From Mountains to Shore

Sunday

• Pine trees on the beach were severely damaged by the horrific winter, and at least one is dead.  Those that remain are putting out new needles and cones.  Evergreens are easily overlooked amidst the spectacular sparkle and pop of the deciduous trees, shrubs, and flowers.  Green as always, chugging along, unnoticed, quietly taking their place in the background scenery.  As complex a miracle of nature as anything else, the end result of as long a tale of survival and struggle and adaptation as any sunbather down here.
• Chinese and Japanese painters loved painting pines, sometimes just for the joy of evocation, sometimes as moral lesson, often enduring snow or wind or rain.  I have sometimes seen myself as more of a lonely pine tree just getting through life adequately than as one of the more spectacular vegetative specimens.  There are no “pine lovers shows,” no “best pine in its class” awards.  But I do my job, I try to stay green, and I endure as well as I can.  There is beauty in that approach to life as well, at least so I tell myself.

Saturday

• Some smaller berries and fruits and many seeds are now in the midst of one of the basic species survival strategies, what  Confederate General Forrest called “fustest with the mostest.”  By making many edibles available early, potential offspring have a chance to be eaten and scattered with excellent chances of staking out the best ground before anything else.  Not coincidentally, many of these are in brilliant colors and attractive shapes.
• All nature becomes an extravagant cornucopia now.  Yesterday I passed a linden tree that was humming loudly _ turned out to be countless thousands of bees attracted by the strong sweet perfume from the blossoms.  Each day I take ten or so pictures, and there are way too many to use.  Each one different, unique to this exact time of year, illustrating some unusual perspective.  A wonderful time to be aware of nature.

Friday

• In the Northeast, untended ground immediately reverts to scrub and woodland.  Unfortunately, interesting forest ecologies can take centuries to develop.  Meadows, on the other hand, provide an immediate paradise for an astonishing variety of plants, insects, birds, small mammals and their predators.  They are also human-friendly, providing open views brushed by cooling breezes which keep the mosquitoes and other pests at bay.  However, maintaining a meadow takes time and money.
• Caumsett State Park provides expanses of meadows in all their mature glory.  Migrating birds find respite, as does anyone overwhelmed by the crowds, traffic and noise only minutes away.  I often find more solitude here than I could in the wilder areas to our north.

Thursday

• At first glance after a trip to the mountains Huntington Harbor seems an example of humans crowding out nature.  Scenes that only a Manhattan-dweller could consider natural _ boats and houses and roads and cars and people without end, square mile after square mile.  And yet _ the initial impressions are not of houses, but of forested shores and reedy wetlands in the foreground.
• There are an awful lot of trees right here _ as there even are in Brooklyn.  Moreover, there is more diversity of trees, shrubs, flowers, and landscapes than in the vast but somewhat monotonous vegetative cover upstate.  What I continually forget is how complicated the world really is, how contradictory its various tensions (for example between civilization and wilderness), how impossible it is to have one true conception of its immensity.    Traveling may broaden the mind, but it also deepens understanding.

Wednesday

• At twilight, mountains and lake seem deserted.  Air feels pure, water crystal, only sounds of natural wind and wave.  But, of course, this air and the rainfall it produces are tinged with residual pollution of an entire continent to the west and the industrial machine of China across the vast Pacific.   These forests were logged once, and at least along the shore are heavily developed with vacation homes, hardly virgin.  Isolation is not quite an illusion, but the planet remains interconnected even here.
• Our generations hold the future in balance.  I am perhaps less active than I should be, but I am not convinced that frantic activity, even in a good cause, is the answer.  I truly believe Thoreau; I honestly feel we must learn to be content to save ourselves and the Earth.  Not to be poor savages, of course, but to learn when better and more are wrong, when it is time to be satiated and say “enough.”   The paradox is that to live such a life as an example is the only effective way to prove the point, but to live such a life is by definition to have almost no external impact.

Tuesday

• People live in these mountains, although in relatively small clusters along highways threaded through the Adirondack wilderness.  Lake George village is larger than most _ obviously because of its lakeshore assets.  The “last of the Mohicans” was fighting here in the French and Indian War a century after the founding of Huntington.  Fort William Henry with its massive timberworks followed a year later, but has never since been important except as a tourist attraction.  Before air conditioning, a trip to the mountains in the summer was something wealthy people could do for a week or a month when they grew tired of the ocean, even building a hotel here on the peak reached by cable railway.
• What I find here is the past, hardly prettied up.  Farmers settled the bottomlands but the winters and rocks defeated them, loggers tore down the remaining virgin forest and moved on.  Scars and signs of ancient settlement are thick in the dense second-growth forest, now a respectable hundred years old or so.  Towns continue to fall into decay, abandoned buildings aging into picturesque ruins, in spite of attempts at revitalization.  And, in our own family, we spent some summers up here in the eighties when our children were small.  Since that time, seemingly everything away from the interstates has stayed in suspended animation.

