Author Archives: Sandy Stott

A Town Meeting – Seeding February

Posted on February 1, 2017 | Comments Off

“The history of a woodlot is often, if not commonly, here a history of cross-purposes, of steady and consistent endeavor on the part of Nature, of interference and blundering with a glimmering of intelligence at the eleventh hour on the part of the proprietor.” Thoreau, Faith in a Seed.

While I read a morning poem, the snow wanes. A few tiny flakes slant still in from the north; spaced even father apart, a few fat flakes fall like random punctuation undecided about the day’s line – here and here; that will do. A flurry at the feeder makes me look over, reminds me to fill its sleeve before turning out to work.

Last evening, I went to a meeting of fellow citizens on two of our town’s commissions. Our charge was to look over a 30-year mistake involving two small parcels of a subdivision that had been set aside for conservation or recreation land and somehow never conveyed to the town as was intended. The recreation lot, suitable only for “passive recreation,” which is an oxymoron of sorts and to most of us means watching trees grow, had the added question of a right-of-way. That drive could only pass through in the shape of a question mark. More possible punctuation.

Tucked behind the houses and still-to-be-built lots was the prize. Down its few-acre center runs Great Gully Brook, and given our underlying sand-plain, this deep cut also features fragile banks. Not far to the south of the site, the brook runs into a broad, mud-rich bay, and also nearby are a couple of wildlife corridors. Smelt are rumored to run in the stream, and, reportedly, turkeys have become its bully-birds. So, keeping the brook’s gully intact is important for the bay, which needs no more silt, and for the fish who would swim and spawn there. The birds and quadrupeds who use it as passage also recommend the gully.

All of this was rich fodder for a little dreaming as the meeting-clock ticked forward. Each night the long darkness comes first to this gully, and through it pass any number of night wanderers; through it too pass the always-waters of the brook, on their way to the bay.

Melt-detail from nearby

The current residents, who like their gully neighbor and want it protected, were at the meeting in numbers. They offered sightings of wildlife and the added life of having such a neighbor. The question-mark right-of-way, they said, was in such a shape because it needed to skirt the gully at enough distance to preserve its banks. They warned of disturbance, of loosing the banks and sending them to choke the bay.

Our commission, which will end up holding title or rights to the gully and so will become its overseer, listened to these stories carefully. We are already maxed out with such seeing over. But the right thing is what must be done – it’s part of being part of a town, of looking out for and after where we live. It is, we hope, the eleventh-hour “glimmering of intelligence” that joins us to our land. It helped to imagine Great Gully’s water running in the night and all who follow it to and from the sea. Even as we talked and listened that life was pulsing along the gully.

Comments Off on A Town Meeting – Seeding February

Posted in Environment, General, Henry David Thoreau, Living Deliberately, Nature, The Roost, Thoreau Quote

A Dusting of Snow

Posted on January 28, 2017 | Comments Off

The wind has gently murmured through the blinds, or puffed the feathery softness against the windows and occasionally sighed like a summer zephyr lifting the leaves along the livelong night…We sleep and at length awake to the still reality of a winter morning. Henry Thoreau, “A Winter Walk”

I have declared this a day of calm at roiled week’s end. Yes, my current writing project tugs already at resolve – thinking about how we respond to mishaps in the mountains is seeded with its own turbulent drama. But when I work at that writing today, I’ll choose a stoic incident, one full of acceptance, and, perhaps near its close, even light.

The day opens with thin sun through the pines and the coverlet of a dusting of snow. The village of juncos who’ve settled the feeder keep adding to a circling calligraphy in that snow; as ever their subject is the urgency of food. For me, urgency points to the non-Thoreauvian beverage, coffee, and, beans ground, the pot dripped full, I settle in front of the window that makes me this morning’s ship captain. The yard looks navigable…and so the day…but it is the dark jolt of beverage that launches me on it.

Add a little toast and poetry. Dark bread, and a darkish poem as well about a long-ago marriage and its “unsnapped threads.” But the words and images are so apt, so chosen as to celebrate poetry’s answers to the hard questions we bring on through living. The poet’s words and images are so precise that I hear a faint click as each slots in behind the other.

I look up after reading. The gray squirrels sort themselves through a hierarchy of chase; not exactly poetry, but motion leading into the day.

And it is a day! exclamation point courtesy of the enduring cyclamen that looks out over the same scene Perhaps it is the rising light; perhaps it is plant-reminder to me, but this now 1+ year-old little plant (which deserves and so will get a larger pot) has chosen this month to exclaim in red. “Sunsunsun!!! … and don’t forget the water.” For all these weeks, I have not, though once or twice the plant had to lie down as reminder.

Exclamation plant! (posed for the photo-op)

The wind arrives, announcing deeper morning, and I’ve begun tumbling through the day’s words, revising some passages and wondering specifically at the way mountain ridges generate turbulence as the wind rises to their crests and then tumbles into the ravine below. I have been pressed nearly flat by such a giddy wind, and I am wondering how to convey such a feeling in words. Strong wind is so-many-handed, in touch with so much of you all at once that it defies the linear, the singular touch of reason. Heavy wind can feel like a form of madness. Perhaps I should toss the words aloft and watch them fly.

