Colin Ellard - You Are Here

Children in space

My last few interviews have taken a very interesting turn in that I've had some chances to take discussion beyond the (admittedly quite fascinating) discussion of sense of direction. I'll confess there have been times when I've almost rued the extent to which people seem to have such a strong intrinsic interest in the question of how we find our way from A to B because there is just so much more to talk about that connects to the human relationship with space.  Some of the conversations that have sprung up both here and in other venues (comments on the syndication of my blog feed to my Facebook presence, for example) about my last post on space and the city have stimulated many new thoughts about how we are dealing with the mounting problems of sustainability, energy balances, and the urbanopolis, all of which I think connect back to how we view space and place and how its many different forms can affect our minds.  But that's follow up for another day.  Today I want to talk about something very near and dear to so many of us: our children. One listener on the Pat Morrison show today asked me how she could help her 3 year old son find his way home.  I loved that the question was asked in so many different ways that I could have yammered about it for hours had Pat not wisely intervened with the hook, and only had a chance to begin an answer.  The most important part of the answer which remained unstated on this program but which I've discussed in many other venues now and also in the pages of my book has to do with story.  If we human beings have one phenomenal talent it is the invention of narratives.  So I tell people who are trying to lost-proof their children to tap into this innate ability.  When you're out walking with your kids, get them to practice connecting places with events by making up stories that interest them.  They have to invent the stories themselves or the method doesn't work very well, but if you give your children the latitude to put themselves and the things that they care about into the picture, they will be able to find their way through these storied routes even years after the fact.  It's quite an astonishingly powerful method.

But what I think I loved even more about this question was that it spoke to the desire on the part of this parent to give her young son some platial autonomy.  Let him wander the world, experience the disorientation of the lost and equip him with the rudiments of the tools that he will need to find his way.  Not only is this a practical gain, but it is one way to ensure that our children will feel connected to the places they inhabit.  In a world where spaces are warped and twisted by every means of modern technology from passive travel in the back seats of cars to the screens that transfix young minds, this encouragement of raw contact with natural place is no small thing.  I don't even think that it is overstating the case to say that this effort to connect our children with the raw feel of places and how they fit together is one thing that we can do to help them overcome one of the most astonishing deficits of the human species.  Converging thought among environmentalists suggests that we desecrate our planet in part because of a failure to put together cause and effect.  We don't see how our local actions have global effects.  Can this be in part because we don't feel the spatial connections of things in our bones?  The great evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould said "We will not save what we do not love."  But how do we grow to love our place?  Perhaps it begins with that integral feeling of connection that comes when we truly know our way.

All fecund in my eco-nuttiness

My first op-edwas published yesterday.  I'm not doing such a great job of avoiding glancing at the comments, though I ought to have predicted that if I become aroused about the comments people make on others' work, then my reactions to comments on my own work would be, um, a bit more stress-inducing.  I have to say that it felt good to put the view out there that a very small change to an urban plan that would make life a bit more pleasant for bikers and walkers, ought to be a pretty simple decision.  There were one or two things I might have said a little differently if I had the exercise to do over again, and I would have maybe left out my discussion of inter-city travel (though still quite surprised to read that there are people who, even after looking at the VIA schedule, think that a train system that is less efficient than it was in the 1930s is acceptable).  But rather than defend myself here (I'm completely ok with being 'out there' and taking some abuse if there's a chance I can help make people keep thinking about these issues), I'll just note a couple of things.  First, as with all such discussions whether initiated by me or not, I notice that they reach the boil quickly.  Those who live outside the core in the suburbs are very reactive to defend their lifestyle on a wide variety of bases -- some imaginary and some with quite a lot of validity.  Those who live in the city and who want to adopt a healthier set of transportation alternatives including walking, biking, and public transport argue that such things are easily possible with a bit of planning and also perhaps they do sometimes claim some moral high ground.  Much of the discussion revolves around questions of social responsibility balancing personal freedom.  We don't want to be told how to live by anyone but (hopefully) we all want to find a way of life that is sustainable for all in the face of the epic changes that we see taking place now or in the near term.  How do we do it?  And what's the role of the state?  These are questions that take me far outside my realm of professional experience, yet they are connected to it.  The question of how we live is inseparable from the issue of where we live, and that's something that we all have to think about quite a lot.

