Happy Earth Day!

Spring has arrived in earnest, just in time to provide glorious decorations for our Earth Day celebration. Yesterday I hiked in a nearby nature preserve and took these photos of nature’s Earth Day display. I enjoyed seeing the skunk cabbage with its leaves unfurled, a satisfying progress report after seeing the odd plant in its earliest spring phase on my hike with Margie a few weekends ago.

This was my second hike this week, and it’s been a long time since I have carved out big chunks of time to get outside and exercise and enjoy nature. I know how good it makes me feel mentally and physically to hike, bike, and garden. Somewhere in my photo box there is a picture of me digging a hole to plant a tree, and I have a look of pure joy on my face. So why don’t I make time every day to do the activities that I enjoy the most? Winter, illness, work, and child-rearing have been my excuses for not getting outside and glorying in the fresh air and getting some much-needed exercise.

Just recently I chanced upon the concept of “lifestyle redesign,” which has got me thinking about how I spend my days. “Lifestyle redesign” was coined by University of Southern California occupational therapy professor Florence Clark. She defines it as “a therapeutic approach to redesigning one’s days in such a way that one can be happy, maximally productive, and experience emotional well-being.” It involves a balance between work and play and emphasizes healthy eating, exercise, and leisure pursuits ON A DAILY BASIS.

There’s nothing revolutionary about the lifestyle redesign concept. We all know that we should embrace healthier lifestyles. But I think it involves a huge perceptual shift to look at each activity we do every day and ask, Is this how I should be spending my time? Is this activity, on balance, aiding my physical and emotional health? For example, I’ve just spent the last two hours sitting in front of the computer. What if instead I had chosen to chat with my husband, who I haven’t seen all day? Our relationship would be the stronger for it, and that would increase both of our levels of happiness.

I really have no answers at the moment for how I would achieve a lifestyle redesign. But I know that making the time to be outside is a key component of the overhaul.

It soothes my nerves. It allows me to have breathing room. It gives me perspective. I take in not only the big expanse of sky but also the lovely little details that are often overlooked. My brain seems to work better, and I go home and back to my responsibilities with a renewed sense of excitement and purpose. And the “ecotherapy” is cheaper than any prescription antidepressant or talk therapy.

I hope you have a chance to search out some green space to enjoy a little ecotherapy of your own on Earth Day and beyond.

A Little Sulphur for the Soul

Sulphur Springs fountain at Clifton Springs, New York

We enjoyed near-perfect spring weather last week. I may even have overdosed a little on sunlight in my enthusiasm to embrace the spring rays. I think by the end of the week I may also have been suffering from a quiet-time deficit. I had fit in only two hours of writing time and a few crafting moments, and even those felt rushed. I knew I needed a peaceful Sunday adventure to clear my scattered mind so that I could be better prepared for this week of busyness.

My boys and I drove to Clifton Springs, a village in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. The Haudenosaunee (also known as the Iroquois) originally discovered and made use of the medicinal sulphur springs in the area. The whole town eventually came to center around wellness, both physical and spiritual, and was known in its heyday as "The Model Village."

Dr. Henry Foster completed his Water Cure Facility in 1850 to offer patients suffering from arthritis and other ailments the benefit of the "water cure." Dr. Foster ushered in a period of intense growth for the village. Many of the original buildings from this era remain today.

I enjoyed a very peaceful hour or so at the Foster Cottage while my kids played games at the YMCA. Dr. Foster built the cottage for his family, and now it houses a museum run by the Clifton Springs Historical Society. Browsing the exhibits in the beautifully restored home transported me back to the Victorian era, when modern medicine was coming into its own. Some components of the water cure today seem decidedly non-therapeutic. (In fact, the needle spray shower and the electric current bath call to mind Abu Ghraib rather than a hospital.) But Dr. Foster's comprehensive, holistic approach to healing echoes modern medical practice.

