Beauty, Truth. Truth, Beauty | Part Three

Closer. Closer. Closest.

Parts one, two and three bring us to the truth, you might say, of this vagabond beauty, wild Forget-Me-Not discovered along Nameless Creek this week.

And I will confess, until now I had missed the lesson, knowing only this plant family, with its uncoiling blossoms, pleased me. The AHA! comes from slowing down enough to see the pattern: the grand design in the apparent chaos of rampant growth. This plant displays the Golden Mean, Beauty manifesting Truth.

There is so much to say in this, more than I can find words for before first light on a busy day. But in the end, the lesson from this small flower and a thousand thousand other tiny teachers will be something like this: we need to move from anesthetic knowledge back toward aesthetic wisdom. Truth is more to be found in Beauty than in Efficiency, more needed to save our world than Power or the Knowledge of least things.

Make a point of finding one thing beautiful today.

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, -- that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." ~ John Keats

"Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect misshapes the beauteous forms of things: We murder to dissect." ~ William Wordsworth

"God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please, you can never have both." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Forget me Not -- Part One

On a sandy spit of temporary island heaped up in last winter's storms, blooming in profusion between foot-wide rivulets of Nameless Creek, we discovered a sea of pale blue flowers. (You can see a bit of red barn roof in the background.)

While we had never seen this plant before on our place, I recognized it, drawing from some seldom-visited recess of plant-taxonomic memory, as a member of the Borage Family, characterized by just the kind of infloresence--or flower-growth arrangement--as we saw here in miniature. Lovely, and all the more so for being so unexpected a find on a routine walk: forget-me-not, Mysotis scorpiodes.

But more about this plant tomorrow and Friday.

Friday SHoRTs

&tc... This has been a difficult fern to make look nice, because unlike yesterday's featured pteridophyte (Osmunda cinnamomea) that had feather-duster distinct spore-producing separate stalks, this Interrupted Fern (same genus) looks like it forgot what it was doing, interrupting the leafy sterile frond for a few iterations of spore-producing pinnae, then resuming its green photosynthetic tasks.

&tc... Funny how time heals--even very tiny wounds. I'd almost forgotten. In the garden this week, I've been so intent on my planting I haven't dwelt on the stingy itchy spots down next to my scalp and on my arms. I just remember to wear a cap and a long sleeve shirt and go on. But it occurred to me yesterday: hey, these are not your plain vanilla gnats. I've only one or two years before felt that invisible irritation, but never before the middle of June: Noseeums. Biting midges so small you can fit three on the head of a pin. Dang global warming.

&tc... Places of Our Lives: a Visual Essay. That's what I've tentatively titled a program I'll be giving twice in October. The plan is to take three "makes a point" essays and illustrate them with digital images. The chosen pieces are (1) Child's Play: Addressing Nature Deficit Disorder; (2) Calling Them By Name--that encourages folks to learn to identify trees, birds, wildflowers etc as a way of gaining appreciation and respect for our personal environments); and (3)Where I am Married--that talks about sense of place, particularly mine for where we live our lives.)

&tc... I plod with the iPod. Personally, I'd ditch iTunes if I could. I'd expected more of Mac. Even so, I'm manually adding and deleting now, and it's working okay. Yesterday I loaded an mp3 book-on-CD (not exactly a streamlined process but it works) and with my new Sony Earbuds purchased at BestBuy in South Dakota, I'm happy. I also found most of my lost music library on CD's hidden in the wardrobe. I used to take these to work years ago--Beatles, Lettermen, lots of classical stuff, Harry Nilsson. NeoLuddite wife Ann still gives me grief, which I accept, having had lots of practice.

The Seldom Scene

I have a few *pterible images from that Blue Ridge Parkway meadow full of ferns I discovered a couple of weeks back, and will post one or two of my favorites.

As with wildflowers, the first blooms (as if ferns had them) are most attractive. Ferns, in addition to their lacy leafery, often have this seldom-seen "fertile" stage, as in this Cinnamon Fern, when they are busily producing spores by the millions for dispersal in the wind.

As I'm sure you remember from biology class, those spores, against all odds finding favorable soil, can produce a gametophyte, a little heart-shaped leaf that will produce either an egg, or a flagellated, swimming sperm.