And now for my deep confession.  I'll whisper this.  Lean in.  Sometimes I drive.  You see, I have a very complicated lifestyle, a bit like the ones described by some of the readers of that op-ed.  I have a large, interesting, blended family.  There are 3 full-time workers in my house, a couple of children in the public schools, and a couple more in daycare.  I also have a dog.  I have what I used to think of as a moonlight job (the book-writing gig) which I now see as the monster that ate my life (no regrets though).  So there are days when I help get the kids ready for the day, help get the dog ready to face a few hours of solitude (ok, I envy him a bit sometimes), pull together whatever I need to drag myself through another day at the office, and there's nothing I want more than to slide behind the wheel of the old spawnhauler with a big travel mug of Java in my hand, burn a few grams of carbon, and take the fossil-fuel magic carpet to the parking lot conveniently located just across the way from my building at the university.  Ok, and then sometimes I even take the elevator up to my office.  Otherwise I spill coffee.  

Not this morning, though.  Having actually been referred to as an eco-nut yesterday (yeah, I know..cool),this morning I hauled out the bike trailer and I lugged two pretty solidly built five-year olds up the road to the daycare centre.  This was interesting because we had to get through a major construction site on my street to do this, so there was a bit of a wait while the workers, who were incredibly obliging and supportive, cleared a path for us.  I had a full load of gear on my back as well.  And some lunches.  And then I had a flat tire, which I managed to buff up to the point of rideworthiness so that I could deliver my children, who were utterly thrilled to be transported through the streets in their open air chariot.  Did I mention it was pouring?

But here's the best part.  I arrived at my office soaking wet, slightly flushed, breathing deeply, fully awake and alert and, in spite of the 10 pounds I've gained in the last 2 months eating potato chips so as to avoid compulsive Amazon rank checking, feeling rather healthy.  And pleased with myself.  

If I'm going to be called an eco-nut, I'm going to live the part.  I'll let you know how that goes.

Tomorrow night, June 2, I'm going to be appearing at the Waterloo Entertainment Complex with Thomas Homer-Dixon.  I'll try not to show up all soaking and sweaty.  

QR and the environment

Don't worry, no cheezy greenwashing effort to link my use of QR to any kind of environmental message. Two separate messages.  The first:  those of you who have contacted me to express bafflement about the quiz, might have missed this.  It's a new page at my site, complete with an awful YouTube video of a haggard author in a rather rain-leaky office (when you hear that universities need some of this infrastructure money, believe it).  Anyway, the instructions there will help you get started, but you'll still need to do a little more digging to get to the answer and to win a free book.

Second, as much fun as it is to try to think of puzzles and contests, I've missed the chance to just talk about stuff that interests me, and there's still quite a lot bubbling away in the background.  I've spent all weekend looking for a chance to say a little more about my visit to the Extended Learning Opportunities group in the village of Erin last week.  I did my own feeble version of a live Tweet (which is difficult to do during a talk - people don't want to see you thumbing on a phone while actually speaking) which mostly consisted of saying something deep such as "Holy frig there's a lot more people here than I had expected and they look hungry for some content."  Was that 140 characters?  I'm tired of counting.  

