Old Growth

I take lots of photographs of trees. I often take similar photos: I look straight up to the sky searching for the circling branches. I also take photos of leaves, pine needles, acorns, nuts, and twigs. I mostly haven’t been satisfied with my photos of trunks, but I keep trying. I’ve had a close relationship with trees my entire life and, if anything, I feel closer to them as I grow older.

Meadowlark Botanical Gardens, Fairfax County, Virginia

First Trees I started climbing trees when I was very young at our home in Detroit. The tree–I think my dad called it a silver maple–was also quite young and I was able to shinny up it and climb pretty far up the branches. I remember being proud of my skill because I was the youngest and the girl. My parents also planted a little cherry tree of some kind in the backyard. I remember swiping a maraschino cherry from the jar in the refrigerator and sticking it on a little twig and announcing that the tree had produced a cherry!  I didn’t fool anyone.* The street trees in our Rosedale Park neighborhood were elms. The trees from each side of the street met in the middle and made a comforting leaf canopy.  Back in the 1950s Christmastime was still reliably cold in Detroit. One night I walked around the block with my dad looking at the Christmas lights.  There was a blue spruce glowing with lights. I must have known it was a blue spruce because my dad told me its name. The magic was so strong that I feel it now, 66 years later.  That mix of the cold air, the holiday lights, the blue tree, and my kind father keep me–even through many long and sometimes trying years–looking up at the trees and sky.

A few years later, my family moved to a lake near Milford, Michigan. When we first moved to our house, trilliums still bloomed nearby in the springtime and we saw deer tracks on the beach. My parents made sure that the builders did not cut down any extra trees when they built our house, so our new world was guarded by a grove of tall oaks and hickories along with the odd little sassafras and wild cherry.  In most of the lawn, the grass grew a little bit thin, but the trees were almost like benevolent gods to my young nature-loving self.  When I miss my home, which is often for a place that I haven’t lived in since 1972, I sometimes miss the trees as much as the people who lived there.**

brother George’s photo of winter dawn with lake and trees from our house

*These early memories  are slightly fuzzy; I might not have been the only one involved in the maraschino gambit.

**(Some of these words are adapted from Losing It: Deconstructing a Life, unpublished work © Lynda Terrill, all rights reserved)


More Trees Through the years, I have been lucky to encounter many trees.  I’ve walked through Michigan woods, Appalachian and Piedmont forests, the grand ponderosa pine forests of the Kaibab Plateau, the bristlecone pines of Great Basin National Park, the redwood and sequoia cathedrals of California, and so many more tree lands. Not every forest or tree needed to be grand for me to love it.  I fondly remember the single small tree on a minuscule pull-out on U.S. Route 89A–then, the only tree to be found on the Arizona Strip between Fredonia, Arizona and the Kaibab Plateau. I can’t remember the species of that tree; it might have been a pinyon pine.

I only started taking photographs (first on little Nikons, now just on phones) about 13 years ago. Nonetheless, I find that I have hundreds of tree-related photos. Below are some of my current favorites.

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lake Shore, Michigan

redbuds, Sky Meadows State Park, Virginia

Eastern hemlocks, Cathedral State Park, West Virginia

autumn, Arlington, Virginia

Mathews Arm Campground, Shenandoah National Park, Virginia

sycamore, Theodore Roosevelt Island, Washington, D.C.

cherry blossoms, Tidal Basin, Washington, D.C.

Red Canyon, Dixie National Forest, Utah

Widforss Trail, North Rim, Grand Canyon, Arizona

November: Frick Park, Pittsburgh

Frick Park, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Great Basin National Park, Nevada

Beach Road, Meher Spiritual Center, Myrtle Beach, SC

Beach Road, Meher Spiritual Center, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

Sequoia feet

Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Park, California

North Rim, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

red mangrove, Florida

G. Richard Thompson Wildlife Management Area, Markham, Virginia

black walnut, Ft. C.F. Smith, Arlington, Virginia

Enough photos for now, I think.

Old Growth, Part 1 In March 2020, Tom and I heard environmentalist Joan Maloof speak about old-growth forests. Maloof, “Professor Emeritus at Salisbury University, founded the Old-Growth Forest Network to preserve, protect and promote the country’s few remaining stands of old-growth forest. (www.joanmaloof.com/).” Since hearing Maloof’s presentation, Tom and I have been visiting more of these special forests, most recently last month when we walked in the Youghiogheny Grove Natural Area in Swallow Falls State Park, Maryland. I was going to make a bulleted list of the old forests we’ve hiked in, but I realized I don’t really know how many we have encountered. I don’t want to sound like a gaga old woman, but I have two ideas to share. First: not only do forests provide the earth with oxygen, food, shelter, fuel, etc., but they provide me with a sense of wonder and contentment that I don’t often feel elsewhere.  Second, while I am a proponent of  preserving all the old-growth forests that are left, I also want to acknowledge that a tree, a grove, a forest, doesn’t need a special designation to be awe-inspiring.  I do encourage tree lovers to investigate the Old Growth Network and I still want to list a few of Tom’s and my favorite forests below:

