on the trail

You enter the woods with your pack heavy with gear and about two miles in, just when the pack straps have pulled your shoulders to the ground, you spot ahead of you what looks like a deflated tent hung up in a tree, as red and as out of place here as a fast food sign. It’s not a tent though, it’s the fuselage of a plane. Or part of one. Less than two hundred feet up the steep side of the mountain you’re on, through ponderosa pine, and ghostly aspen, lay the rest of the aircraft – scattered, shattered. The trees around it are sheered off at their torsos, some still hanging on to hunks of long-dead wood. Your pack sitting beside the trail, you take your time up the hill – who knows what could be lying around? – checking off the parts of the plane. There’s a landing gear, the rubber of its tire faded and brittle. There’s a propeller, looking unearthly as it rises out of the dense ground cover, wet from the rains of the monsoon season. There’s the giant wrecked heart of the engine. Curled and warped sheet metal, broken glass, hunks of random plastic. A tray. A mug, the ring where you’d put your finger unbroken, still whole.

As spectacular a sight as this is, it’s nothing to this mountain. Nothing at all. Your jaw drops, and the mountain snores. It doesn’t even snore. It rumbles and shifts silently, imperceptibly. It is indifferent to you and this plane. Less than indifferent, but not, you think, unconscious. From the moment you set foot in the woods you have been humbled, by the silence you could never achieve on your own, by the richness and singular purpose of the life all around you, by the weight of your pack whispering, convincingly, to stop for a moment, rest. And now your humility attains a deeper sense of itself as you comb through the pieces of the plane, make your way back down the steep hill, re-shoulder your pack, and continue.

tempting autumn

Tonight
I wanted to make a meal
to tempt autumn to walk through the door
have a seat at the table
and stay awhile.

Tonight
I wanted to make a meal
to remember how it felt
when we picked apples in Vermont
and I made her stop at every single maple stand
along the way
until I decided
once and for all
that I didn’t like maple syrup
after all.

Tonight
I wanted to make a meal
to remember how it all works:
that love comes and love goes,
that life comes and goes, too.

The days are dying here,
the night swallowing up the sun
always a bit earlier.
And my days here are dying,
fading with as much sadness
and sweetness
as that last bit of light
left in the sky.

If only
I had remembered
that this was my last summer.
If only
I had remembered
that these days will never come again.
A thousand days lost
to a disappearing light.

Maybe that’s why
tonight
I wanted to make a meal
to remember:
to remember.
That this is my last autumn here,
that these days will never come again,
that the light is disappearing,
and I have to catch it while I can.

And maybe I made this meal
not to welcome in autumn,
but to welcome in remembering.
The apple trees and maple stands,
and these days with me now,
and these days soon to come
in through that open door
stay awhile
and leave.

Summer will leave
to make room for autumn
and autumn will leave
for winter
and by spring
I will be gone.

I want to remember this.

Tonight
I wanted to make a meal
to remember
that I am here.
Now.
Alive.

surprise

as i walk out onto the front porch
the coolness of the midnight air
surprises my skin
pink and warm
from baking on a summer evening
too stubborn to submit to fall.

and as i slide my fork into this tender flesh
the sudden eroticism of the meal
surprises me, too.

the warm dew of brown sugar and butter coats my lips
and soft strands of golden squash melt on my tongue.
the slight subtle crunching of quinoa
the delicate bursting of cranberry
as my teeth sink in

slow.


as i swallow my first bite,
a wave of electricity comes over me
and a sudden smile takes over my face
as i realize,
much to my surprise,
that i am
fully
deliciously
erotically
alive.

The Necessity of Trees

I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods

meeting the unmarked strip of light---

ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:

I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you

anything? Because you listen, because in times like these

to have you listen at all, it’s necessary

to talk about trees.

(From “What Kind of Times are These,” Adrienne Rich, 1991)

Golden, yellow brilliance sends me to higher ground, searching for stands of aspens every October. Here, animated clusters of aspens present themselves against the green, stately uprightness of the surrounding conifers.