But the most unexpected part of the talk was not so much the size of the crowd nor the quality of the questions (60 minute talk, and a planned 45 minute question period that not only went through the break but went overtime as well -- about 75 minutes altogether) but the nature of the questions.  I've given my "Where Am I?" talk a few times now to a number of different types of crowds, but this was my first appearance before an older group of people who are very active and thoughtful about the world.  I think that what surprised me the most (other than the questions about dowsing -- ok, I've been accused of covering a lot of territory in my book but even I didn't think about dowsing) was the attunement of this audience to the environmental issues. In my book I make the argument that being lost disconnects us from nature, and is one of the root causes or our neglect of our duty to act as stewards of the planet.  These people did not need to hear this from me (though I believe they very much enjoyed hearing me say the words).  It occurred to me that one difference between this audience and my more typical one would have been that many of these people would have grown up in rural settings.  In fact, one delightful fellow, in an eloquent paean to fields, forests and critters, likened his early experiences of the simple joys of connection with nature on the farm where he grew up to my descriptions of Aboriginal Songlines and pleasure-seeking raft voyages in the Pacific ocean by the Puluwatese.  I most commonly think of our modern urban disconnect as a gradual shift in outlook that began a very long time ago, and when I think of people who are truly connected to the planet, my examples tend towards the exotic.  It was a nice wake-up call for me to remember that we in our superdeveloped, overheated high-density lifestyles actually live among people who get this because they've lived it.  When I think about possible futures and try to imagine optimistic ones, I most often imagine that the up and coming generation, now beginning to show a profound aptitude for organizing the changes that we need, are the only ones who are up to the job.  It was an unexpectedly buoyant experience to remember that there are other generations among us who could contribute much wisdom and understanding to the processes of change if we listen to them.  

More about this later.  And also Le Corbusier, who is still churning away back there, mixing it up right now with Plato, Vitruvius, and the freemasons.  It's getting a little messy in the back of my cranium.

Wayfinding renaissance

It's truly a delight to see legendary wayfinder, Nainoa Thompson, of the Polynesian Voyaging Society continuing with his quest to keep the ancient seafaring methods of the Pacific Islanders alive.  Thompson will set out without any modern navigational instruments in a vessel something like the one pictured above in an attempt to travel from Hawaii to Kirbati, a round trip of about 2,000 miles.  The point?  To celebrate a remarkable heritage, to help to retain an ancient set of skills and perhaps most of all to remind us of a time when being somewhere could mean only actually being there, no matter how difficult the getting there might be. 
For me, one of the most enjoyable parts of writing my book was the opportunity to read about the methods and exploits of practitioners of these traditional seafaring methods. 

Geo-boy

As you might be able to imagine, there's a slightly greater than average amount of discussion in my house of space, place, getting-there, and knowing-where that extends all the way from the paterfamilias (that's me) to the two little rapscallions who, for some reason we can't remember, we've come to call The Toads. A few days ago, when I arrived at our local preschool to pick up my four year old son (Toad Two), his teacher took me aside, bursting with a story.  She told me that Toad Two had been carefully arranging some kind of open house for all of his little friends to descend on us for an after-supper romp in the snow.  "We live on Mary Street.  Do you know where Mary Street is?" he asked one of his little friends.  His friend looked blank.  "That's ok," said my son, "I'll explain to you how to get there.  Now, will you be using a map or a GPS?"

That's my boy.  Bless him.

Over the next little while, I want to talk about children and space.  How do kids understand geographic space?  Is this understanding changing because of advances in technology and, if so, are the changes for better or for worse?  How do we make our spaces (or our technologies) support our children in their efforts to understand and connect with the spaces and places of their lives?  And why does this matter?

I hope you'll check in.

I made a hallway today.

I spent a well-deserved day of respite at home today.  This was not entirely intentional.  It came about mostly because of a long series of appointments, repairs, and restorations that I've been putting off for the last month while scrambling to put together a few grant applications.  One can only temporarily put off essential life-sustaining activities such as clearing the driveway of garbage and finding a place to sleep for house guests who are arriving shortly.  So between answering the door for delivery and service people, I've been spending a lot of effort making small oases of space in which they can work.

I'm fascinated by how tiny changes in the locations of a big stack of boxes or a wayward armchair can entirely change the character of a room.  The room I'm sitting in right now is a large basement bedroom that I've just reclaimed from one of my children who has just moved into university residence.  For the past couple of years, I've known this space as one filled with underwear hanging from hooks on the walls (not kidding) and gigantic mounds of laundry and study notes all mixed together on the floor.  Now it has a spartan arrangement of a couple of chairs, a desk, and a bookshelf.  Of course the room looks a lot bigger, but it speaks an entirely different language as well.  Like an immigrant to a new culture, it contains some old vestiges of its former self -- the impossibly ugly wall hangings and the pile of teen kitsch on top of the old dresser.  But there's a new being -- cool, quiet, reserved and brimming with possibilities.  I want to sit in here and interrogate the space.

