Usefulness

Usefulness

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“I produce nothing but words; I consume nothing but food, a little propane, a little firewood. By being virtually useless in the calculations of the culture at large I become useful, at last, to myself.”

Philip Connors, Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout

I’ve just started reading this book, which is a meditation on solitude, a history of wildfires and fire control in the American West, and (at least in part) a paean to Aldo Leopold, the great conservationist I discovered a few years ago. It’s written by a guy who sits in a tower looking for wildfires in the Gila National Forest in New Mexico.

Talk about dreams of escape — this is certainly one for me. Purposeful, sporadic work, enforced alone time, the splendor of creation. But for now, my secondary landscape will have to be the one I create every time I lace up my running shoes and step out the door.

Walking is for me a way to be “useless in the calculations of the culture” so I can become “useful, at last, to myself.” Walking is also low-tech. It produces nothing, consumes little. But it is rich in what matters most: the time and space in which to observe, think, slow the wheels of time.

Rain Power

Rain Power

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I don’t love the rain but I do appreciate its force and manner, the way it reminds us of elemental things, of topography, for instance.

My neighborhood is laced with the tributaries of Little Difficult Run, and when showers are heavy these timid trickles become raging torrents. I’ve seen bridges lifted off their moorings and deposited downstream. I’ve seen small lakes form as creeks flood their banks and become rivers. I’ve seen trees topple, their roots torn from rain-loosened soil.

Today’s deluge is not enough for that. But it’s enough to make me remember.

(Before the storm.)

I’m Stumped

I’m Stumped

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On one of my favorite, most well-trod routes, I start on the street and end up in the woods. The last part of my walk winds through the “Folkstone Forest,” a straggly stretch of trees that lines the road and leads to the common land meadow.

It’s not a forest in the classic, fairy tale sense, but a neighbor has gone to the trouble of printing up a green sign that says “Folkstone Forest” and hung it from a branch, so who am I to contradict?

The little trail I take is lined with fallen logs and dignified by a small plank bridge. But by this point in my walk I’m ready to be home. The playlist is winding down, the work is waiting. So of course it’s then, when I’m not paying attention, that I run across the tiniest little nub of a tree stump.

Can I tell you how many times this stump has tripped me up? Too many to count. So now I look for it. I check out the smooth dirt path for the aberration, the knob. It’s become a game for me, to find the stump before it stumps me. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. The stump keeps me humble.

Equinox

Equinox

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It was a day of balancing — darkness and light, summer and fall. And for me, a day of driving eight and a half hours from Kentucky to Virginia.

Fall comes early in the higher elevations, and the hills were brushed with yellow. Yellow from the thinning trees, from the just-turning leaves, from the goldenrod. Yellow set off by the shaggy gray limestone cliffs that line the road.

A drive is a balancing act, too, a passage from one place to another, holding each in mind as you pass between the two.

A Week Without “The Roosevelts”

A Week Without “The Roosevelts”

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For those of us who were engrossed in Ken Burns’ latest film, this is the “week without Roosevelts.” Last week I could come home from the workaday world of the 21st century and enter, for two hours, the 19th and 20th. The latter half of the show was recent history for me, times that my parents and grandparents lived through, and times, therefore, that I don’t always consider history.

But it is history, and well worth learning. The film left me with curiosity — wanting to read books about TR, FDR and ER — and with hard-to-forget images: a diagram of where the bullet struck Teddy Roosevelt as he was giving a campaign speech. (He spoke for another hour before going to the hospital.) Photographs of ordinary Americans, their heads inclined toward big boxy radios, listening to FDR’s fireside chats.

On those nights, apparently, you could leave your house, walk down the street and never stop listening to the president’s voice. FDR’s words, calm and comforting, were pouring out of every window, were soothing the jangled nerves of a troubled nation.

Would we ever again be so unified? Maybe on September 12, 2001. But then again, maybe not.

Tale of A Trespassing

Tale of A Trespassing

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Yesterday I had my comuppance. I clambered over a fence, tiptoed through a beautifully manicured lawn and was just preparing to scale the second fence into a horse pasture when I heard a voice. It sounded angry. I pulled out my earphones.