  • Kaibab National Forest, Arizona
  • Great Basin National Park, Nevada
  • Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, Michigan
  • Cascade Falls, Ottawa National Forest, Michigan
  • Congaree National Park, South Carolina
  • Red Canyon, Dixie National Forest, Utah
  • Fishlake National Forest (including Pando and Singletree Campground), Utah
  • Cathedral Forest, Cook State Forest, Pennsylvania
  • Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias, Yosemite National Park, California
  • The Giant Forest, Sequoia  & Kings Canyon National Parks, California

Old-Growth Forest Network sign, Swallow Falls State Park

Youghiogheny Grove Natural Area, Swallow Falls State Park, Maryland

Old Growth, Part 2 I realize that I think, talk, and write quite a bit about trees. I might even repeat myself sometimes. Part of that may be because I am old and prone to reverie, but mostly it is because trees (and birds, bugs, plants, and rocks) help me focus on beauty amid the terrible news that surrounds me almost daily. Side note: I once had an employer who gave me job–at least in part–because, she said, I was a life-long learner. Maybe I am. Now, though, I just want to grow like a tree–like a tulip poplar in flower or just hang on like a pinyon pine on a canyon rim.

tulip poplar flower, Arlington, Virginia

pinyon pine, Colorado National Monument, Colorado

Salad Days, Salad Years: Reverie

Right now, my weather app claims that it is 29 degrees* here this afternoon in Arlington, Virginia. So far this winter we’ve had some cold spells, some cold rains, but only a couple of snow flurries. Still, it is winter enough to keep me inside today in reverie.

I’m old now and I do spend some time thinking about times long past. Shakespeare gives us the phrase “salad days” (Antony and Cleopatra, Act I, Scene 5). For me, though, the phrase is literal: I am thinking about the salads I’ve made and the salad ingredients I’ve grown.

Early salads Sometime in my early teens, I started making salads for the family dinners. This was an easy task, but I felt proud to do it. If you are from the Midwest of my childhood (or perhaps from another time or place, also), you may know this salad. I tore up iceberg lettuce, cut up tomatoes, and–if we had them–also put in cucumbers and scallions. I made the thousand island salad dressing by mixing Hellman’s mayonnaise and ketchup to which I might add a little pickle relish and/or chopped hard-boiled egg to make the islands. I think we all liked the salad well enough and it paired well with the meatloaf or pork chops or pot roast meals we often ate.

Around this same era, my mom taught me to make her potato salad. She was a careful cook and I can see her now–telling me how one needs to boil the potatoes with their “jackets” on, and then showing me how to cut them and the other vegetables in precise pieces before mixing in the few seasonings and dressing. I have been thinking about this potato salad for a couple of years now. I keep thinking I want to make a batch, even though our lives left the cold chicken and potato salad era decades ago. Tom and I both remember picnics up Mill Creek Canyon near Salt Lake City with our very young children and our friends-maybe cold chicken with potato salad in the summer and roasted hot dogs over a fire and potato salad when September came. The last time I made potato salad regularly was in the early 1990s in Washington, D.C. when I taught adult learners from the Food and Beverage Workers Union, Local 32. Most of the classes were on Saturdays and the students and I decided to have potluck lunches. Some students brought D.C. half-smokes, some brought macaroni and cheese, other brought chips, drinks, and other tasty foods. I brought the potato salad. I added more onion, cumin seed, and liquid from jarred jalapenos to my mom’s recipe and it was a hit. Watch for updates: When spring comes for real, I am going to make a batch of potato salad and go on a picnic with Tom and whomever else wants to come. I just can’t decide whether to bring the cold fried chicken or grill the hot dogs.

Middle salads As I’ve mentioned before, I spent the summer of 1970 working for the Utah Parks Company at Zion Inn in Zion National Park as a pantry worker (AKA “salad girl”). I worked the summers of 1971-1973 at Grand Canyon Lodge at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, also as a pantry worker. These are some of the happiest times of my life so I have years worth of reverie about this era. I learned a great deal from my bosses and coworkers about making salads, cooking, and life in general. In the national parks, I learned to make big trays of desserts and tubs of salads. One of the first lessons in Zion was that what worked in Michigan might not work in the desert southwest. Mary, my pantry boss, instructed me to prepare a large tray of cheese sandwiches. Being the organized person (I thought) I was, I lay out a full tray of bread slices in preparation for adding, in turn, the cheese slices and then the top slice of bread. There, in the desert, that first layer of bread dried out instantly and was unusable. Never would have happened like that in Michigan. Adapt to your circumstances was the lesson. I am still working on that.