The route to this room winds through much of the rest of the basement.  It would take too long to explain how this came to be, but there's one way in and one way out of here, and it is at the end of a long corridor.  For the past two years, that corridor has been filled with things that were dropped into place virtually on the day that we moved in.  Boxes of tools, books, and those odds and ends that somehow seemed too important to leave behind, yet were almost certainly destined to remain unused for decades if not forever (when did I think I would have time or that it would be a good idea to make my own beer?).  Now with all of that stuff moved aside, put away, discarded when I could bear to part with it (my water meter repair guy just made off with a terrific foozball table that just didn't have a leg to stand on), I see spaces of different shapes and sizes.  The actual changes are small, but the effects they have on me are profound.  Now, not only does the room I'm in call to me from every other part of the house, but the hallway pours me into it as surely as a slender-necked pitcher pours a steady stream of water into a waiting glass.

Recursion in nature

I've spent a lot of time this summer looking for recursive patterns in nature.  These patterns, repeating but not quite repeating, bursting with shape and colour at different scales of space, are both incredibly attractive, interesting, but also soothing.  The word that keeps occurring to me is resonance.  There's something out there that plays a nice tune using some ancient brain circuits of mine as an instrument.
This kind of recursion can take place at a wide range of sizes, from little blossoms in the forest, to sweeping rays of light and contours of clouds encompassing half the sky.  This particular combination of colour and pattern in both the sky and the lake was difficult to tear my eyes away from.

Ferns are great places to find these recursive patterns.  If you click on the fern picture, you should be able to see a larger image--large enough to see how the patterns of the leaves repeat themselves at multiple scales.  Evidence is beginning to accumulate that looking at these types of repeating patterns has a remarkable effect on how we feel--even our breathing patterns and heart rate are affected.

Summer fiction

Ok.  I once promised my agent that I would never mention to anyone in the business that I wrote fiction sometimes.  But this story, written a couple of years ago, resonates with the themes that obsess me, so it seemed worth a gamble to show it the light of day. Besides...it's summer.  And I'm on vacation.  I called it What Spiders Know.

 

High season ends. The weather cools. I remain, stubbornly walking up and down the only road in town, clambering over the rocks on the beaches, kicking at the sand. A man with a rusted dump truck and a worn out hat drops a small mountain of firewood on my driveway. I spend days stacking it in neat piles, having driven slowly past the neighbour’s houses to take mental snapshots of the proper technique. Now, I tell myself, they’ll believe that I’m here to stay. When every piece of this wood has turned to ash in my little stove, I’ll still be here, digging in, fending off the long Maritime winter, walking up and down the road. By then they’ll know I’m serious. By then I’ll be a fixture.

My simple plan to stay and grow roots did not sit well with the ghost of Risser’s Beach. I met her one quiet afternoon in a thick stand of birch trees lying just off the water. All of her possessions sat in plain sight, piled on an old stump in the woods: A plastic deer, a baby bottle, some scraps of ribbon and a few coins, arranged in a crude pentagram. My hands, old and wrinkled like my father’s, hovered over the stump. These were hands worn down by time and love, but as foreign to the winds and tides on this lonely piece of beach as if they had just blown onshore in a hurricane. They hovered over the flotsam shrine but could not touch it.

She made a sound. Not the guttural moans or wails you might expect from an old Atlantic seawitch, but more a gentle coo, a melody. I turned my head, but seeing only empty space, turned away with a shrug. If she became bolder, reached out with icy fingers to touch my shoulder, blew her chilly breath through my hair, I could soar off this beach without a backward glance and never return. So what’s to fear? I walked on, thinking less about what kind of eerie presence might be behind me than of how best to tell the story to my family at dinner.

