Like dewdrops on cattails,
They form perfectly clear.
Whispering through leaves,
heavy voices rise up,
drift beyond night
toward the silent dawn,
and sing.
            Hekta ehaŋna ded uŋtipi.
            Heuŋ he ohiŋni uŋkiksuyapi kte.
            Aŋpetu dena ded uŋtipi.
            Heca ohiŋni uŋdowaŋpi kte.
            Mni
            Mni pejuta
            Mni wiconi
            Mni wakaŋ
Always on still morning air,
they come,
connected by
memories
connected by
water.

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Writing a way home

 

have we the wisdom to know our place?

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning I registered for an online “nature writing” course offering a lesson by each of the following:

• Rebecca Giggs
  

  Her debut nonfiction book, Fathoms: The World in the Whale, came out in 2020 with Simon & Schuster (US), and Scribe (Aus/UK). In the US Fathoms was awarded the prestigious 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. The book also listed as a finalist in the Kirkus Prize and the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. In Australia, Fathoms won the 2020 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Prize for Literature, the Royal Zoological Society's Whitley Award for Popular Zoology, and the WA Premier's Prize for an Emerging Writer. It was also shortlisted for the 2021 Stella Prize — Australia's most renown award for writing by women and non-binary authors in any genre. Recently the book was distinguished by being 'Highly Commended' in the shortlist for the 2021 Wainwright Prize for Writing on Global Conservation.

• Charles Foster
  

  Charles Foster is a writer, barrister and traveller. His books cover many fields. They include books on travel, evolutionary biology, natural history, anthropology, theology, archaeology, philosophy and law. Ultimately they are all presumptuous and unsuccessful attempts to answer the questions 'who or what are we?', and 'what on earth are we doing here?'

• Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder
  

  Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder is a writer based in northern New England. As a staff writer for Emergence Magazine, she explores the human relationship to place. Her work has been featured in Crannóg Magazine, Inhabiting the Anthropocene, and the EcoTheo Review. She is currently writing her first book.

• Lucy Jones
  

  I’m a journalist and author, based in England. I also teach writing workshops (the Guardian Nature Writing Masterclass) and talk about my research areas. My first book, Foxes Unearthed: A Story of Love & Loathing in Modern Britain, was published by Elliott & Thompson in 2016. It was long-listed for the Wainwright Prize and won the Society of Authors' Roger Deakin Award. My second book, Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need The Wild was published in March 2020 by Allen Lane (Penguin). The paperback was published in February 2021. Losing Eden was long-listed for the Wainwright Prize and received a Society of Authors’ K Blundell Trust Award. The Times and Telegraph named it a book of the year (2020) and the paperback became a Times' bestseller (2021). It is published in German, Spanish, Italian, the United States and soon in Portugal and Estonia. My third book, co-written with Kenneth Greenway, is called The Nature Seed and is published by Profile Books. I write features about science, health, wildlife and the environment for a variety of publications, including the BBC, Emergence, the Guardian and the Independent. Before going freelance in 2015, I worked at NME and The Daily Telegraph. I am represented by Jessica Woollard at David Higham Associates. For commissioning or broadcasting queries, you can write to me at lucyjones01@gmail.com. I am currently researching matrescence.

• Lia Purpura
  

  Lia Purpura’s new collection of essays, All the Fierce Tethers (Sarabande Books) has arrived! Her most recent collection of poems is It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful (Viking/Penguin.) She is the author of three previous collections of poems (King Baby, Stone Sky Lifting, The Brighter the Veil); three previous collections of essays (Rough Likeness, On Looking, Increase), and one collection of translations (Poems of Grzegorz Musial: Berliner Tagebuch & Taste of Ash).

• Jamie Figueroa
  

  Jamie Figueroa is the author of the critically acclaimed novel BROTHER, SISTER, MOTHER, EXPLORER, which “brims with spellbinding prose, magical elements, and wounded, full-hearted characters that nearly jump off the page” (Publishers Weekly). Figueroa is Boricua (Afro-Taíno) by way of Ohio and is a longtime resident of northern New Mexico. Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, Emergence Magazine, Elle, McSweeney’s, and Agni, among others. She received a Truman Capote Award and was a Bread Loaf Rona Jaffe Scholar. A VONA alum, she received her MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Given the array of writers, this should be interesting. I'm continuing to explore why New England remains "home" and Minnesota is a "home away from home." Maybe this will provide either insights or paths to follow, or both. After all, Robert Frost, known as a New England poet, was born in California. That’s really far from the real ocean, you know.

The Death of the Hired Man

By Robert Frost

 

... ‘Home,’ he mocked gently. 

                                       ‘Yes, what else but home? 

It all depends on what you mean by home. 

Of course he’s nothing to us, any more 

Than was the hound that came a stranger to us 

Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.’ 

‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, 

They have to take you in.’ 

                                      ‘I should have called it 

Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.’ ...

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’Tis The Day of Himself

☘ ☘ ☘ ☘ ☘ ☘ ☘ ☘ ☘ ☘

May love and laughter light your days,

and warm your heart and home.

May good and faithful friends be yours,

wherever you may roam.

May peace and plenty bless your world

with joy that long endures.

May all life's passing seasons

bring the best to you and yours!

In my younger days I marched in several St.Patrick’s Day parades, some in spitting snow, others in shining sun. Boston, and the south shore of Massachusetts, have always been “home.” Slowly, over many years, Minnesota has become a home away from home.

Today the roadside ditches, or about half of them, are running full of snowmelt. Many farm fields have large ephemeral ponds or wet spots, none of which this afternoon had attracted waterfowl. In the North Country, mid-March is a bit early to expect to see fresh green anywhere outside, but this year’s rapid thaw should have us looking at mostly bare ground over the weekend. That, along with love and laughter, will warm our heart and home.

Digging

By Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb   

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   

My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   

Bends low, comes up twenty years away   

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

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