Author Archives: Sandy Stott

Every year in early March, I fire up my computer and imagine my way to Alaska for what I see as the rite of spring. There, through the mountains, along the tundra and over the Yukon River’s thick ice, the dogs are running. These dogs are not the “Boses” that Henry Thoreau cites from time to time as further symbols of the habit-ridden town; these dogs are sled-dogs, dogs born to run, and this is their annual chance at the Iditarod, the world’s premier mushing event. Beginning just outside of Anchorage and aiming for thousand-mile distant Nome, the “last great race” supposedly replicates an early 20th-century emergency run to deliver diptheria serum to a town that might die without it. The mushers and dogs became heroes, and each year some 60 sled-dog teams and their drivers tap into that heroic spirit for their nine or ten or more days on the trail to Nome. Really, the race pays homage to the spirit of the various solitaries drawn to Alaska’s vastness and promise. In winter, the only way of travelling distances through this interior was by dog-sled.

Even as the dogs (who run best at around zero degrees) and their human companions press into Alaska’s marrow-chilling heartland, around here, crocuses often open their cupped hands to the sun.

This year, however, there’s an odd inversion at work. Today, we’re back in the land of horizontal snow while most of us pine for spring. Schools are cancelled, tennis nets recently raised in hope droop, the northeast wind drifts snow around five kayaks dragged near the Sudbury. Yesterday’s snow-in-the-air that wouldn’t stick has given way to the return of winter’s coat.

And, some five hours behind us in their day, this year’s dog-teams have hit the midpoint turn to the north along the Yukon, where…the temperatures have been in the 40s all night long. Yesterday, along sections of the trail, they flirted with 50 degrees. Even in my furless state, I can imagine that this isn’t great weather for the dogs with their winter-thick ruffs. The next time it’s 50-degrees here – will it ever be 50 again? – I can deepen my sympathy by layering on my parka and going for a run.

Musher Jessie Royer and her dogs in this year’s Iditarod – photo by Sebastian Schnuelle

Still, the dogs look happy. The Iditarod’s website is rife with photos and videos of these running dogs as they arrive in teams of 12 or 16 at the various checkpoints – often hamlets of 40 or 70 people in Alaska’s roadless interior – and the dogs are the embodiment of life. If our lives are often quests to find what we “are meant to do,” here are some models, I think.

http://iditarod.com/

Long silly for dogs, I watch them lope along through winter’s fading landscape and see joy and possibility; they are the advent of spring.

By Corinne H. Smith

We recently moved into a 1950s ranch house in southeastern Pennsylvania. One of the lease requirements was that I maintain the yard for this corner-lot. No problem, I thought. I don’t mind mowing grass, raking leaves, or shoveling snow. Heck, I even enjoy doing such mindless tasks. They force me out into Nature and give me time to think. I gleefully signed the contract.

I didn’t notice one particular tree until a week or two later, when I literally stumbled onto its produce.

Most of our backyard is fenced in. But along one outside edge, a four-foot wide strip of grass lies next to a locally-busy street. Leaves and other natural litter were merging into the roadway there. So on a nice afternoon, I grabbed a rake and a few bags dedicated for “yard waste” and headed out to clean up. That’s when I discovered that all of the leaves had five narrow fingers, and that they were surrounded by hundreds of spiky seed balls. All this scatter had come from one of our trees. The annoying balls were everywhere. Walking here felt like skating on quarter-sized pincushions. I gathered up three bags full of the offspring of that one lone tree. Then I went inside and checked my field guides. It was a sweetgum tree. I’d seen them once or twice before, but I’d never lived close to one.

Two weeks later, after a long day of rain and wind, I was out there again. Those darn balls just kept on falling. I looked up. The sweetgum branches were leafless. But hundreds, if not thousands, of seed balls were still hanging on. I could see them silhouetted against the white winter sky. What a mess I was in for. Usually, I aim to keep an open mind when it comes to Nature and her bounty. But this seemed like a never-ending penance that I had unknowingly volunteered for.