Darkness falling, I made my way back to our rental house, stumbling along the shoulder of the highway. More than half of the houses along the way were empty. Curtains down, fridge doors propped open, chains across the driveway, the inhabitants fled to the city for the winter or possibly forever. Those who had stayed behind could be seen through their windows, sitting around tables, bathed in yellow light, lost in conversation. They seemed as though they were posing for me, showing off the tight consistency of their lives, proving that, unlike me, they belonged here. I stood before such a house, trying to imagine myself on the other side of the window. It hurt to be outside, looking in. I wanted to share what they had, be inside the neat corners of that room, defined by light and warmth. I convinced myself I could pay the price, rise at four in the morning in January, blue fingers fumbling with a match to light the stove, fending off the gnawing hunger and screaming children.

Who was I kidding? The worst part about inventing the wheel was that it gave us mobility. Ever since then, we’ve been rolling about the globe, scrambling so hard to be somewhere else that we forget where we started out. I’ve tried to find virtue in that kind of drifting, a nobility of detachment. When I broke away from the ground that bore me, flew to

Canada

from a motherland an ocean away, I cut all ties. Now I hover above the earth, looking down on geometric plains of land like a high flying eagle, as I plot great circle routes over the planet. I can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. But no matter how hard I plunge my fingers into the soil here beneath my feet, it is as an interloper, a stranger lurking in the bushes beside the highway, an isolated incident soon to be blown away and forgotten.

A place just has to be more than its water, trees and rock formations. Stories are what glue it all together. Each bend in the road is knit to the next one by a name from the past, and each name joins with others in a song. In some places I imagined rousing anthems, in others, quiet hymns. Bathed in lonely silence, I strained to listen, like an old man nearing the end of his senses. I convinced myself I could hear a note or two, but it might have been nothing more than a stray breeze.

Walking the rest of the way home, I remembered a conversation with my daughter. On a long drive, she asked the timeless question:

“Dad, where are we?” I gave what I thought was a reasonable answer.

“We’re about halfway between

Milton

and

Guelph

.” I could see her rolling eyes in the rear view mirror.

“Yes, but where are we?” she persisted. I smiled. How to explain municipal boundaries, county lines, the miasma of urban politics and how arbitrary borders get defined to a tired little girl looking out the window at a blur of passing trees and grassy hills?

“Well, right now, we’re not really anywhere.”

I deserved the rolling eyes. I was the one who didn’t get it.

Milton

and

Guelph

were places. We’d been to them, roamed the streets drinking coffee, stretching our legs in the middle of a long journey to some other place. This place right here, outside our windows, was nowhere. Empty space. A few clumps of vegetation and a stone farmhouse or two. Not far from the giant neon Schneider’s Meats sign beside the highway which meant that, no matter how tired we were and how bad the weather, we’d be able to make it all the way home to Kitchener. That’s all it meant.

Now, remembering this conversation, I wish I had answered her question by pulling onto the shoulder, stopping the car, taking her by the hand and leading her into the middle of one of those grassy fields where we could lie down, side by side, smelling the soil, listening to the insects crawling and watching the clouds ring the sky like giant pearls on a tangled necklace.

“This is where we are.” I would say.

The trailer home I passed looked rough. One end was held together with old tarps and nylon rope. A scattering of articles around the property formed a crude fence, lit up in harsh monochromes by a single bare bulb dangling in the yard. A car wheel sat collecting rainwater, weeds poking from the bolt holes. The iron door of an old stove stood resting against a post. There had been times when I had puzzled over such sights. Why cling to cold, sodden ground like this when the world waits just around the next corner? How sad to be trapped, to lack the imagination to climb to one’s feet and take flight. What piece of brain were these people missing that chained them to the ground, dooming them to an existence scratched out of the old parts that had fallen off of other people’s possessions? Why didn’t they just move, for God’s sake? Were they alcoholics? Mentally retarded? Now, as the wind flapped at the few tattered bits of laundry hanging from the line, the truth washed over me like the first decent wave sliding up the beach as the tide changes. These people could no more imagine cutting themselves out of this place than they could reach in and rip out their own organs. This lonely stretch of land along the side of the ocean wasn’t just the container that held their souls. It was their skin, blood and bones.