Photographs of four decades of nurses graduating from the Clifton Springs nursing school reminded me of the important role women played in the town's development. They were a vital part of the medical care offered in the town's hospitals. By the early 20th century, their roles had extended to the political arena. Clifton Springs is not far from Seneca Falls, where Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the first women's rights convention in the United States in 1848. Women from Clifton Springs organized a branch of the Woman Suffrage Association and hosted its conventions with nationally recognized speakers.

For the next several months, the Clifton Springs Chamber of Commerce will be hosting "Super Sundays" to celebrate the town's sesquicentennial. Whatever ails you, it's definitely worth a visit to this quiet town to feel immersed in an earlier era of health and social improvement.

Spring Break

At the end of last week I spent a lovely morning outside. My son and I wandered around our yard admiring the spring flowers in bloom on the warm, sunny day. He spotted a clump of crocuses in full bloom, and the sun just lit up their deep orange centers. So of course I had to run in to get the camera to try to capture that little cup of sunshine and the rest of the proud spring flowers.

The next day we went outside again to finish our gardening chores, and that lovely clump of crocuses was gone. At first I thought, Were they just a beautiful dream--a wish for spring to have arrived in full? But on closer inspection, I noticed the green leaves of the crocuses and one wilted blossom. The leaves had been neatly chewed down to their bases, probably by a hungry deer.

Having the crocuses so beautiful and complete one day and gone the next was a lesson for me that I needed to be reminded of. The world around me changes every day, and I need to be present to experience it--not only aware of and responsive to the natural world, but with my family and friends. I can't take anything for granted.

I'll be taking a blog break to put this little life lesson into practice.

Enjoy the season and the changes it brings!

Skunk Cabbage

Through the changing seasons, the woods yield a new landscape at every visit. This past Saturday, when I visited the woods with Margie of Resurrection Fern, I had the added benefit of experiencing the landscape with someone who has a deep appreciation of nature's rhythms.

It was a blustery, overcast day, and a soft snow was borne on the wind. We had the woods completely to ourselves. Our conversation flowed in comfortable snippets as we soaked up the otherworldly feel of the wetlands at their wettest and heard the quiet creaking of the bare trees.

It was such a joy to have a hiking companion who likes to stop and appreciate the smallest vistas. What a treat to see how a clump of moss became a magical miniature habitat through her lens. How the silhouettes of trees reflected in a small puddle became a rippling aura in an Impressionist-like photograph.

In her quiet way, Margie made me feel adventurous that day. I wrote this poem to capture one part of our hike that felt like a treasure hunt.

Skunk Cabbage

If you are quiet
In the winter swamp
You may hear the secret tunneling downward
Of roots that seem to be reaching for a tropical land.

The thermogenic heart of the skunk cabbage
warms the winter earth.
It melts snow and ice to emerge in early spring
to a land of soggy mounds
and the remains of winter:
puddles lined with brown leaves;
the ghostly shape of a bloated frog floating belly up.

The two pointed tips of its leathery spathe
Pierce the ground like the poison-tipped arrows of a lost Amazonian tribe.
The twin spades arc gracefully as they open their eggplant bellies
Curving into sensuous, sculptural forms:
An advertisement, an enticement
To bees and other winsome pollinators.

Warm heart meets cold air,
Creating a perfect spring breeze
That carries the heady scent of carrion.
A bee rides the luxuriant thermal
into the egg-shaped spadix
and enjoys the sweet meal of petal-less pollen,
a first taste of the coming spring banquet.


**A note about the photo shown here: I took this photos two weeks ago on a family hike. You can see Margie's gorgeous, deeply colored photograph from our hike on her Flickr photostream and in this collection of photos in her amazing post.

What a Heart Needs

And what happened then . . . ?
Well . . . in Who-ville they say
That the Grinch's small heart
Grew three sizes that day!
--Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1957)

It took three days for me, but, like the Grinch, my small heart grew three sizes this weekend. I spent time with two amazing women, with a third amazing woman present in spirit. My friend Maya hosted a visit from our mutual blogging friend Margie. I could not imagine a more appropriate setting than N.'s barn (the third woman whose presence encompassed us in a very loving way) to finally meet Margie, whose blog I instantly fell in love with when I first read it last spring. (This was the first post I read of Margie's.) I really am not adept enough with words to express how incredibly special it was to be in the physical presence of such loving, brilliant, and creative women. To see the world through their eyes as they experienced it, to hear the sweet timbre of their voices, to enjoy their quiet laughter--my heart is indeed full with the feeling that our friendship blossomed this weekend.