But no madness on this day, designated “calm,” even if now a little wind-laved. After work, I’ll read some from Henry Thoreau’s “A Winter Walk.” Then, I’ll take one.

Comments Off on A Dusting of Snow

Posted in Arts, General, Henry David Thoreau, Living Deliberately, Nature, The Roost, Thoreau Quote

The Day(s) After

Posted on January 26, 2017 | 4 comments

By Corinne H. Smith

“Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? – in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or to the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. … The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.” ~ Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government”

Like fellow blog poster Sandy Stott, I too am an introvert and am not the biggest fan of crowds of any size. Over the years though, I have set my discomfort aside to attend a fair number of Major League Baseball games, NFL football games, and stadium rock concerts. I even went to a Farm Aid gathering in Illinois farm country in the late 1990s. And, as events unfolded, I knew I had to participate in the March on Washington last weekend, even though I figured the crowd here would be sizable. I was prepared to walk among thousands of people. Naturally, I was somewhat shocked but downright heartened to end up sharing a personal space with HUNDREDS of thousands of people.

The crowd, with the Washington Monument in the background, in low cloud cover. Photo – Don Jewler

My two companions and I began the day at the Metro station near their suburban Virginia home. The first two trains that stopped were already packed solid with people, many of whom were wearing pink hats. The doors opened, but there was no room left for more passengers. “I’ve never seen it like this,” said one of my well-traveled friends. “It’s worse than Calcutta!” We decided to take a train going in the opposite direction, to ride through a few stops, and then to get off to board an emptier train heading toward DC. The plan worked. But soon enough, we too found ourselves fully immersed in a mass of humanity, cushioned inside a fully-loaded Silver Line bullet zipping toward the Mall. Every seat was taken, and every other inch of every car was filled with someone standing. We proceeded in fits and starts. The train came to a stop for seemingly no reason, and we groaned. After what seemed like an eternity, it started up again, and we cheered. Even in such close quarters, everyone was merry, kind, patient, tolerant, and respectful. We were going to the same place. We held common beliefs. We could be polite to every stranger and to every fellow traveler who had come from various parts of the country. Why couldn’t our government officials behave as politely?

Sitting in the train, surrounded. Photo – Don Jewler

From the Metro station at L’Enfant Plaza, we walked toward Independence Avenue. We quickly became part of the sea of people, stretching as far as we could see. Some folks had even climbed into the trees to get a better look. We waded through the crowd to find good places to stand. We weren’t anywhere near the stage, but we could hear and see the speakers through several Jumbo-trons and stacks of audio equipment. We got to hear Michael Moore, Ashley Judd, and some of the others before we waded again toward the edges. After what seemed another lifetime, our mass began moving down the street. No one commanded us to start marching, but march we did. With so many people, we could go in only one direction. A woman named Mary Ann from St. Louis chuckled from behind me, “This isn’t as much a march, as it is a mingle.” So it was. We chanted, we laughed, we marveled at the sight and the feeling and the sheer power of being among a large group of fully committed people. When my companions and I decided to cut out and head back to the train, we saw that the parallel streets and the Mall were also filled with people marching, heading toward the Washington Monument. Independence Avenue couldn’t hold us all. What a stunning sight!

The March. Photo – Don Jewler

“When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour – for the horse was soon tackled – was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.” ~ Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government”

Henry Thoreau’s act of civil disobedience constituted one small experience in his life. It was personally meaningful, but it was just one night in jail. When he was released, he could return to the schedule he had set before his day had been interrupted by the sheriff. He didn’t want or expect the government to take any more time out of his life than it already had.

Our experience today is different in terms of both scale and duration. These Marches were held in hundreds of cities worldwide and involved millions of individuals, not just one. This commitment constituted just one day in our lives, and it was spent in a different kind of environment than we were used to. But unlike Thoreau, we know that our work is far from over.

On Sunday, January 22, the Day After the March, my friends and I went back downtown to do some sightseeing and to see a gallery exhibit. Independence Avenue was empty now, without the hundreds of thousands filling it. I could see the buildings and the streets that I couldn’t see, 24 hours earlier. Birds had returned to the trees. Nearby pussy willows – ironically enough — were fuzzing out in the gallery gardens. Life had returned to normal. But only in a way.

Alone, on Independence Avenue, the Day After, with room to spare. Where is everyone? Photo – Don Jewler

Our March is hardly over. Yes, we have all returned to our homes and to our own schedules and lives. But our One Day Among Others marked just the beginning of our collective involvement in this particular resistance. This new government will continue to demand much more time and energy from us than it already has. Thoreau’s personal brand of civil disobedience was the once-and-done kind. Ours seems as though it will become infinite. Yet, like millions of battery-powered drum-beating bunnies, we and the movement will keep on going, with no clear end in sight. At least we can take comfort in knowing that we’re not going the path alone.

4 Comments

Posted in General, Henry David Thoreau, Historic Preservation, Living Deliberately, News and Events, The Roost, Thoreau Quote