In darkness only pierced by stars, I reached out with tentative fingers to find the front door. My hands swept through a cobweb. The plump spider, unstartled, slipped down a filament of silk to peer at me. Such optimism. They were immense this year, the local residents had told me. It was a sign. I didn’t ask ‘of what’ so as not to give myself away. In movies, spider webs symbolize decline. How did this insect, in two hours, claim this place with such alacrity while I bumbled about in darkness by the side of the road, wishing only for a brief taste of belonging? I know too much. I’ve seen this place from above, even if only in my dreams. I can find it on a map. My web, in sorry tatters, blew into the sky long ago.

The cold doorknob turned with resistance, as though there was a hand on the other side, holding on lightly. The door scraped open, and the thud as it hit the wall echoed through the empty house. All lights were off. I’d forgotten that nobody would be home. Or home but not here. Real home was somewhere else at the moment. Perhaps it always would be. Leaving the lights off, I kicked off muddy shoes and mounted the stairs to the bedroom and let myself fall, face down, on the unmade bed. Fitful sleep took me almost immediately. Still in darkness, I woke to a voice in bed beside me. The words were muffled but insistent, as if she were shouting at me from a great distance.

“I’m here with you,” she might have said. I wasn’t sure.

The sound of the old fashioned twist-bell on the front door was unmistakable and startling. I sidled down the stairs like a cat against a wall. I threw on the light and opened the door. A man stood on the threshold, blinking in the light.

“I didn’t know anyone was living here,” he said. “Saw someone creeping around earlier. Must’ve been you. Thought I should check.” We stood in confused silence for a few seconds. The man shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. He looked past me into a living room littered with toys, newspapers, coffee cups. “Here with family?”

“Yes, but they’re away tonight. It’s just me here. I’m sure it’s me you saw. I’d been walking. I came home.” Still groggy, I struggled to put together a sensible set of words. The man reached out a hand.

“Name’s Finn. I live just across the way. This house is usually empty this time of year.” He gave me a questioning look.

“Colin. I’m renting. For the year.” Finn straightened up and turned his head slightly to fix me with one eye.

“You’re not leaving? Here for the winter?”

“Thanks for looking in,” I said, nodding.

“Got some wood? You’ll need some.” He looked up and surveyed the house, pushing his cap back to get a better view of the roof. “Nine cords, I’d say.”

“I’ve got three.”

“Three?” he fixed me with the sideways glance again, assessing. “Thing is, nobody lives here anymore. Maclean moved away years ago. I’m not used to neighbours. I’m all by myself.” Whatever he was trying to tell me was just beyond my comprehension. It seemed safest to nod. He looked up at the spider, still dangling in the doorway, a new web almost completed. “Sure three’s enough? Oil’s high this year. Sure you’re gonna stay?”

“I’m staying,” I said, feeling more awake now and able to push a hard edge of certainty into the words, “no matter what.” Finn smiled.

“Winter’s miserable here. You’ll hate it. I do. Everybody does.” He turned to leave. “See you again,” he said over his shoulder. I watched him walk down the driveway. When he reached the large rock that marked the house from the highway, he sat down. I waved. He waved back. He took off his hat and crouched forward, elbows resting on knees, fingers running over the edges of his hat. He was rocking slightly as if he was thinking, weighing matters up. I took a step toward him. He looked up at me, waiting. I raised my head, as if I’d stepped outside to look at the stars. I subjected the sky to a thorough, sweeping scan and then let my gaze land on Finn, as if by accident. He straightened his back and shifted, preparing to stand, but it looked effortful. I took a breath, plunged in, and walked the few steps to where he sat.

“Thing is, I wonder if you could drive me into town. I’m not feeling altogether too good.” My reflex was to hesitate, weigh, filter, analyze, ask a probing question or two.
“Sure. Let me get my keys.” By the time I had fumbled through discarded pants pockets, found the keys and met Finn in the driveway, things looked worse for him. Even in the dim light of the yard, I could see the sweat and smell his sickness. He sat in the passenger seat of my car, breathing heavily, eyes closed.

