The Rondout Reservoir in the morning.
The Benefits of Getting Up Early.
27-Apr-11Catskill “Spring.”
23-Apr-11
Catskill Roadkill Mink.
23-Apr-11
Saw this little mink along the road in the Bone Hollow area of the Rondout Valley. We thought it might be a baby beaver – this was right next to a lake with a beaver lodge – and got out to take a look. It was a mink. My coworker was surprised they were around in the Catskills, but I don’t think they’re all that rare, in fact. I’ve seen more than one, which is more than I can say for other species not considered rare like coyotes. The black-tipped tail is distinctive and when they are moving quickly – which is all the time when they’re alive, it seems, though this one I suppose was not fast enough – the black tip is almost all you can see moving through the underbrush. I’ve always seen them along rivers or by ponds.
This one was recently dead and not yet stiff. The fur was wonderfully soft. Both of us were interested in taking it to a taxidermist to get it stuffed, but really and truly, neither of us had the fifty bucks (or whatever it would have been) to spare. I think I had eleven bucks or so in the bank. I suppose I should learn how to skin and cure a wild animal on my own. So many things yet to learn.
Spring.
14-Apr-11One of the essays I wrote for the Staten Island book not included in the printed edition. And appropriate for the month of April – when we have gorgeous days like today, it is enough for me.
The edition of the Staten Island book is very nearly sold out. Now is the time to order a copy if you want one! There will probably be a second edition, done slightly more economically – probably without the fold-out map – in order to make it a bit cheaper and hence easier to sell in bookshops.
SPRING
“Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts, of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.” – THOREAU
Each of the ancient professions registers the seasons of God’s grace in a different way. As spring comes on the farmer watches the thaw of the soil, the hunter the movement of game. The teacher does not look for the bluebird or the daffodil, but for a more reliable signal more attuned to nature’s mysteries: the teenager. There comes a day when even the best teacher with the most thrilling lesson-plan turns from his blackboard to his pupils, and finds all the most lively of them gazing longingly out the window, staring at the wind and the warm spring light. Five thousand years of civilization have not entirely debased the human race. They still maintain some of the primeval innocence of the Golden Age, when there was nothing but nature in a perennial spring. The teachers who attempt to beat this longing out of their students, with force or threat or histrionics, forget that it is this longing which is the parent of all our arts and sciences, and all our moral progress: a longing for a world more real, more beautiful, and more true than any we have succeeded so far in institutionalizing. I was happy when my students would rather be out in the world than in my classes. It meant that I was teaching well, or, more likely, that they were growing nonetheless.
I taught most of my last-period classes out of doors on fine days, and neither I nor any of my students remember any of the details of what we discussed. It was enough perhaps to be out there. The boys would look at the girls and then try to wrestle each other. That ancient behavior had apparently not grown old. Neither I nor my students quite knew the lesson-plan, but perhaps we learned that the goal of the true education is satisfaction with the gift of life. They had a field of grass beneath their feet, the close presence of their friends, and the warmth of the sun upon their back. Any more would have been clutter, a kind of subtraction by addition. We have our spring cleaning for good reason. The warm breath of spring is a call to a higher and simpler life than we have known before. As one ascends a mountain there is less to see; that is why one may see so far. The tallest point on a pyramid is where it is narrowest. It touches heaven at the moment of pure simplicity.
I do not know a single man or woman who in the spring is happy with any of our business. We all then have a longing to work less, and enjoy more. I would catch myself staring out the window too, or at pictures of friends, which is much the same thing. When the term came towards its end and I had large amounts of grading to do, I used to stop work to watch the colors of the sunset on clear evenings. How then I would promise to myself that this spring I would truly feel, that this spring I would be a lover, that now that the winter was passed I would begin to live more genuinely and according to higher laws.
But the world remains always better than we. Spring comes upon us and finds us unreceptive and cold still. The warm air and peerless green spring up all around us, and we still sit in harsh judgement. Beauty and wonder, when we do not resist them, always incline us to humility. If we take humility as our guide, we see that the deep question the mind must ponder is not why there are awful things that happen to us worthy people, but why there are any good things that happen to us who are so unworthy. The problem of evil does not tax the deepest minds for long. They have better things to do. It is the goodness of the world that is the miracle and the mystery.
First Gardening.
13-Apr-11I had quite a few lettuce seeds left over from last year, so I sowed a bunch of them as soon as the snow was off the vegetable beds. We’ll see if they germinate – nothing to lose, I suppose.
The Crazy Ingenuity of Mice.
10-Apr-11I had not had any problems with mice in the cabin – a few times mice got in, but they left quickly, for whatever reason – but this winter I was absent most of the time and had left food behind me. I found the telltale droppings on the counter – it’s always the counter, isn’t it? – and so I knew that I had a roommate for the time being. I had left some tamari roasted almonds on the dining table, and when I first arrived at the cabin, I was hungry and wanted some simple snack – it was one a.m. – while starting the fire to take the chill out of the cabin (it was about 35 degrees indoors). I picked up the almond-bag and found it completely empty – not one almond in sight – and saw the little beasties had gnawed a hole in the bag.
I found the almonds later when I went to clean something later that night. I had a paper towel roll on the counter, and picking it up, almonds went cascading all over the counter. The mice had used this as a silo, and with some effort had moved half a bag of almonds from the table to the counter. It was way too late to clean up the almonds, so I left them for the morning.
And checking out the bathroom later that night, I saw the high price of luxurious living: my little friend, who thought he was living in the mouse-palace of Sardanapalus, had fallen into the toilet bowl getting a drink, and had been unable to get out. He was dead.