If you don't mind indulging me, I'll be sharing more of our weekend in future posts. I'm going to need some time to process it all, and I think I learned more about the creative process--and myself--in this one weekend than I have in the entire year of this blog journey that I've been on. Perhaps I could even say that it was the culmination of my creative journey.



What I hope for you, my friends, in April to grow your heart and nurture your creative spirit: hike with a friend or two or three and let the conversation flow (be sure to go off trail to find a hidden treasure); watch a friend frame breath-taking photographs to enlarge your point of view; sit in a book store with a friend and a pile of books and magazines; window shop with a friend; unpack a suitcase of collected and created treasures with a friend or two.

Beauty in Decay

Photo by John Pfahl, 11/8/94 from The Very Rich Hours of a Compost Pile (brussel sprouts and ginkgo leaves)

"My Compost pile, situated in a hidden corner of the garden, constantly changes with the passing months. The rich efflorescence of rotting vegetable matter creates a daybook of both the memorable and mundane meals that grace my table."
--John Pfahl, American photographer

The great power of blogland, and the reason that I can't quit it, is its capacity to capture the beauty and poetry in the mundane--an instant electronic "daybook," as photographer John Pfahl calls his daily composting. Millions of people all over the world have digital cameras at their disposal, as well as access to the networked pixel-displaying device that we're staring at to share these images.

What emerges is literally a snapshot of fleeting beauty that can be shared almost instantly. The photographs I see on blogs and on Flickr have opened my eyes to the quotidian delights around me--the deepened colors of submerged lake stones, light and shadow on a summer floor, a mound of strawberries in a plastic basket.

What I'm finding beauty in lately is the simple act of composting our kitchen scraps. The first time I noticed the beauty in this ritual was in my son's preschool classroom. I usually hang out a little bit after dropoff to just observe. First thing in the mornings the children sit down at their communal table and cut fresh vegetables for snack. They chat sociably as they chop. All of the scraps that don't go into my son the Human Composter are tossed into a small bowl that is then taken outdoors and dumped in a compost "cage."

The ease of the routine and the beauty of returning nature's bounty to the place it began were great motivators for me. After we got home one day my son helped me set up the covered compost bin we had gotten from our local recycling center. Our under-counter bin in the kitchen works great so far, though we'll see whether the warmer temperatures will create a gooey, smelly mess with a swarm of fruit flies attending it. (I guess I'll learn to find beauty in that as well, but perhaps I'll have to go down to the microscopic level to see it.)

Just as I had gotten over my anxiety about composting, Smoothpebble published "Black Gold," her poetic com-post. Her photos epitomize beauty in the mundane and are reminiscent of Pfahl's "The Very Rich Hours of a Compost Pile" series from the early 1990s. Pfahl's inspiration for the compost series was the 15th-century illuminated Book of Hours, Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. Illustrated by a number of artists over a span of decades, the masterpiece illuminates the beauty of daily life across the seasons.

March: Sowing the Field;
from Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, Mars;
The Musee Conde, France.

A Foothill Home Companion's Flickr group, Remains of the Day, could be Pfahl's Flickr child. The group brings together daily compost vignettes. Like Pfahl's series, the photos serve as daybooks of how the bloggers care for their families and, in a small way, the planet in a manner that's simple and beautiful.

I have of course been noticing the clever, beautiful ways in which bloggers handle kitchen scraps.

Photo of repurposed vintage cooler by maya*made

There are any number of nice, shiny, new covered kitchen compost containers to buy, but of course it's far more appropriate to use a cleanable bowl or other repurposed bucket you have on hand. My favorite compost solutions for the kitchen are repurposed vintage containers. The coolest has to be this vintage cooler at maya*made's mom's barn. I love how it's being used in the exact opposite way of its original purpose, and yet it's a perfect re-use with its airtight lid and convenient handle. In her urban West Coast abode, Maya's mom uses an old lidded metal pot in her kitchen and a rusty fence (from the estate of an 83-year-old Master Gardener) to enclose her outdoor compost bin. I love how her choices encompass so much history and meaning.