In the Grand Canyon Lodge kitchen, I had other lessons to learn. Our dear bosses/mentors/friends-for-life were pantry supervisor Bertha Fitzwater and chef Floyd Winder. Bertha, born in 1897, was hard of hearing. Her hearing seemed selective, though: She could hear what she wanted and needed to hear and then ignore the rest. Early on that summer Bertha told me to “clean as you go” in the kitchen. I have done so ever since then, and it has served me and my kitchen well. More important than cleanliness is kindness and I learned some of that from Bertha. 1971 was so long ago, maybe you can hardly imagine it. We women in the kitchen wore horrible white uniform dresses (they deserve their own whole cranky reverie). Most of the hipp(i)er young men that headed to the North Rim cut their hair before they got there. Not so, Pat Malone. He showed up in the kitchen sporting his long golden locks and scraggly goatee. Utah Parks was a conservative company and many of the workers were traditionally minded Latter-Day Saints. So, as I watched, Pat was getting a quiet and cold shoulder from the workers in the kitchen. Maybe Bertha couldn’t hear, but she could see and feel. She got a bowl of ice cream and went right up to Pat and pushed the bowl near his face and said, smell this, I think it is going bad. Pat put his face down to smell and Bertha shoved the ice cream into his face. Haha, a good laugh all around and the ice was broken. Golden, elf-like Pat (gone these ten years) became a favorite of many. I still see and feel your kindness, Bertha, and I try sometimes to follow your path. Linda, Richard, and Gordon, we are still pantry friends together.

Chef Floyd Winder was a large middle-aged man with a military buzz cut, a Utah twang, a piercing intellect, and a wit as dry as the desert. I met Floyd (and Bertha) in May, 1971, just weeks after I had graduated from college.  After all of those high octane professors (and yes, many of them were exemplary and I learned a great deal from their classes), all the papers I wrote, all the hours I had spent throwing around words like etiology, polity, and structural-functionalism, I was full of myself and my fancy education.  Well, as I watched and listened to Bertha and Floyd I saw that they knew just as much about their own fields of endeavor as the professors did about theirs. More importantly, Bertha and Floyd seemed to understand human nature, but still decided to look at people with humor and kindness. Floyd knew his workers well, and if they were smart and conscientious, he just left them to their jobs—no micromanaging from him. Here are three short Floyd stories:

North Rim was about 80 miles from the closest town. So, when we ran out of ingredients, we were out until the next truck made its way up to our kitchen at the end of the road. The pantry staff made seafood cocktail appetizers, using crab, shrimp, lettuce, cocktail sauce–the usual ingredients. They were popular menu items, so we often ran out of the canned crab. What to do? Floyd said put canned tuna on the salad instead. To our alarmed looks Floyd simply noted that tuna comes from the sea.

Grand Lodge kitchen served excellent ice cream and sherbet, but we made ho-hum puddings, cobblers, cakes, and frozen pies baked in house. One time a customer was oohing and aahing to the server about her slice of pie. The guest asked for the recipe, so Floyd cut off the recipe panel from the frozen pie box for the woman. In neither of this or the above instance did Floyd smile.

The kitchen ran well under Floyd’s firm, but (somehow) laid-back rule. The menu was on a set schedule and the food was rolled out mostly the same week after week under his supervision. The only time I ever saw Floyd personally cook any food was when Utah Parks Company hosted a party for the staff. It turned out that not only could Floyd cook delicious food, but, by god, he created an ice sculpture for us.

I have other, more serious, stories about Floyd. When I felt lonely that year in Page, Arizona, I would visit Floyd and his kids at his home in Springdale, Utah right outside of Zion. A kind face and a homey meal meant a great deal to me back in those days when I was so green. A few years later, Floyd would visit Tom and me and our little children when he was up in Salt Lake City for cancer treatments at the VA Hospital.

Growing salads As I’ve mentioned before, I took up growing my own salads many years ago–49 years ago to be precise. Every garden space (from window sills to large gardens with grape vines and raspberries and corn) is different. Different, but always satisfying. Sometimes plants grow for me and sometimes they don’t, but I am always learning something new from them. Here is a partial list of the salad stuff I’ve grown: many types of lettuce, thyme, basil (five kinds), rosemary, spinach, Swiss chard, cilantro, sugar snap peas, shallots, onions, tomatoes (probably at least 25 varieties), peppers (probably more than 15 varieties), chives, lemon balm, sage, dill, borage, anise hyssop, artichokes, scallions, mint, radicchio, arugula, kale (at least three types), Italian oregano, cucumbers, broccoli, epazote, field cress, mizuna, parsley, lemon grass, and more that I can’t remember right this minute. However, the memories of my mother and the rest of my family, Bertha, Floyd, and all the others remain green.

spring seed packets
Thai basil over-wintered in the house
green leaf black seeded simpson lettuce seedlings, 2/15/23
chives

*I started this article about two weeks ago, I have avoided working on it. Today, I feel spring in the air (and in my bones) and hear it in the birdsong.

