Category Archives: Living Deliberately

Tawny Grammar – Hearing the Leopard-wind on the Kerry Way

Posted on October 12, 2015 by Sandy Stott | Comments Off

There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky knowledge, — Gramatica parda, tawny grammar, — a kind of motherwit derived from that same leopard to which I have referred. Thoreau, Walking

The old way to Killarney: first there is the music in the name; who wouldn’t want to walk toward Killarney, with its lingering “aaar” sound following the hard opening K? To say that I will spend the day walking to Killarney calls up a little mist of romance from my Gaelic ancestors, albeit Scots-Gaels, who are, the Irish tell me, a different sort of Gael. But in the larger world, a Gael is a Gael, and so a sliver of me feels at home here; that feeling will deepen as I reach the wind-washed, treeless mountainscapes later in the day. This will be a day on “the old way to Killarney,” a stretch of a path now called the Kerry Way, and every “old way” leads back as well as on.

As is true for many ways, to reach a semblance of trail on the Kerry Way, you must leave town. Kenmare, in this case. And after some early bumbling that almost sets me on the way to Sneem, I find the street that aims straight into the hills that rise above Kenmare, climbing through new housing that looks down on the town and then cresting the first ridge to find wire-girt fields with cows or sheep nosing about. Behind that ridge stretches a little valley of farms, and then above, there are the mountains that separate Kenmare from Killarney; my way makes for the mountains.

The way up from Kenmare

A few kilometers in, I’ve outwalked the tarmac, but not yet (never to?) the wires. Soon the trees too are gone, and sheep speckle two bony mountains that rise before me. A signpost assures me that I am indeed headed for Killarney; I hum a little made-up tune whose only word is “Killarney.” The aptly-named pass at Windy Gap draws my eye and then my feet, and I go up.

The Kerry Way is a 200+kilometer walkers-loop around the Iveragh Peninsula, which holds also the much more famous auto route, The Ring of Kerry. The Way was only completed in 1989, and as it meanders it also intersects with other walking ways that reflect a quiet surge of long-distance walkers among the myriad, motoring public. Chief among these intersectors is the E-8, which travels from Cork to Istanbul, over 2000 foot-miles away. And so a winding line of connection stretches out before me.

The way down the valley to Killarney

But mostly, I feel I am following the present into the past. The way to Killarney is foot battered, and it is more direct than the twisting, newer road that rises from Kenmare with the same goal. Why the new route doesn’t follow the old seems a mystery, but I am glad to be in foot-country and out of even aural contact with machines. The wind has taken over.

The day’s high point blows in at the pass between two knuckled mountains, Knockanaguish and Peakeen. The long grasses that grow the sheep ripple like water and the air washes and swirls uphill with a liquid roar, turning somersaults over the ledges, then leaving the downhill grasses on the other side untouched. Just as we find voice by pressing air over our vocal chords, so too does the wind as it calls against the grasses and rocks. It is a wild language, what Henry Thoreau calls a “tawny grammar” in his essay Walking. Mere words would fly away on this wind, scatter like bits of confetti; there is no writing this wind. It moves like a leopard. But there is listening as this cat-wind yowls the story of this old land, writes itself on the way to Killarney.

Click on this link to hear the wind, see its passage through the gap: IMG_0719

Comments Off on Tawny Grammar – Hearing the Leopard-wind on the Kerry Way

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

Henry and the Mouse

Posted on October 8, 2015 by Sandy Stott | 8 comments

By Corinne H. Smith

“The mice which haunted my house were not the common ones, which are said to have been introduced into the country, but a wild native kind not found in the village. I sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it interested him much. When I was building, one of these had its nest underneath the house, and before I had laid the second floor, and swept out the shavings, would come out regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet. It probably had never seen a man before; and it soon became quite familiar, and would run over my shoes and up my clothes. It could readily ascend the sides of the room by short impulses, like a squirrel, which it resembled in its motions. At length, as I leaned with my elbow on the bench one day, it ran up my clothes, and along my sleeve, and round and round the paper which held my dinner, while I kept the latter close, and dodged and played at bo-peep with it; and when at least I held still a piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, it came and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterward cleaned its face and paws, like a fly, and walked away.” ~ “Brute Neighbors,” WALDEN

This week I partnered on a Thoreau-related project with a young fifth-grader named Henry. We met at Thoreau Farm and set up our stuff in the first floor parlor. For one part of our project, I needed some water. So I walked into the tiny kitchenette, found a glass in a cabinet, filled it with water, and took it into the parlor.

After we finished our project, I took the glass back to the kitchen. I dumped the water down the drain, rinsed the glass a bit, and left it in the sink. I hadn’t noticed anything else in the sink when I had first filled the glass. But now I thought I saw something small and dark in there. Perhaps, with a tail. I turned on the overhead light to look again. Sure enough, it was a tiny mouse. It was cowering against the stainless steel side. Had I accidentally dumped water on it? I hoped not. I spoke quietly to it and apologized. Then I went back to find Henry.

“I found something in the kitchen sink, Henry,” I said. “A live mouse.” His eyes got big. “Want to see it?” I asked. He nodded.

