Author Archives: Sandy Stott

Faith in a Seed (of Light) – Two Solstice Stories

Posted on December 21, 2015 | Comments Off

“I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.” Henry Thoreau

Sisyphus at Solstice

Well that was, as always, a long way down to where the year’s slope relaxes and my stone is still.

But here’s a day of rest at the bottom; then, I get to begin the work I like, pushing this glowing rock uphill, seeing it add to each day a thumbnail’s worth of light on both margins. From here to the stretched light of summer’s a long climb. But that climb begins right after 11:49 p.m. on the 21st.; we top out next year on June 20th.

It’s not that I mind going downhill into this dark nick in time. Every day’s a gift, and I’ve said often that November’s long sightlines make it my favorite month. But like all my breathing brethren, I like also the light that rims each growing day, and I like the easy warmth it suggests may come.

Mostly, however, as I imagine my part in rolling this light up toward the sky, I like the direction – uphill is all about life; climbing is living. And so being put to this stony task seems also the greatest gift imaginable. Who wouldn’t go gladly, day in, day out, to this work?

What is funny, I reflect while testing shoulder to stone, rocking it a little, is that the old gods thought they’d devised the perfect torment when they set me this work. They thought it all added up to nothing. But they, in their haste, gave me a stone that’s round and weighted nicely to my strength. And they gave me – bless them, foremost – a hill to climb. And then, as if those gifts weren’t enough, I got also two days of pause, this near one down here at bottom, the other in the high country of summer light. Solstices.

And I get to do this forever.

Second Solstice Story

The season’s low-angled sun

The other evening, as a rare (for this year) cold front blew in, we went to a solstice party. Even as we took the narrowing roads that went finally to dirt, the lid of darkness slipped over the land; strings of lights stirred and winked in the wind. The house was warm and food-filled, and the small percussions of exclamation and laughter added to that warmth. We burn words too against darkness.

Later in the evening everyone bundled on coats and trundled back outside…for a celebration of light. A fire burned in an outdoor chiminea, but the wind quickly snuffed the candles and lanterns we carried; a few headlamps flashed on. We listened to the sweet voice of a child as he joined his mother in singing a nursery school song about light. Then, we held copies of a Wendell Berry piece aloft to catch the headlamp light and read together about an enduring sycamore he knows. Our murmur of voices threaded the wind.

Our eyes turned then toward the yard, where our host prepared an unsanctioned evocation of light that he promised would bring “slightly longer days starting soon. Just watch,” he said.

We looked up, as if from the bottom of a long well; the half-moon slipped behind a flying cloud; it was gone. Then, in rapid succession – green, red, blue, gold, gold again – little orbs of light raced up into the sky, where they blew into bright cinders that arced slowly back our way. The Roman Candles gave way then to the fizzing rise of three streaks against the night’s slate, and, above our upturned faces, each opened with a soft pop into starburst. Again, again, again.

Evocation of light drifted over the dark pines and settled down, seeding our minds.

Reading to the end brings this little reward

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Posted in Arts, Environment, General, Henry David Thoreau, Living Deliberately, Nature, News and Events, The Roost, Thoreau Quote

Pointed Questions – Seeing Like Henry

Posted on December 18, 2015 | Comments Off

Every month, I drive over to town hall and join 4 or 5 other “commissioners” to learn what conservation issues are afoot in our town and offer opinion or, at times, decision on some of them. It’s a volunteer position to which I was appointed by the town council after submitting my resume and having a 15-minute interview. Most of our work involves review of development plans and easements, with an eye toward how they will apportion and protect conserved land. Or how our town will work with land already conserved and managed by the town. And, though we sit behind official nameplates and are televised on local cable, (where, reportedly, we are watched by some coterie of citizens), our meetings tend toward the quiet.

This week, however, brought a little noisy incandescence to our early evening gathering. Under discussion was a development to be sited on a point that juts out into our nearby, muddy bay. The 4 houses have been planned for nearly 20 years, and approved that long ago, so, despite that lag, they were not the issue. What drew our attention, or, more accurately, drew public comment that focused our attention, was the delicate question of erosion of the soft bluffs along the point and the “hardening” proposed to block that erosion.

Eroding bluff – candidate for rip-rap.

Rip-rapping, the dumping and/or positioning of stone, is common practice along the coast, where those who own land look warily at the sea. The sea is, of course, a primary reason why coastliners want to live where they do, but its relationship with land seems often like that of predator and prey. Waves, the ocean’s teeth when stirred by storm, can and do simply gnash land (and dwellings) away.

On a point such as the one under discussion this week – well up the bay and protected from severe storm effects by islands and mudflats – the gnawing away of land is a slow, seemingly gentle, practice. Still, even a cursory glance shows the way repeated rubbings of tide and current can add up to a lot of loss. A little seaside path along the 30-foot high bluff on the point’s east flank illustrates this action: in the ten years I’ve walked this area, erosion’s taken enough of the bluff to drop trees into the sea and force the path 15 feet inland. Left to their own rhythms, sea and bluff would dance slowly inland across this point, perhaps cutting it off entirely in a century or so.