Monday

• No, this is not Huntington.  A long drive upstate is refreshing in a way that a plane ride is not _ one begins to understand the immensity of distance.  Our ancestors and native Americans appreciated the vastness of the continent far more than we do.
• I try to limit myself locally, and steep wisdom from long contemplation of small and usual things.  But as with any concentration, I tend to see the reality of the entire world though its sharp specialized lens.  It is refreshing to be forced to recognize that my microcosm is only a microcosm.  More than enough for me, infinitesimal compared to the whole.

Solar Midlife Bash

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Sunday

• Field bindweed has lovely and abundant blooms.  It grows profusely anywhere _ especially gardens.  It can overrun cultivated spaces and plants, choking them out, as kudzu is reported to do in the south.  Pretty much like civilization itself.
• No matter how much I patrol and pull, bindweed never goes away.  I guess it gets delivered by birds.  It’s like a miniature version of Jack’s beanstalk _ jumping up from nothing to feet long overnight.  Why this, ragweed, and kudzu have not taken over the entire world is a mystery _ but you get more understanding of farmer’s use of herbicides when fighting this more intimate battle.

Saturday

• Just barely possible to make out light green berries ripening on this cedar tree _ too high up to get a close shot.  Most of the trees are setting fruit by now, using all the extra energy available into trying to start a new generation.   Trees seem to be the most patient of Earth’s inhabitants, but they have to rush along during solstice like everything else.
• No outside stone alters around here _ at least none that I know of _ and I doubt if any of the neighbors are getting up at five or so in the morning to catch a glimpse of a rising sun.  They’d be disappointed today in any case, because the clouds are thick.  But the exact moment of the sun’s northern apogee is far less important than the fact that it is occurring, and we will be hurtling back again towards the long darkness in another six months.

Friday

• Cascading flowers bursting like a fireworks finale.  Sun beams benevolently, as it has steadily for billions of years.  Hard to believe this beautiful four-o-clock is a weed.  Harder to believe that it and humans are closely related.  Both species the end products of eons of adaptation, survival, and change.  Closer examination of cell structure and energy cycles yield even more wonders than the external appearance of this marvelous bloom.
• In my high school, not all that long ago in years but a medieval era in biological knowledge, genetic mapping was in its infancy.   It was even possible to believe in ancient multiple spontaneous generations of life, at least of single-celled organisms.  Today, a miraculously tight web of tensions, patterns, and chromosomal control binds even plants and animals into a single family, with far less differentiation at the lowest and most important levels of cell division and organization than we should reasonably expect.  Life on Earth may or may not be unique in the universe, but there is no remaining doubt that on this planet everything alive is a close cousin, all tied to that sun which for all intents and purposes has remained eternally unchanged, birthday after birthday. 

Thursday

• Pale blue chicory is a reliable indicator that summer has arrived to stay.  It adjusts to the variations in seasons, and when the blooms finally appear not only is frost gone, but also most chilled evenings and mornings.  The scraggly stems and leaves win no prizes, and it is sometimes hard to understand how a structure so skimpy can support flowers so beautiful.  Blue is a welcome color in a landscape filled with yellow, red, and green.
• I always had a strong affinity for chicory, a hardy individualistic plant that thrives on the most unpromising soil.  It never grows in massive stands like ragweed, chokes out no other plants, makes do magnificently with what is available.  When an area becomes too fertile and crowded, it moves on.  I think that if I were a plant, I might be like that.

Wednesday

• For those with fortunate lives, the everyday world seems intensely beautiful.  Nobody can deny pain, worry, fear, and helpless anger.  Loveliness is not a panacea for all cares of the human condition but it can be medicinal.  Ignoring such simple joy to do “more important things” eventually shrivels the soul.
• I have fallen much into slothful ways as I accept aging.  Throughout my life I tried to appreciate my environment even in the midst of the necessary rush of work and family.  Now there is more time for contemplation, and acceptance that a view like this could hardly be improved. 