Other trees have yellow leaves, but I don’t know these names or pay such close attention to them. Aspen leaves twist, flutter, and glint, performing a succinct choreography induced by staunch breezes of transition that swirl over the mountain.

The shimmering, shivering leaves of the aspen rustle demurely--or dance frenetically when there is a big gust—and in either case, snuggling up close to an aspen trunk and looking straight up is perhaps the best way to bring the sky closer.

A Repurposed "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"

"How do you like me now?" -Annie Dilliard

Love: Milosz and Me, A Commentary

Love

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills--
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness,
It doesn't matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn't always understand.

-- Czeslaw Milosz


Love 2060

New sand, shallow footprints
Record time days ago, and
Footprints made in ages past there,
Buried deep, but there.

Vista from the mountain
Extends far beyond reach
Yet even distant mountains are there
Painted horizon blue by desert sun.

A breeze wafts by and
Carries faintest odor of cedar smoke
Invisible, but there,
As is love.

Decades from now
Distant vistas will be past
Memories will be cedar smoke
And love, yes Love, is here.

- LR


Erin and Josh - Thank you for sharing your
joy.

Inspiration from the Sandia Forest

Before our trip to Sandia Crest, I thought the entire landscape of the Albuquerque area was desert-like. I was shocked to see a beautiful forest with green pine trees. Some of the mountains covered with colorful plants could well rival the fall foliage of Vermont in terms of beauty. Watching these trees revived their importance (different species) to our life. They inspired me the following words.

TREE,

When one pronounces this word, some think of the genealogical tree, or Christmas tree

But I think about you: the Tree of Peace.

You helped celebrate LIFE in my family when I was born,

At that time, your roots were growing taking the shape of the jar

Sometimes, your leaves started becoming yellowish because of carelessness

But as soon as someone quenched your thirst with water,

You quickly regenerated

I cannot be grateful enough

Your sap, with abundant nutritional values

Fed my mother when she was breastfeeding me

I did not remember the taste, but I know that I liked it

Even at the age of six, I did not want to quit my mother’s breast

Fortunately, I was given the opportunity to drink your sap again

During my wedding ceremony, you sealed the ties between both families

I also remember my grandfather giving me your leaves from our compound

To bring them with me to my new place, so that I will always feel at HOME

When there is a an argument or a controversy in a family,

The elders seat under your shade so that you can inspire them to solve the problem.

You are there to bring PEACE among people

Your branches are distributed to the belligerents

As a way to bury the hatchet.

When someone dies, he is buried along with your branches

To wish them peace in their new adventure

In the past, you served as a gravestone.

At that time cemeteries were vast green spaces, with lots of trees, full of life

In contrasts to the dullness of today’s cemeteries

You always accompany us in every step of our life

We rely on your branches, roots, sap, leaves, shade and bark

But at the same time, we are so ignorant that we want to get rid of you

Whatever we choose to do, you are LIFE, PEACE, and HOME

Enjoy this video on our first steps in the mountains

BlogPost3...

I turned on the movie and immediately he asks me “What the hell is this?”

“Killer of Sheep” I reply “An arthouse film…about a slaughterhouse worker in LA in the 70s.”

“Ah, look, that's the same alleyway from Blood In Blood Out”

“Or Boyz in the Hood”

“Yup, you're right”

I knew he wouldn’t stick around, his favorite movie is Rambo followed closely by Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo. On the other hand, I was willing to give this movie a chance. I like weird stuff and this movie looked a bit weird. Weird and disturbing. Weird and disturbing and promising.

But, he stuck around.

“That little girl looks like Aliyah, huh?”

“Ya, sure does. Singing the blues like TaTa, too”

“This movie is making my heart heavy.” I told him.

“Why, babydoll, it’s just a movie.”

“I mean, why are all these babies just outside without their moms? They could get hit by a car or raped or something.”

We were pretty quiet after that but he stayed there. Bored through the liquor store scene, I thought maybe he would abandon the movie to go play some Call of Duty on the PS3. No. He stayed.