I thought my mouse-problem was over, until the next morning I was back at the counter, laughing about the crazy mouse ingenuity of storing food in a paper-towel roll, when I paused – there were no almonds on the counter. During the night another mouse had moved them all! Still to this day I’m not quite certain where they are. He may have moved out – I’m not hearing any mouse-noises, and no more droppings either – but I bet I’ll see some more of him.
Back in the mountains.
10-Apr-11I returned up here a week ago. It’s been a very busy week, working at the nursery and dealing with the practical problems of wilderness life: getting water from the spring, prepping tools, tending the fire. Relatively simple tasks like cleaning or cooking are far more labor-intensive when you are getting all your water from a spring hundreds of feet downhill.
In the move up here the cable which allows my camera to talk to my computer was misplaced, and so I can’t post pictures. This is unfortunate, because in the past week I witnessed the transition from winter to spring: we had snow Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and there was already snow on the ground. But each time the snow melted quickly, and the past few days it has not gone below freezing. Yesterday was sunny and beautiful all day. There’s still snow around, but it’s fighting a losing battle now. My vegetable beds should be ready for planting next week.
It’s so beautiful here. And so quiet. The only noises I heard on Saturday were the roar of the river in the valley and the sounds of the birds in the trees.
Dreams.
10-Apr-11One of the consistently impressive things about life in the woods is the enlarged importance of dreams: if you keep to the natural cycle of light and dark you will sleep more, and arise naturally: and these two things are probably enough to ensure that your mind will get some harvest from its natural crop of dreams.
A few nights ago I dreamt I was being attacked by my father (now many years dead), who was crazed and violent, but I would not defend myself: “He’s my father,” I said, “I’m not going to hurt him.”
This reminds me of a friend a story told me: “I knew this guy who was all into archetypes and I never was. Then I was in a class with him where we told everyone our dreams. His dreams were almost perfectly archetypal dreams, whereas mine were all entirely personal and idiosyncratic. Then I understood why he was so interested in archetypes and I wasn’t.”
Of Gods and Men.
01-Apr-11I saw the movie Of Gods and Men two nights ago at the excellent little art-house movie theater in Kew Gardens. The movie was not perfect – poorly paced, occasionally indulgent, not quite as intelligent as it might have been – but it was very good, and it affected me. It depicted the monastic life beautifully – a life given to simple tasks, a life where no conversation is indulged unless it is significant, a life at rest from ambitions other than worshipping God in tiny things. But not only was it beautiful, it was accurate as well – I recognized a great deal from my years teaching in a school run by monks. My mother, who had been a nun, was impressed by how much it reminded her of her time in the convent as well.
When I left the theater, I could hear again – the movie had no score, and its silence had worked its way into me. I realized that I hadn’t truly heard anything in ages. I walked to my mother’s house along Lefferts Boulevard, hearing every engine from every car and every breath of wind. It made me want to go home to Wildcat Mountain, but it was enough for that night just to be there walking along that road.
It also stirred me another way, in a way I still cannot quite fathom. The movie represented something I know well from real life but really had not seen much of in movies – real Christianity. You may say that the monks in the movie (Frenchmen murdered in an Algerian Civil War) were merely a vestige of colonialism, inheritors of some injustice bound to be avenged, or simply dumb the way all people who do not avoid visible dangers are dumb, but I find it hard to care forever about injustice and stupidity. They are ours; we are born and reared and die in them, and there is no help for it. They will kill us in the end, either our own or someone else’s.
But the movie went out of its way not to spend much time on the monks’ death: the focus was on their life, and on the brief period of time when it was clear to them what is true of all lives: that choices are made against the backdrop of coming death. They did not know if it would come today or in twenty years, but for a brief period of their lives they truly felt it.
And I wanted something I felt they had: a love which was no longer held in reserve, but had already been given, and merely sought to live out its days in gratitude for the receiving. I wanted whatever goodness I had to be not merely my own.
Much more could be said about the film, but this is enough: when I talk about Christianity, I mean something very similar to what is represented in this movie. That is extraordinary enough, I think. Though it is monastic, the ideals it shows of work, worship, and beauty, and the absence of secular conceptions of ambition, are the same as would be found in a Christian family or Christian solitary life.
Youngstown, Ohio.
31-Mar-11On my way back to New York, I had reason to stop in Youngstown, another place I had long wanted to see. I knew it only from the Bruce Springsteen song (a live version here; it is different from the studio version, which is far more desolate; I would link to the album version but Springsteen’s or his company’s people regularly scrub the internet of album tracks). I had imagined a place abandoned, terrible, and depressed. I was pleasantly surprised to find a functioning Main Street, and on the hill overlooking town a university thronged with young people. The main problem with the Main Street appeared to be a lack of parking; there were full lots all around it. This was an acceptable problem to have: it means the jobs are still downtown. It also means, of course, that people don’t actually live near Main Street, which is inherently wasteful, but is a problem which can be solved, by bringing in housing and a few key businesses such as a supermarket.
Seeing so many destroyed or decayed downtown areas – especially along the Mississippi south of Cairo – brought to mind the claim, which I believe is true, that our government policies favor suburban living over urban living. For all I know this may have seemed like a rational response to fears of nuclear annihilation – low-density is one mode of defending against the bomb – and if energy consumption is no matter, hell, why not drive on an empty highway five miles to your home five minutes away from the center of town? Obviously, none of these rationales are really applicable anymore, though the policies derived from them are in place. This seems like a problem worth tackling. Many of these cities can be saved – with their fine old architecture and homes – if we do it soon. And apparently this would be yet another benefit of switching from a taxation system which disincentivizes employment (in the form of income and payroll taxes) to one which disincentivizes nonrenewable resource consumption (in the form of a carbon tax). More on this topic here.