Given the necessary film of water between the two (understand why there are no desert ferns?) the multi-tailed sperm swim to the egg along a chemical gradient (they "smell" the egg, in a sense) and voila! a fertilized egg (the sporophyte phase in this "alternation of generations") begins to elongate into what will become a fern frond--either a "sterile" leaf-only frond, or one these fancy feather-duster-looking arrangments (or some variation on the theme generally not as gawdy as this) that is "fertile" and spore-bearing.

Now. You may expect a pop test on this at our next meeting. Do your homework.

*Pteridology is the study of ferns, so if I'm having a pterible day, it means I'm seeing lots of them!

Beginning of the Beginning

We are poised in our time between humanity's proclivity for self-indulgence, arrogance and short-sighted self-destruction and a time of healing, cooperation and sustainable relationship with each other and the planet. Some of you understand. You feel revulsion and you feel the possibilities to do better--far better--for the sake of our children's children, and because it is the RIGHT thing. The problems are many. So too may be the solutions.

"But what can one person do?" we hear so often, perhaps from our own lips or unspoken thoughts.

While working in the garden yesterday, mending the fences from last year's deer damage, feeling more than a little discouraged about the state of the world, I listened to Paul Hawken describe our collective understanding about our place in the grand scheme of things, and encourage his listeners wisely in ways we CAN and ARE changing the way we do things to each other and the planet--perhaps, even in time to avoid paying the consequences of where our bigger-hammer approach to commerce and politics seems to be carrying us.

I encourage you to pull this thread. If you could use some encouragement, some hope, and a vision for a brighter future than the one we see at first glance in the media, take time to visit at least one of the links below.

Read the advance endorsements of Hawken's Book, Blessed Unrest by Jane Goodall, Barry Lopez, Bill McKibben, Terry Tempest Williams, David James Duncan, David Suzuki and others.

Watch the short video where Hawken speaks at the Bioneers conference describing this "movement without a name" that may already include more than a million like-minded organizations and 100 million people. If you think you're alone and powerless, watch.

Buy the book. Give to your children.

And finally, visit Natural Capital, and read about WISER, the World Index for Social and Environmental Responsibility. Let's find out where we fit best, each one of us. We all have strengths, skills, gifts, experience that can be used toward the healing of injury--environmental, political, and economic. Maybe it's NOT too late, after all. Perhaps we are at the beginning of the beginning, a time of blessed unrest--and not the beginning of the end.

Clean Coal: Count the Costs

" More than 470 mountains have been destroyed by mountaintop removal coal mining. Watch this video about mountaintop removal, including excerpts from the documentary Kilowatt Ours, featuring Woody Harrelson and a soundtrack featuring an original recording of "Blowin' in the Wind," sung by Willie Nelson. (08:23)"

PLEASE do more than watch the video when you visit the link. Keep clicking on the page. Get an education. Then educate somebody else. Maybe even a politician.

You might also keep in mind this quote from a few days ago: "the Bush administration released a new energy plan in April 2001 that called for construction of 1,300 new power plants by 2020." And understand that "clean coal" mined just as you see here will power those plants. Unless WE SPEAK OUT for our mountains, streams, freedoms and rights.

Waste Not, Want Not

Inefficiency: energy converted uselessly to heat of friction and incompletely burned energy residues: air and water pollutants.

The answer: Efficiency boosts--a much better solution to having more energy and less waste (including famously: greenhouse gases). Here's a snippet from a piece by Lester Brown on Huffingtonpost.com

" One crucial area of focus, a step we can take essentially immediately, is raising energy efficiency--especially in the United States.

When the Bush administration released a new energy plan in April 2001 that called for construction of 1,300 new power plants by 2020, Bill Prindle of the Washington-based Alliance to Save Energy responded by pointing out how the country could eliminate the need for those plants and save money in the process. He ticked off several steps that would reduce the demand for electricity:

* Improving efficiency standards for household appliances would eliminate the need for 127 power plants;

* More stringent residential air conditioner efficiency standards would eliminate 43 power plants;

* Raising commercial air conditioner standards would eliminate the need for 50 plants;

* Using tax credits and energy codes to improve the efficiency of new buildings would save another 170 plants;

* Similar steps to raise the energy efficiency of existing buildings would save 210 plants.