“Um, why is he drinking out of that tiny ass tea cup?”

“Shut up and watch, stupid”

“Hey, you know what that building reminds me of,” he tells me a few minutes later.

“What?”

“The Bridgewater.”

“Ha! Hell yes, that looks exactly like the Bridgewater.”

“Yup. Remember that one time we saw that little boy there?”

“Ya, he came out and went and drank out of the Concho. Like, straight up drank that nasty ass water.”

“Ya, remember he had a cup and everything.”

“Damn.”

“You think those people are poorer than that kid or what.”

“Hell no, that little Mexican had it worse.”

“Ya, you’re right…”

By the end of the movie we were holding each other’s hand and had ceased to talk to one another.

Eric and I grew up in the same hood. We played together; at the Concho River, at the crumbling and abandoned Bridgewater Inn, and everywhere in between 23^rd and 47^th street. Years later, we saw ourselves raising our kids in that same hood.

One year and 800 miles removed from our life on 801 E. 40^th street and this little arthouse film reminds us that we know the difference between poor and broke. We know all about working at the matanza and about the blues. About being bored and bored and there being no end to the boredom because our moms and dads do not have the money to take us to Six Flags or Corpus Christi or even to Burger King.

But it also reminds us that we are in the middle of rising above all of that. That one day we will take our kids to Disney World, dammit, and no one can stop us.

“Do you want to watch Tropic Thunder?” he asks me.

“Na, put on Joe Dirt.”

“Ah, good choice…”

Field Entry 1: Great Sand Dunes

As most of you now know, on September 17, I got married in the Great Sand Dunes at sunset.

It is a magical, incredible place. The Dune Field sits in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo mountains (which was formed by uplift and placed as the Rio Grande rift widened). But even before the Sangre de Cristo mountains uplifted, creating some of the many 14,000 foot peaks that dot Colorado, the San Juan mountains (some 75-125 miles west of the Sangre de Cristo range across the San Luis Valley) were formed through volcanic eruptions and subsequent volcanic rumblings.

Apparently, lakes then formed in the valley and subsequently dried up, leaving massive sand sheets covering the area between the mountain ranges. Wind moving from the Southwest to the Northeast across the valley carried the sand (over thousands of years) to its current shifting resting place nestled at the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountains.

(Above, looking southeast toward the Sangre de Cristo range. We've moved approximately a half mile away from the parking lot.)

(Above, at the top of High Dune, 650 feet high [yup, we climbed up 650 feet of sand!] looking northwest. Our footprints stop at the apex. So did all the prints that were there before we got there.)

(Above, looking west. That glowing orb is the sun. The mountains in the distance are the San Juans--about 85 miles away at this point.)

(Above, Just before we said our vows, drank a bottle of wine, and careened back down the dunes. Much easier down than up.)

I have to say, there was a part of me that wasn't convinced I wanted to get married after hoofing it up a hill (Josh wanted to get married at the top of a volcano), but at some point about a week before we decided to actually go do it, the Sand Dunes started feeling like the perfect place. If we could make it up the hill, one, and two, do it without strangling each other, then we'd probably be okay. This is how the thinking went. Well, we barely made it up the hill. Josh was fine. I, on the other hand, was ready to give up about every 60 steps (this is how often I had to stop). So we didn't strangle each other, and at the zenith I was awed (and sweaty, thirsty, and ready to collapse, but overwhelmed with the awe of being in such a spectacular, incredible place). I was so, unbelievably glad that Josh hadn't stopped at any of the 60-paces points, and had continued to the top, disappearing over the last crest so that I had to follow him up. (This is why I married him: the man knows how to push me past my limits and bring me to the brink of tears at the beauty of the world. He knows how to get me up a hill, past the tears.)

I don't know what else to say about this place, except that it is geologically incredible. It is visceral, spectacular. It is like being on another planet, and I plan to go back, as often as I can.