Tuesday

• Clouds, mist, fog, rain, snow _ all aspects of the same phenomenon _ seem to be antagonists of a beautiful day.  They are as much creations of the sun as golden beams on a beach.  Identical viewpoints during such varied conditions may hardly seem related.  An artist could emphasize the beauty in each, maybe increase our appreciation.
• I once considered art a capture of the extraordinary, but I now realize that its main value is in helping me experience the ordinary.  When meditation quiets my inner voice,  what remains is susceptible to re-enchantment with the world as it exists, not as I imagine it to be.  When art captures my soul, it opens me to what a true miracle a raindrop represents.

Monday

• As e.e. cummings happily announced, each day is the sun’s birthday.  In the north temperate zone, an environment shared by ancient Druids and current Huntington residents, the annual solar birthday is also crucial.  At summer solstice the mighty golden orb is renewing all life where once winter had triggered dormancy awaiting the hopeful return of the lifegiver.  In that respect, this is a midlife party, when one is full of directed energy and authority, not yet tinged with possible diminishment,  a time for cheering and celebration and belief that the status quo  can continue nearly forever.
• For many years, I adhered to our technical schedules of school and business _ relative calm in the summer, dreams and plans in the fall,  heads down work in winter, and feverish reevaluation and attempts to complete tasks in the spring _ almost the opposite of the cycle of our farming ancestors, but perhaps more in tune with that of even more ancient hunter-gatherers.

As a nature bonus today, I include an (amateurish) quick shot of an osprey nest newly constructed on a boat in the harbor, and also a link to whales sighted around here memorial day ( http://patch.com/new-york/huntington/beluga-whales-spend-memorial-day-huntington-harbor-0 ) .  Whether these are oddities or harbingers has yet to be determined.

Primed!

.Sunday

• Low growing small yellow wildflowers spring up in an almost unused patch of nasty dirt, on which more cultivated plants would wither and die.  On the other hand, these are never found invading gardens and lawns.  There must be all kinds of useful lessons in that, but they have all been twice-told, and in any case are always less true than complex reality.  Modern minds wish there to be clear rules and logical reasons,   but the cruel fact is that often the universe is ruled by luck and happenstance as much as by grand organizing forces.  That is especially true for life, in all its manifestations.
• My views have evolved to believe that importance is in the details.  It is the particulars of this or that plant _ not the species but the individual plant _ that meaning comes into play.  That is true of all life, and all people, and even my daily thoughts and actions.  Our tendency is to think grand symphonies, while forgetting the individual notes of which they are composed.  Tiny forgotten and overlooked patches of beauty like this should be a reminder to consider elements, tensions, and contradictions just as much as selected items that confirm our desire for order.

Saturday

• Like shoppers in a mall, geese more or less aimlessly form into impromptu lines and paddle hither and yon.  With all the tender new growth everywhere, it must be a fine time to be an avian vegetarian.  Nature in full bounty, plenty for everyone, no worries.
• Geese and squirrels comfort me, simply because it is fun to see such placid and playful creatures somehow surviving in the middle of everything, bringing a bit of wilderness to city and suburb.  Although sometimes annoying, neither of the species approaches the difficulty I’ve had with raccoons, rabbits, or deer, for example, or that some are encountering now with coyotes, foxes, and bears.  They are a constant reminder that we still share the planet, and should strive to keep it so. 

Friday

• Seatow looks like a child’s storybook caricature of a brave little tugboat.   Its primary duty is to retrieve boats _ often sailboats _ whose motors have failed.  Like most leisure activities, using the wind for motive power is fun as long as you don’t have to get anywhere in particular in a hurry.  Used to be stranded mariners would have to wave, holler, shoot off flares, or hoist appropriate flags to hail a rescue.  Now getting help is as easy as ordering a pizza.
• When we first moved here, everyone said I would soon be bitten by the “boat bug,” but so far I have proved immune.  I don’t mind a few hours every year or so on a big ship like a ferry.  Generally, I regard nautical trips much as I do golf _ “a good walk wasted” _ without even having “a good walk.”

Thursday

• On certain calm days, an unsuspecting passer-by may be awakened from reverie by an odor.  The dense sweet perfume of honeysuckle thickly clustering on hedges and fences is unmistakable.  It joins other subtle background odors from vegetation and salt tang of the tides.  Not all scents are pleasant _ car exhaust,  exposed mud flats, decaying fish die-offs, or bags of clams inexplicably set by the side of the road during high heat.  All form part of the unconscious fabric of existence to certify that we are awake and not dreaming.
• My sense of smell is woefully worse than that of my wife; I taste less accordingly.  But even I was brought up short by this pleasant cloud emanating from otherwise subtle flowers.  Along the breezy harbor, such olfactory intensity is rare, since any concentrations are usually rapidly dispersed by a strong clean wind fresh off the sound.  I strive to remember that not all of what I experience is sight and sound, not all of who I am is logic and words.