Looking out from the bluff path.

But, of course, we like our houses and landscapes to suggest permanence, even as that’s the last possibility on life’s list. And so: hardening of coast against change; and so: mild controversy at our meeting. Should rip-rap-rock be allowed? Those who would build the four houses say, yea, of course. They want the appearance of bluff security. Careful what you wish/rip-rap for, say others. Studies of coastal erosion show that often hardened coastline in one spot simply shifts erosion to the softer flanks of that hardening; the currents and tides, even the gentle ones up bay, will find a way. They will gnaw what they will gnaw.

Then, there is the possibility of unintended effect on the mudflats surrounding the point. These flats, extensive at low tide, are rich with shellfish; they are fished by clammers who depend for their living upon their consistency. Might the change in point stability affect these flats, either through redirected silt, of via redirected runoff? It’s happened elsewhere. Might a plague of invasive green crabs, clam-eaters linked too to the warming of our waters, make the rip-rap their residence? That too has happened elsewhere. So many pointed questions. To which we will return in January.

The point’s extensive clamflats; the tiny figures are clammers.

All of this would fascinate Henry Thoreau, who walked to his observations, surveyed them closely, measuring often to decimals the works of winds and waters, looking for the stories land and water tell of themselves. Thoreau’s ability to see and tell those stories gets him named often as the father of ecological thinking. For Thoreau, a close look at what was present often allowed him to see back into the past and forward into the future.

When we meet again in January to look at the point proposals, I’ll have walked the land again and tried to see like Henry.

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Posted in Environment, General, Henry David Thoreau, Living Deliberately, Nature, News and Events, The Roost

Opened after 110 Years – Advent Pages in Thoreau’s Journals

Posted on December 15, 2015 | 2 comments

It is clear that I have never been here before – this early winter, 1860 section of my 1906 edition of the journals is rife with uncut pages; drawing a knife carefully along the joined edge of two pages is a little like opening a present or finding a secret glade. I have never seen these words, these observations, before; and yet each is a little window into a world I’ve come to know, to anticipate.

Like many children who grew itchy at time’s slow passage as Christmas neared, I liked the advent calendar. December’s dark days seemed a sort of tunneling toward magic, and the calendar’s little windows lit the way. My more religious grandmother had given the calendar to her somewhat-wayward son’s family, and in one season I had memorized each window’s offering. Still, until each window opened and its little painting appeared, the future felt like mystery.

Modern Advent Calendar

Now, as I reopen each in memory, I realize that they were refreshingly free of religious iconography, that most of the tiny paintings behind the doors showed birds, pine cones, trees and snow; our calendar was paean to the world beyond the windows, and, during the short days of waiting for first snow and the 25th’s presents, that’s where I went to pass the time.

That you could only open one advent window per day kept time tugging at its reins. The fifth, as I recall, featured a Christmas tree, and sometime during that week, we too got our tree, which then spent the obligatory 48 hours in a bucket of sugar-water outside the backdoor. The candles along our mantle mimicked the green and yellow painting of day eight. Double figures neared, then arrived.

Now, I no longer have an advent calendar, but the habit of countdown remains; I imagine little woodland scenes behind the door to each day; then I go looking for them. And in this season of small windows, I confess that I have been bad, a little. Each day, when I’ve picked up Thoreau’s journal, I have opened more than one page, read more than one window’s words. That turns out to have been unavoidable, because after December 4th, Thoreau recorded little of that December.

The largest door in my remembered advent calendar was, of course, that of the 25th; behind it lay the day toward which we had been counting. The 25th doesn’t appear in Thoreau’s 1860 journal, but the 26th bears mention of what must have been a present received on the 25th. That year Thoreau’s 25th opened to an owl: “Melvin sent to me yesterday a perfect Strix asio, or red owl of Wilson, — not at all gray.”

And, in the next paragraph, Thoreau’s fascination with the details of his gift are clear. As ever, the windows of Henry Thoreau’s calendar opened to the natural world, even when it was brought to him as a present. And this gift-owl was part of a local habit wherein Thoreau’s neighbors brought to him their findings from the woods when it opened its windows to them.

Long-eared Owl

In my long ago calendar, we too had an owl; it was painted into one of the early December days, its large eyes looking out in anticipation. I didn’t know then these little paintings of the owl and the fir tree and the snowy path led to the present I’d receive over a lifetime. But perhaps, when she selected that woodland calendar, my grandmother intuited it.

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Posted in Arts, Environment, General, Henry David Thoreau, Literature, Living Deliberately, Nature, News and Events, The Roost, Thoreau Quote