Perhaps I'll add something more academic to this post later, but for now, I think the pictures speak for themselves.

Brief follow-up on in-class discussion of Farewell, My Subaru

I mentioned that Doug Fine cites harvestingrainwater.com, which is Brad Lancaster's web site. Lancaster will indeed be giving another lecture this fall. Details are below (copied from the Community Academy Brochure: http://www.aa.edu/ftpimages/109/download/Community%20Academy%20Broch%20Fall10%20(2)%20(2).pdf)).

Thursday,October 7 (6:30-7:30 pm)

HarvestingWater and More To Turn “Wastes” Into Resources: The Story of Rain Beer, Urban Drool Harvesting, Managing Mega-Cities Like Forests and More.

Brad Lancaster

Music Building, Performance Hall (Albuquerque Academy Campus)

This dynamic talk looks into how we tend to mismanage our most precious resource: water. Examples and case studies will be used to illustrate how one can sustainably enhance water, energy, and food resources at home, in our communities, and beyond. In addition, Brad will cover water-harvesting from dirt roads, Portland’s Sustainable Stormwater Program, green burials, an urban farm irrigated solely by rain and stormwater. Monetary savings associated

with each example are dramatic, and these practices simultaneously enhance local resources and quality of life. Best of all, you can do the same! Brad Lancaster has run a permaculture consulting, design, and education business focused on sustainable landscaping approaches since 1993. Together with his brother, Brad harvests over 100,000 gallons of rainwater a year on a 1/8 acre urban lot into living air conditioners of food-bearing shade trees, abundant gardens, and thriving landscaping that incorporates wildlife habitat. Brad is also the author of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, an accessible resource that explains what water harvesting is, how to do it appropriately, and how to modify it to the unique conditions of everyone’s own site.

I Went Hiking And Did Not Fall To My Death!

I went hiking!

The graffiti was everywhere. On the street signs. On the concrete dividers. On the metal trashcans. And, more disturbing, on the trees, rocks, and canyon walls. It covered the cave walls from the entrance to the very end of the narrowest passage and was done with everything from markers to spray paint to chalk.

I am still sorting through my feelings about the tagging. While I understand the need to mark, I just do not get the need to tag an innocent rock just trying to lay off the beaten path and soak up the sun. While even I have been guilty of carving my name into stuff, I cannot fathom why someone would gouge out the wall of an ancient shelter.

and seriously...what is all this hostility against cheetos?

Caving (sans analysis): Went Caving. Found Beer. Drank it.

I don't particularly enjoy small spaces. Or dirt. Or, especially, breathing dirt. I'm not often known to sit, alone, in complete darkness. But, with only one flashlight between myself and four eager and curious companions, and at least 50 feet of pitch black between myself and the entrance to the cave (the only source of natural light), I figured that light and company were probably preferable to solitude and darkness.

That's how I ended up trekking (squatting crawling and crouching) to the end of the Sandia Man Cave for the second time. The aforementioned flashlight not being in my possession, I didn't have much say in the direction of general travel, so I pressed on with the group for what turned out to be the better part of an hour, into the "depths" of a cave whose entrance is actually some 30 feet above another small ledge, itself perhaps another 50 or 100 feet above the canyon floor. It's accessible now by a painted metal staircase that spirals tightly, too tightly for comfortable footing, in fact, up to a platform at the cave mouth.

Sandia Man Cave, where Frank Hibben first discovered artifacts in 1935, was the site of two archeological treasures: Folsom artifacts (a certain type of spearhead technology dating to about 25,000 years) and Sandia artifacts (a different kind of spearhead with a different characteristic shape than Folsom spearheads, estimated at 30,000 years or so). [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,763963,00.html]

I vaguely knew this while crawling on my knees through a few centimeters of red ocher dirt, staining my hands and clothes. It is difficult while crawling through small spaces to maintain a sense of reverence for 30,000 years of human history implicated in the exact place in which you are struggling to maintain your balance, composure, and regular heart-rate and breathing patterns, but every now and then I manage a brief, startling thought back to the unknowable history of this place. Sometimes the thought is accompanied by a more concrete one, usually associated with fear for my own safety ("the cave hasn't collapsed in 30,000 years, it's probably not going to come down today"). But sometimes as the light that Scott has strapped to his forehead disappears around a corner and I'm enveloped in a cold, dry darkness, I try to imagine the endeavor this would be with a torch. If I can't breathe in the dust, I certainly couldn't breathe with a thick layer of smoke.