Wednesday

• Wonderful new blooms appear each day.  This catalpa blossom, by itself, would probably win prizes at some winter shows.  But it arrives in clusters, often high up, and kind of disappears into a general impression of a big tree with white flowers.  Only by pausing and looking intently is full beauty revealed.
• Of necessity, I used to rush around as much as anyone else.  Ours is a culture which rewards activity and I spent much of my life half-blinded watching goals.  I do not regard that as a waste, just a different period, and I am now fortunate to be able to spend more time in appreciation.  I admit that my body and hormones are also less likely to rebel during meditation (or even demand it), possibly to the good, but good or bad a fact to which I must adapt.

Tuesday

• Most folks drive along this road around forty miles an hour, concerned primarily with not hitting other people, going off the rails, or running into parked cars.  Some even slow down a bit to take in the view.  Even pedestrians are often so wrapped up in inner clamor that they merely scan the horizon, enjoy vessels bobbing on the waves, once in a while take a picture of some striking panorama.  But few take any moments to study the infinite small miracles of which this is all composed.  Such as this lovely nightshade plant, with its intricate flowers of purple and gold ready to start becoming brilliant red berries.  Or the two beetles going at it desperately on a leaf, unaware of the prying camera.
• I try to be aware of small details, but of course that is impossible and overwhelming and, in the end, just as futile as ignoring them altogether.  I want to gaze on the panoramas too.  And I have my own tumultuous inner thoughts _ such as thinking about what I may write here _ threatening always to drown out my immediate perceptions.  Life and consciousness are complicated and marvelous and only when I start taking any of it for granted am I truly becoming lost. 

Monday

• The rose family is blooming profusely, boats float densely, people anxiously enjoy a perfect day here or there.  Each season in the Northeast year by year is a little different, some with more or less rain, more or less cold, more or less cloud cover.  This one has been pretty cool and quite dry.  But more and more, everything is ready and primed for use as solstice and the Fourth of July loom.  Soon vacations will explode, beaches will be packed, sails will unfurl, schools will empty, businesses will slip into semi-dormancy.  Even in a 24x7 world, old customs die hard.
• I’m as impatient as the next guy.  Where are the hot days, when will the water warm up?  I try to be in tune with the seasons, but seasons have their own varying rhythm and I rush ahead.  A cold damp day now, for example, would have been a welcome blast of heat back in February.  But my expectations are already slipping into late July, while the meteorology acts like early May.

The Right Stuff

Sunday

• Full display of Darwinian struggle as each plant tries to grab moisture, nutrients, sunlight and outgrow the others lest it be left to wither and die.  “Survival of the fittest” obviously, “nature red in tooth and claw” viciously competing,.  But natural selection does not occur in one afternoon, survival strategies are annual, seasonal, and extremely specialized.  Perennials like the reeds and roses have their own clocks, annuals like the ragweed and grass have others, and flowers on roses or clovers are timed with precision to become pollinated and produce fruits at different times to avoid some of the crush.  Tolerating variety, thus avoiding the diseases and insect plagues that infest monocultures, is a more subtle way to make it to another generation but sometimes more effective than wiping out all competition.
• My peers and I were taught that the mission of science was to simplify and find basic laws and causes, and in that we usually made assumptions that went way too far.  The cheetah chasing two gazelles on the plains _ obviously the survivor will be the swiftest.  Nature, we thought, will perfect simply to swifter and swifter until an ideal form is reached.   If that were true, birds would rule the world.   Humans, we thought, would perfect to smarter and smarter. Environments and niche survival is complicated and messy.  We are finally understanding our own avoidance of niche environmental traps is also complicated and messy, and potentially species-endangering.  It remains an open question whether intelligence as we know it can be harnessed for more than a few thousand years without self-destruction.