These five measures from the longer list suggested by Prindle would not only eliminate the need for 600 power plants, they would also save money. Although these calculations were made in 2001, they are still valid simply because there has been so little progress in raising U.S. energy efficiency since then."

Fred sez: When the time comes, I'll vote against the BIGGER HAMMER approach. Sometimes LESS is MORE.

On Losing Our Rootedness in the Soil

"Most people of my grandparents’ generation had an intuitive sense of agricultural basics: when various fruits and vegetables come into season, which ones keep through the winter, how to preserve the others. On what day autumn’s frost will likely fall on their county, and when to expect the last one in spring. Which crops can be planted before the last frost, and which must wait. What animals and vegetables thrive in one’s immediate region and how to live well on those, with little else thrown into the mix beyond a bag of flour, a pinch of salt, and a handful of coffee. Few people of my generation, and approximately none of our children, could answer any of those questions, let alone all of them. This knowledge has largely vanished from our culture."

by Barbara Kingsolver | Orion Magazine March-April 2007

The WHEREs We're From

Spring. A time of new beginnings. A time to take nourishment from our roots to our winter-resting branches and grow a little taller--no matter how old we are.

And for this purpose--to give you an idea of the soil you grow in--I've posted a link to the Where I'm From template permanently in the sidebar. This "meme" is still circulating to good effect out there in the online world. And closer to home, even wife Ann sat down and wrote her own version for her reunion. Here's mine.

Let me emphasize that my only role in this is to make available two things I didn't have any part of creating: 1) the original poem by George Ella Lyon (which you can find via a link on the template page) and 2) the poem template with blanks and prompts that guide you to create your own version of George Ella's original. I am simply the messenger.

I will see George Ella again this summer at Hindman at the Writers Workshop, and tell her once more how popular and poignant her work has been.

If you haven't sat still long enough to ponder what you'd put in the blanks of the template, what are you waiting for? Finished, it will be a gift to your family. And to yourself. Trust me, it's worth the time.

Giving Nature Back: To Our Children, Ourselves

...Abby had found the broken remnants of a tailless kite, and entertained herself (and us) for a delightful hour under the blue prairie sky.

That afternoon I witnessed in a most striking way the contrast between the old-fashioned play of children actively entertaining their bodies and imaginations in the out-of-doors, and the modern, physically-passive, over-stimulating kinds of "recreation" that happen to kids almost exclusively indoors and may involve use of the thumb muscles alone.

"I like to play indoors better 'cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are" explained one urban fifth grader.

Read More (quick-loading Scribd pdf). This is an early draft, editorial comments welcomed and appreciated.

No Child: Your Thoughts

For those of you who responded to the Leave No Child Inside link last week, please take note: You can share a comment to the piece on the Orion site. The comments already posted are worth reading, if only to know that you are not the only one concerned that your grandchildren don't know one tree from another.

Here is the comment I left a few days back.

I am truly encouraged to find the pendulum swinging, finally, back to a healthy center. I left biology teaching in the mid-80s partly because I no longer found enough field-interested students to enroll for my "Plant Life of Virginia" class at the community college where I taught.

The catalyst of Richard Louv's writing has brought to the surface the uneasiness many of us as individuals and institutions have felt in the distance between all of us--not just youth--and the outdoors during the cultural shift towards indoor electronic inactivity, with the false belief that humanity is somehow apart from and above the cycles and rhythms of the natural world.

I have felt until now largely alone in my hope that, in my blogging and essays, I might reconnect ADULT readers with the small wonders of the ordinary. I have a renewed courage to persevere aggressively in this goal here in my Blue Ridge area of Virginia.

I also have a broader context in which to discuss my "memoir of landscape", Slow Road Home --a Blue Ridge Book of Days, as it also serves to bring readers back to center on the "pace, place and pleasures" of the natural world.

I am so encouraged, with renewed hope that there are receptive ears to hear this message in our times. I think Mr. Louv is to appear soon in Roanoke not far from me, and hope to be able to hear him speak.

And this: Richard Louv will be reading these comments and making specific response on March 13 and March 20. This could represent some really valuable exchange of ideas, experience and hope on this important matter of reuniting ourselves (adult and child alike) with the wholeness that comes from simply being attuned to earth and sky.