Now, a day later, I wonder if there is evidence of how far into the cave Sandia Man and his compadres must have gone. Maybe they weren't too keen on bringing fire into enclosed spaces, either. Certainly they wouldn't have brought the beer we find littered around the place--bottles and cans both causing the light to glint and reflect into our eyes. It is these more recent artifacts (combined with the ubiquitous graffiti--one is dated AD 160, can you believe it?) that have me thinking, even as I choke on the dirt kicked up by those walking deeper into the earth in front of me, about reverence, about leaving our marks. What is it that compels us to scratch our names (or paint them) into the surfaces of rocks, cave walls, or trees? (The last time I was at the Man Cave with my then fiance, I was enchanted to find E+J inside a heart on the delicate white bark of an aspen. There it was, and I didn't even have to carve it myself. I could relish someone else's destructive act in my own romantic way. I took a picture.)

Marie scratches something into a low ledge and the scritch-scritch sound vibrates a little bit in the air around us. We laugh as Laurel (or was it Christine?) chides her for ruining the "pristine" nature of the cave. It's only one name among a thousand that have visited this place. Is it vandalism? Or reverence? to put your name on the place you have been? to make your mark and let the world know, "I was here."

As we go further into the cave it feels warmer and damper, but I can't tell if this is my own body heating up from the gentle exertion (today my muscles burn ever so slightly) or if the air is really changing, growing damper and therefore feeling warmer. Scott presses on, belly first, it seems, and shines the light back for the rest of us to keep up. We are content to go on until we can't see over the next ledge, anticipating a scarier drop, perhaps, or a different scene around the next dark corner. Then we stop, discuss. Move on. The one light keeps us all together, as does a mutual curiosity, a feeling of being compelled--propelled?--forward that Laurel articulates before we drop off the last small ledge into another chamber. It turns out that there is nothing different to behold--all is darkness, coolness, a composite of jagged edges and smooth curves for ceiling, floor and walls. Dust coats everything in thick layers. I rely more on my hands and fingers to tell me this than my eyes. My eyes are useful in this dim light at the back of the pack only for making out edges that endanger my face and skull. My hands do the rest of the navigating.

At the end we sit in a space with barely enough head clearance to accommodate our straightened backs.

I ask Scott to turn out his headlamp, and as it goes out, the cramped space we inhabit seems to disappear. There's an infinity in the absolute darkness that I hadn't expected, an extensiveness to the physical dimensions that I wasn't prepared for. (Still, I wouldn't risk attempting to stand or move.) Scott wonders if his eyes will adjust, and though I know where he is as he speaks, his voice comes from everywhere and nowhere all at once. So do Laurel's, Marie's, and Christine's. I think of Bilbo Baggins when he meets Gollum. Even that darkness wasn't so complete.

Our eyes don't adjust. Even so, we all seem to think we see colors. I can imagine my hand in front of me. I know where it is. I know where I should see it. It is there, and yet, it isn't. It is cold. The fear that goes with darkness and silence breaks over me in waves, tempered by the conversation that I intermittently participate in. It gets weird and Christine's camera gives a flash. Too much darkness is unnerving, and we move out, much as we came in, only more quickly, and with a different kind of urgency.

Coming out into the light, someone asks, "Has the world always been this bright?" and I wonder.

Feast & Celebration

Hiking: A Total Body Experience

Our ENGL 640 Field Trip to Sandia Man Cave (Sandia Mountains, New Mexico) was complete: hiking, spelunking, geocaching--even libations and litter patrol.