“What do you think you’re doing? This is private property,” said the irate homeowner.

“I’m so sorry. I was just cutting through your yard to get to Parker’s Mill Road,” I answered, by way of apology and with just a trace of a question mark at the end of my sentence, hoping he would see the utter harmlessness of my actions.

“This is not a cut-through,” he snapped.

“Don’t worry,” I said, my voice rising now. “I don’t even live here. I’m just visiting my mother.”

“Make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said, rage bubbling up through his words.

“Got it,” I said, all attempts at politeness vanishing. The only way out at that point was to climb another fence, which I did as quickly as possible.

This was at the beginning of my walk, and after that I started trotting, hoping I could bounce the bad feelings away. It was what I deserved, I know. But the punishment did not fit the crime. It made me think about how many times it doesn’t. Not a bad thing to ponder from time to time.

Thinking of Scotland

Thinking of Scotland

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For me it means solo travel (my first), discovering the charms of Inverness and Edinburgh, the endless depths of Loch Ness; the panorama of earth and sky and bare, dark hills leading up to Ben Nevis. I took the West Highland line to Mallaig, and watched the ferries scuttling off for the Isle of Skye. I felt like I was at the roof of the continent, on top of the world — and, in more ways than one, I was.

So this morning, when I learned that Scotland voted no to independence, I was excited. I know little of the politics and the frustration — mine is an admittedly romantic view of this misty, feisty nation.

But I’m glad it will keep its ties to the United Kingdom, glad it will not become another casualty in this strange new world.

Washing and Drying

Washing and Drying

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The dishwasher is fixed so now I can look back wistfully to the weeks of washing and drying. OK, not too wistfully. It was getting old. But the glasses did feel squeaky clean when I rinsed them and  the plates stacked up nicely after they were dried.

There was the pride of completion that I don’t feel when the dishwasher does all the work. And I never ran out of knives or spoons. Dishes were washed after they were used. No two-day limbo while the food left on them grew ever more caked and dried.

So yes, washing dishes by hand had its charms. But I’m glad the old machine has been pressed back into service.

The Dentist

The Dentist

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On Monday I went to the dentist for what was supposed to be a routine extraction. It was a wisdom tooth, not impacted, and I was assured that I didn’t need to consult an oral surgeon.

Wrong! The routine quickly became difficult and I experienced two hours of what can only be described as medieval dentistry — with gloves.

As I reclined there, hands clasped tight, mouth pried unnaturally wide open, the young (key word) dentist experimented with tool after tool. (I was waiting for him to try a come-along!) And I kept imagining those old illustrations of medieval dentists. I’ve seen this kind of art in modern dental offices; it’s supposed to be a humorous nod to how far we have come.

After Monday I would say we haven’t come far. Because now I know that underneath all the equipment, all the whirring, spinning bells and whistles of modern dentistry, there is still just the dentist and the tooth. It’s a contest of wills. In my case the dentist won. But just barely.

Johann Liss, Farmer at the Dentist, 1616-17 from Wikipedia

Home Leave

Home Leave

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Yesterday word came from Suzanne. Her home leave is approved! She will be arriving at Dulles Airport at 1:30 on October 20 — and she’ll be in the U.S. for six weeks!

The Peace Corps grants paid home leave to folks who sign on for a third year. Suzanne has already started her new job, as technical assistant to Population Services International and its Beninese partner, planning and training for the peer-education program there known as Amour et Vie. PSI estimates that in 2012 alone its services helped prevent 1,340 HIV cases, more than 70, 000 unwanted pregnancies and almost 30,000 cases of diarrhea.

The peer educators now give Ebola prevention suggestions, too. But their primary work is to bring about the sort of deep-boned changes that will someday lift the country out of poverty — and these will continue long after the epidemic is in check.

It’s good, important work — but it’s thousands of miles away. I’m beyond excited to know that our girl will be home soon — at least for a while!