“Finn? Do you think we should call an ambulance?”

“No need. I’ve seen you fellas drive.” Finn had his left shoulder raised and his right hand was pushing hard on his chest. He slumped forward in his seat, head bobbing with every movement of the car. I sprayed gravel as I pulled on to the highway. By the time we reached the emergency entrance at the hospital, Finn was white, drenched with sweat, gasping for air. Before I could get out of my seat, a paramedic had yanked open the passenger door and had poked his head into the car. I could see the top of his head, close shaved and shiny as he looked into Finn’s face. He smelled clean, medicinal, safe.

“Finn, my old son. You’ve cut it close this time I think.” The attendant looked up at me. “Ticker.” he said. “Third time. You must’ve driven here quick. Thank the Lord for those

Ontario

plates,” he chortled, “They sure burn up the highway.” Another attendant had appeared with a stretcher and, with characteristic economy of movement and effort, the two of them had unfolded Finn from the car and had him laid flat on the stretcher. I stood under the awning of the entrance and watched him pass. The second attendant eased me aside. “Staying out at The Point?” he asked.

“Yes, staying….just moved in. New neighbours.” I struggled to explain myself.

“Lucky for him you were nearby,” the paramedic mumbled without looking up, busying himself with the straps on the gurney.

“Yes, lucky,” I replied. Finn raised his head slightly as he passed by and grasped at my arm. His face was ashen. Eyes locked with mine, his lips moved to speak. I leaned in closer to hear him. His voice was a croak.

“Three cords’ll never do her,” he said. I nodded, patted his arm and watched until he disappeared through the sliding doors.

Spell of the sensuous

"An alder leaf, loosened by wind, is drifting out with the tide. As it drifts, it bumps into the slender leg of a great blue heron staring intently through the rippled surface, then drifts on. The heron raises one leg out of the water and replaces it, a single step. As I watch I, too, am drawn into the spread of silence. Slowly, a bank of cloud approaches, slipping its bulged and billowing texture over the earth, folding the heron and the alder trees and my gazing body into the depths of a vast breathing being, enfolding us all within a common flesh, a common story now bursting with rain."

David Abrams - The Spell of the Sensuous

Being and knowing

I wrote this brief entry in the summer of 2006, just before ending my sabbatical. My first-hand experience of extensive quiet periods with nature, perhaps the first such opportunities I'd had since childhood, were leading me gently by the hand to a new understanding of the importance of place.

I'm spending my last reading hours here with Rachel Carson.  I'd always wanted to read "Silent Spring."

As I discover one interesting thing after another from Carson -- the complexity of soil ecology, the perfect interlock between bird, fish and insect ecosystems, I find myself wanting to know more. When I read of the role of spindle fungi in soil, I become drunk with the desire to know a few more details and I resolve to find something good to read on soil. Same thing happens with fish toxicology. This is a very old pattern with me. I've always worried that my thirst to know, to catalog, to memorize was a desire to possess by understanding. Now, having had so many chances to stand in unmediated rapture of the greatness of the sea, the quiet wisdom of a saltmarsh, the brazen confidence of a tiny tidal pool, I wonder whether something else much more disturbing has been going on. Has my desire to relegate all of my experience to a carefully ordered bank of knowledge been an escape? Is this constant needling desire to 'know' an attempt to avert my gaze from the bright glare of life by scooping it up into a rack of books that I can line up on a shelf like a collection of tamed tigers? Is that what academics do? In collecting knowledge, are we spurning wisdom?

It is, perhaps, a wonderful thing to be able to generate a flow chart of the intricate interactions between bacteria, algae, fungi and insects on the floor of a forest. But to let that stand in the way of the feeling of your beating heart as you lie under a 400 year old hemlock tree, sifting a handful of cool, damp soil through your fingers, is a mistake I hope I've learned to avoid.