Getting into the Gritty Details

ENGL 640 Environmental Rhetoric Field Trip to Sandia Man Cave Hike, September 25, 2010.

Perspective

On a sizzling spring Saturday morning in late May, we were set up selling at the Taos Farmers’ Market, enjoying the sights and smells and diversity of the crowd. Everyone comes out for the market and it was garden-planting time so we were busy and had a line of customers. We had 70+ varieties of vegetable starts and over 100 kinds of culinary and medicinal herbs on any given Saturday – a double space to spread out, and the prime market location, right at entrance and visible to main road traffic. Customers were all in around the plants, touching, reading signs and labels, asking questions, tasting in some cases, lining up to pay for their selections so they could rush home and plant, plant, plant. One lady spent a good 10 minutes poring over the flats of zucchini plants (sold in 3.5” pots, 18 to a flat), looking for just the right one to take home with her. She eventually found it, waited in line, paid me, and trotted off happily into the crowd.

About 20 minutes later, there she was, back in line, zucchini start in hand! When she got up to the table, behind 3 or 4 customers, she glanced furtively over her shoulder as if embarrassed to be back, held the plant up between us, tapped the side of the pot, and asked “I can eat the squash off this plant, right?” Of course! I assured her – absolutely! – and told her to plant it up to the bottom leaves, water daily and deeply, mulch if possible, and call me with any more questions. I reassured her it was easy to do and delicious to harvest and enjoy. And off she went, happy as a clam, and presumably enjoyed zucchini all summer.

Now, when that woman asked me if she could really, actually eat the squash from that plant, I was about bowled over. Just amazed, and somewhat unraveled too. I kept my composure and didn’t show how shocked I was to be asked whether she could actually eat the squash the plant would produce. And I guess I’ll never forget that as it was a pivotal moment for me - to this day, I’m amazed and appalled that we, as a culture, as a society, have lost our ability to identify food in our environment. I’ve seen it over and over again – there are fruit-bearing trees, berry shrubs, edible flowers, and herbs all over Albuquerque (even on campus – there is a nice little herb patch outside the sub) and they are not cultivated for food. People don’t know what is around them.

I wonder sometimes how many people would starve surrounded food because they can’t recognize it if, for instance, there were a global collapse of some sort (it’s a popular concern, really)? The woman at the market was unsure if she had bought a plant that would produce edible zucchini – would she have grown the plant out, had zukes ready for picking, and hesitated then, unsure of whether they were the same food as she found in the grocery store? It strikes me as so true when we learn that by giving words to something, identifying our environment with linguistic symbols that have meaning to us, we truly are creating our realities. We don’t know until we do know. And thankfully she asked. Had she not, the zucchini-plant woman would not have had the knowledge to identify the fruits of her plant as food. She would have stayed in the dark, uncertain, without the words to identify the properties of the plant she had. Maybe some deep memory in her cells, her genes, would have tugged at her consciousness, whispering to her that yes, this looks like food, growing and alive. Maybe not.

We have been nourishing ourselves with live food, gathered and cultivated from our environment, for tens of thousands of years – how could we have lost that knowledge, the ability to recognize food, in less than 2 generations? What else around us are we not cognizant of? And how can we each stay “plugged in” to the natural cycles, growing seasons, that we live through every year of our lives? If everyone grew a little garden (even in their city yard, or on the balcony, or in a bare spot at the university) would we be more aware of our world and how it really supports us every day? Would we be grateful?

Growing food in a city yard

Zuchini, summer squash, lettuce, lemon cukes, 3 kinds tomatoes, calabacitas, chile peppers, cantaloupe, Bolivian rainbow peppers, bi-color corn, watermelon, acorn squash, beets, peas (snow and shelling), green beans, calendula, basils (4 varieties), parsley, rosemary, thyme, lovage,
kale, collards, carrots, valerian, pears, habas, sage, ...

All in a city yard. Amended soil, watered generously, and enjoyed fresh produce all summer. Its easy and can be done with very little space.