Maya tells me that the outdoor caged compost "bin" (below) in use at the barn is super-easy to make. I hope she'll do a tutorial for all of us soon.

Photo of compost bin, repurposed cooler,
and wheelbarrow by maya*made

My knitting friend (and new blogger; yay!) Laura lives in an old farmhouse, and her kitchen compost pail fits the vintage aesthetic beautifully, though it's not vintage. Her family uses a small covered enameled stock pot from the Martha Stewart line at Kmart. Head on over to Laura's blog to say hello and check out her gardening and upcoming composting images. Of course, you'll also be drawn in by her lovely beaded knitting patterns. (I had a chance to learn some knitting basics from Laura this past Sunday, and she is a true spatial genius!) She'll be offering workshops at Squam later this spring, and if Maya isn't enough of a draw for you, access to Laura's gentle, hands-on knitting help should be.

Photo of thrift-store treasures by Resurrection Fern

Can you spot Resurrection Fern's thrifted kitchen-scrap collector in the photo above? The repurposed rooster cookie canister is one of Margie's many great thrift-store finds; she has an excellent eye for beauty in unexpected places--and an eye for a good deal.

I hope to hear what type of kitchen compost bucket you use and any tips you can provide for a novice composter.

Active Versus Passive Voice

I just drank a whole glass of 100 percent cranberry juice (for medicinal purposes only, I assure you; shudder), while simultaneously uploading pictures from my camera, editing said pictures, writing bad poetry, and waiting for an email response from an author. Boy, can I multitask.

Meanwhile I am thinking how much I need for my Monday mornings to be just like this (especially writing the bad poetry part), so that I can process Everything I Learned Over the Weekend While Hanging Out With My Kids (maybe that should be the title, or at least subtitle, of every one of my Monday posts).

Lesson 1: The Vernal Equinox does not bring immediate spring weather. I took my boys to the lake yesterday, and our toesies were cold! My youngest wondered what the white things were on the lake--whitecaps whipped up by a very brisk wind.

Lesson 2: Cold brings out different reactions in people. All I wanted was to stand on the rocks and feel the wind whipping against my cheeks, no matter how cold I got. My younger son doggedly followed through on his compulsion to gather sticks and stones and throw them in the water, no matter how cold he got. My older son declared that he was freezing to death and decided to retreat to the car. All valid reactions.

Lesson 3: Meeting the needs of three said people with very different reactions to a cold, windy lake involves cajolery and compromise. My younger son threw his rocks and branches into the lake until he declared that his fingers were about to "freeze to death." Meanwhile, my older son climbed on rocks for a little while and then raced to the warm car before his toes fell off from the cold. And I got a few minutes of wind-basking, rock-perusing, and picture-taking in between keeping the kids out of the water.

Lesson 3: I much prefer active voice to passive voice, even (especially?) when describing nature. This lesson actually came to me in the shower as I was thinking about my bad poetry, rather than deriving directly from hanging out with my boys. Of course, "He hit his brother repeatedly with a stick" did come up yesterday, illustrating the power of an active verb. The phrasing sounds more direct and evocative than "He was hit repeatedly with a stick wielded by his brother," I think. The latter sounds almost Dickensian. Not to disparage Dickens--the readers in my family all consider him a quite fine writer--but his writing comes from two centuries ago.

The active voice issue came up for me as I was thinking about the crazy assemblage of driftwood, stones, and detritus that the waves had washed up into the crevices of the big rocks along the jetty. I suppose that it's much easier to say that these sculptures were created by natural forces (passive construction) than try to identify and spin out a tale of all the random causal forces involved: geological forces acting over millenia to create these particular rocks and the particular location itself (a glacial lake over the remains of an ancient sea), acts as random as a boy throwing sticks in a lake, nature returning its treasures to a smoother, more primitive state.