We walked into the kitchenette, and he peeked over the edge. “Oh, wow!” He hurried back to the parlor to tell his mother what he had seen. She was not a fan of mice. She shivered and stayed right where she was standing.

“I want to rescue and relocate it,” I said. “Will you help me, Henry?” He agreed. We walked back. I noticed that Henry kept his distance, though. He stayed away from the counter and let me, the grown-up, manage the task at hand. I had decided that putting the mouse outside was an unacceptable solution. Where else could I move it, away from the kitchen? The basement.

I grabbed a paper towel. “Okay, I’m going to grab it somehow, and we’re going to take it down to the basement,” I said. I looked at the mouse, who was still cowering. I didn’t know where it had come from or where its nest was. Naturally, there were spots along the edgework that didn’t quite meet the walls. Maybe the mouse lived under the cabinets. Maybe it had run across the counter in search of crumbs, slipped into the sink, and couldn’t find a toehold on the silvery walls. It had been temporarily trapped. Well, the basement should make a fine home for it, too. “I’m going to pick it up somehow,” I said again.

“Maybe you can put it in the glass to move it,” Henry suggested.

“Good idea. Except that I don’t really want to use that drinking glass. I wonder if we have any paper cups.” I opened a lower door and spied a few. I loosened one from the others. I put it into the sink and pushed the mouse into it with the paper towel. I covered the opening so it couldn’t get out.

“Its tail is sticking out of the cup.”

“That’s okay. Let’s go.” Henry fairly ran to the basement door, turned on the lights, and led the way down the steps. I followed, carrying the covered cup.

“Now. Where should I put it?” The basement is semi-finished. The limestone rocks of the foundation jut out from every side. I guessed it didn’t matter where I put the mouse. It would figure out the best place to go, on its own. So I laid the cup on its side near a central wall. I took the paper towel away and peeked inside. Now it was the mouse who had the big eyes, looking right at me. I wished it well. Henry and I backed up. We watched the cup rock back and forth slightly, as the mouse moved around inside. It would be okay. We didn’t wait for its re-appearance. We trudged back up the steps. Our work for the day was finished, all around.

Well, Mr. Thoreau, we didn’t go the extra mile that you did. We didn’t deliberately feed this mouse and let it run all over our clothes. I guess I did kind of play peek-a-boo with it, though. And we saved it for you and put it in the basement. Now we can confirm that one of your houses is once again enlivened by mice.

8 Comments

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

Life Book

Posted on October 3, 2015 by Sandy Stott | Comments Off

“Every man, I think, reads one book in his life, and this one is mine,” E.B. White wrote of “Walden” in a 1953 New Yorker piece. “It is not the best book I ever encountered, perhaps, but it is for me the handiest.”

The other day a Google alert that feeds me regular notice of Thoreau’s appearance in media across the web, offered me a link to a reflective piece that had just appeared on Salon.com. Benjamin Naddaff-Hafrey’s pleasureable essay opened at the end of E.B. White’s life and then rolled back through his long attachment to Walden and the many copies White owned, read and gave away, including a 1964 edition (complete with a rain-shedding duraflex cover) to which he wrote the introduction.

Thoreau and White
Credit: Wikimedia

The traced arc of White’s connection to Walden made me look back over my own, a mostly pleasant stroll through seasons of learning and teaching, and that, in turn, brought on reflections from over three years of writing for The Roost. How many books and writers could both sustain my interest and provide so many points of thinking and writing departure? Answer: one.

If one accepts White’s proposal, the question follows: how do you know when you’ve picked up and read your life-book? For me the answer arrived slowly. My first reading of Walden was hardly a reading at all. Assigned the book in a high school English class, I turned dutifully to it on evening one and fell promptly asleep. The pattern continued through the three weeks we considered sections of the book, and there was also an alarming transference to class time, where my chronic head-bobbing intensified, lowering my teacher’s already low estimation of me. I missed entirely Thoreau’s discontent with the sort of schooling I was sleeping through, and I missed his affection for the outdoor world where I felt truly animated. I did benefit from the cautionary message of this sleepy passage years later when I began to teach Walden, but my first meeting with Henry Thoreau was akin to passing someone of the street.

Jump to college and a reading with a touch more adhesive. I got – mostly by listening to lectures – some of Thoreau’s central critique of his (and, by extension, my) world, and I noted that the place he went for insight and wisdom was like mine, wooded and hilly. All good, but not exactly a scrivmance.

Then there was the long, oblique approach to my life’s work, teaching. By the time I landed in an English Department some 20 years along, I knew quite a bit about teaching and writing and a lot about being outside, but I’d not returned to Walden, though as a journal editor, I’d received any number of pieces to which it was important. Then, a year or two into my English career, my department chair said, “So here we are in Concord, and, since Phil retired, no one’s been teaching Walden. You spend too much time in the woods. How about you?”

Of such questions long affection is born. I arrived at my life-book late, much later, for instance than White did, but, after 25 years of readings, teachings, and any number of epiphanies, major and minor, I’m still turning its pages, still awake to its possibilities. I keep Walden handy.

Comments Off on Life Book

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