In desperation, I turned to Henry Thoreau’s journal to see what observations he might have had about the sweetgum. Unfortunately, these trees are not natives to Massachusetts. Thoreau encountered them only in the fall of 1856, when he was undertaking a surveying job in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. There the sweetgum trees were “very common and large, oak-like,” according to his journal entry for October 27. “The fruit was a coarse, rigid, spherical bur, an inch or more in diameter, which opened and dropped much fine seed in my trunk.” Henry had it good. He didn’t have to collect any sweetgum seeds himself, because the darned spiked casings fell right into his own open receptacle. And since he was just visiting, he didn’t have to clean up anything afterward. Lucky man.

Sweetgum Heaven

In sweetgum frustration, I looked online. The anonymous author of the Wikipedia entry was a kindred spirit: “The long-persisting fallen spiked fruits can be unpleasant to walk on; sweetgum is banned in some places for this reason. In abundance, they can leave a lawn lumpy.” No kidding. The neighbors who tip-toe along our part of the street can verify this.

Some enterprising folks sell batches of sweetgum balls online, I discovered. Crafty people use them in projects consisting of natural elements, like holiday decorations or handmade wreaths. Hey, maybe money does grow on trees! I could just pack up these seeds and send them elsewhere.

White-winged Crossbill

A benefit of the sweetgum finally appeared a few weeks later when a flock of colorful birds landed in our yard. The males had red bodies, and the females were greenish. They ran around and picked ferociously at the sweetgum balls still left on the lawn. My guide book identified these birds as white-winged crossbills, which I had never seen before. I watched them for at least an hour in fascination. I guess the sweetgum tree has fans after all. And I guess I should leave some of the seed balls in the yard.

For many readers, Henry Thoreau seems like an insistent finger, always poking and prodding, always wondering in a tactile way if you are awake. And some – I’m thinking now of those assigned readings in Walden or one of the essays – stir grumpily and follow along. Picture so many sleepy bears poked from what they hoped would be their long winter’s naps.

Poke: “But men labor under a mistake.” (Walden)
Prod: “It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you lead…” (Walden)
Poke: “…lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility…” (Walden)
Prod: “Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.” (Walden)
Poke: “The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior.” (Walden)

And that is all within the first seven pages. “Whoa,” I recall a student saying early one semester, “the man should ease up.”

All of this assigned attention would, I imagine, mildly gratify Henry Thoreau; he was, after all, a writer who wished to be read. But over time, I’ve come to think of Henry’s finger as a pointer rather than a poker. Once we are awake and ambling along with him, he is forever pointing out what he sees and senses. And in that pointing Henry Thoreau becomes the teacher.

All of this came to mind the other day when I read an opinion piece written for The Chronicle of Higher Education by an Emory College professor (see link below). The essay was another lament about the preparedness of said professor’s students and the decline of secondary education brought on by what he saw as too much attention paid to narrative writing at the expense of its analytic cousin. O, the indignities this pro-fessor must now put up with. Perhaps he must teach.

My sympathy waned, however, when I noticed that the professor characterized himself as an “educator.” There, in a word, was the difference. True to the word’s root in the Latin verb ducere, to lead, this educator saw himself as leading students out – clearly leading them out of darkness and into the amply-lit spaces of his mind. He would educate; they would follow.

How different, I thought, from a teacher, who, true also to her or his word’s roots (the index finger is an old definition of the word), points out what s/he sees and often expects the student to create her or his own meanings from it. Here was Thoreau’s finger, pointing to all he encountered, to everything he saw and sensed and then asking in a hundred different ways, What do you think of this? What do you see?

Long after my student said “Whoa” and hoped that Henry would “ease up,” we emerged from the pages of Walden and that student looked up. “So,” he said, “the last thing Thoreau wants us to do is follow him.”

Exactly, I thought. Thoreau’s a teacher; if you wake up and walk with him for a while, he’ll point out what he sees. But he’ll insist also that you make your own meaning, lead yourself, finally, to your own life.

Link to the Chronicle of Higher Education article (Note: I found the responses more lucid and pointed than the article): http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2013/02/07/teaching-writing-through-personal-reflection-bad-idea/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en#