Saturday

• By now, everything that can be growing is doing so, exposing the casualties of a difficult winter.  This beach rose is a reminder that even with all the right stuff _ sun, air, water, nutrients, warmth _ nothing much happens without what used to be called the “vital force.”  Back in the days of Galvani and Frankenstein, biologists confidently predicted that by adding just the right electric spark to just the right assortment of chemicals life could be spontaneously generated.  That has proved not to be the case, in spite of many experiments.  Nor can the force be transferred from a living organism to a dead one _ nothing will bring this bush back to life.
• Back when I went to school, scientists were also confident that they had nearly cracked the deep mysteries of the universe, at the final layer of quarks and leptons.  Developments in quantum mechanics, chaos theory, and fundamental structures of reality have shaken that belief.  It may be that some levels of our reality are truly unknowable, unpredictable, and uncontrollable.  I wonder if “life force” will not turn out to be as elusive as dark energy, phantom strings, and entropic time itself.

Friday

• Weeds seem to get by with very little.  No nutrients, no water, blasting sun or deepest shade, they are always present and almost always doing very well.  It helps that anything that lives under such adverse conditions is usually just labeled a weed without regard to particulars.  After the next war, probably the only life left to live (and thrive) on Earth will be bacteria, cockroaches, and ragweed.
• Weeds always seem prototypical Americans.  Industrious, hardy, colonizing, forcing out whatever might have been there first, smothering landscapes in a monotonous blanket of conformity.  I have to admire them for their grit and pluck and immense survival skills.  On the other hand, I regret the niches and odd wonders that are obliterated in their triumphant progression.

Thursday

• Trees, hawkweeds, myriad grasses growing robustly in Huntington Historic Cemetery.  Tablets with names, dates, and bits of wisdom or advice are scattered about in pale echo of Ozymandias, with hopes that loved ones and posterity would remember or care.  One true legacy of those who “rest” here, of course, is the nutrients returned to the soil so the cycle of life can refresh and renew.  Another is providing a place of repose for the weary traveler, who can quietly contemplate vanity and mortality.
• Daily papers claim retiring baby boomers desire to “leave the world a better place.”  Since nobody agrees on the meaning of “better” in such a context, what is really meant is that old people want to stay in control as they age and after they die.  I wish such egotistic popinjays would gracefully step aside, but as has ever been true, only death itself can allow the world to become whatever it will be. 

Wednesday

• Dune grass colonizing a bit of beach away from bathers and children.  In this it is helped by a developing symbiosis with poison ivy, which keeps humans out far more effectively than signs.  Although there seems to be scant moisture available, constant seepage from underground streams along this shore provides dampness most of the year for thirsty roots.  The oyster shells were probably deposited by a feasting gull after being dropped and cracked open on a rock, pavement, or unlucky car in the parking lot.
• I believe we need to preserve vast wilderness and semi-wilderness for the health of our planet and biosphere.  But I do not wish to live near nor visit such reserves.  But in the more civilized and tame surroundings I prefer, I love these inconsequential intrusions of uncultivated nature.  There is a lot to learn, and even more on which to spiritually center, by observing dune grass, gulls, oyster shells, and poison ivy.   Our place and meaning intertwines with theirs, and I do well to reflect on such things deeply and often.

Tuesday

• Spartina has not suffered from lack of water this spring.  Grasses are probably the most numerous flowering plants in any environment except rainforests and open water.  It’s easy to ignore them, but each has its own beauty and niche.
• I read once in a gardening book that the most permanent thing anyone will ever plant is a lawn, which may be around for centuries, unlike most trees and shrubs.  A single blade of grass is fragile, just like an individual human (in spite of Robinson Crusoe.)  But a clump of grass is as tough as a tribe, a meadow nearly as indestructible as a civilization.  I wonder if we should not consider ourselves more a bit of a lawn than masters of the universe. 

Monday

• For some time now, there has been abundant sunshine and warmer temperatures.  The missing ingredient has been moisture, which finally arrived last night with storms and a cold front, although more is needed to saturate the parched soil.  These ferns and other non-flowering plants will appreciate it.  For all the annuals from here on it is a sprint to solstice, taking advantage of maximum solar energy, building incredible vegetative structures from water and trace minerals and the atmospheric carbon dioxide.  Within weeks meadows will be in extreme bloom and insects too will explode into the sudden bounty. 
• Perversely, I am already taking this all for granted.  The world is completely green _ well, it was so yesterday.  What’s new?  The dark brown winter and glaring cold snow cover is forgotten.  I’m already seeking novelty _ bright flowers, exciting sunsets, people’s vacation activities.  There are fine advantages to living in the moment, but there is also a dangerous shallowness to perceptions.  I try to balance and remember and meditate more deeply, but I find myself also seduced to a quicker pulse by the long days and soothing warm breeze and even gentle rainfall.

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