October 2022, Arlington, Virginia

October is my favorite month, and I say that as someone who likes all the months–even February. When I was a child, I tried to like November the most because it is my birthday month, but October wins every year (see my post from 10 years ago here). In the fall I feel nostalgic: I miss my mother and father and a growing host of others. So, there is a little sadness, but–northerner in my bones–I always feel happy about preparing for the ice and snow of winter (whether it comes or not). I have been making bread again and wandering through the beauty in my neighborhood.

American sweetgum, Oakland Park

mixed forest, Arlington, Virginia

tree with fungus

clustered mountain mint

Lubber Run, October 30, 2022

leaf in Lubber Run

stump and forest, Lubber Run

wild bergamot, Oakland Park

forest trail

Peregrinations

Speaking of peregrinations: When I was child I wanted to be a falconer. I wanted to have a hawk, or perhaps a peregrine falcon on my arm. She would fly off my arm and circle the sky until she was only a dot and then, finally, fly back to me. I didn’t dwell on the hunting part of this fantasy–just on the bold, high flying bird who would come home to me. (I confess that I might have come up with this idea from reading The Hardy Boys: The Hooded Hawk Mystery). I keep alert for birds of prey wherever I am, but I have not had one on my arm. However, we’ve had Phoenix the orange-winged Amazon parrot in our family for the last 27 years, and I have been content to have him on my hand and in my heart, if not in the wild blue sky.

Phoenix Q. Terrill

Tom and I spent much of September 2022 traveling. This year our road trip was at least 4,300 miles and we loved it, as usual.* We only camped by one great lake this year, but we did travel through 12 states. We visited with loved ones and walked on beaches, in forests, and on prairies. We enjoyed our travel on foot paths, back roads, dirt roads, and highways. Tom and I lunched in prosperous Glen Arbor, relaxed in the egalitarian comfort of campgrounds, and talked about sights to see with couple of Wisconsin bikers at Kitch-iti-kipi.

beach, Lake Michigan
Fayette Historic State Park, Michigan
bison and prairie grasses, Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, Oklahoma
Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore
Kitch-iti-Kipi, Manitisque, Michigan

Besides, Michigan, Tom and I camped in Iowa, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. We drank cold coffee and ate cold, but delicious, meals. Furthermore, for most of this trip, we didn’t even bother with putting up the tent; we just reclined on our the Subaru’s front seats and slept when the sky was dark.

dinner at the campsite

One thing was different this year: we had campfires at three different campsites. Tom and I are usually content to have the sunset be the dramatic display of the evening. It’s more environmentally sound, I think, than the big bonfires some campers build. Plus, who needs a campfire for cheese and meat sandwiches, especially when we weren’t packing marshmallows, Hersey bars, and graham crackers. This time it was different, though. I think–damn hot weather not withstanding–we needed the emotional warmth of the fire. The flickering yet steady light, the hopeful sparks flying upward, and feet warming on the firepit rim soothed us. Tom and I are grateful for the year we have had–we are still here and we are still okay. However, we continue to get older, and not so much wiser. How can it be that I have been tagging along with brothers Mike and George for 70 years? How is it that brothers Rog and Dan are missing somehow? Why do I still miss the stubborn and lovely beagle/basset, Randi? Now that I finally finished reading Will Bagley’s South Pass: Gateway to a Continent, I want to talk to him about it and where is he? I just read in the Washington Post today that the January 6th berserkers “…stashed weapons, ammunition and hand grenades in a Comfort Inn in Arlington County, Va….” That motel is a 0.9 mile walk from where I am now writing in my living room. What is happening to my beloved country? We needed that fire to comfort us at night just as the water, trees, and flowers did during the day.

Lake Michigan, September 2022
post oaks, Osage Hills State Park, Oklahoma
snow-on-the-mountain, Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, Oklahoma

We call them “roadtrips,” not just “camping trips.” We do so because although we enjoy camping in less frequented parks, forests, and the like, we also enjoy finding out-of-the-way museums and visiting little towns. I sometimes imagine the lives of the people who live on the farms and in the burgs we pass through. I imagine them to be mostly happy. Early in the trip, Tom and I stayed in Green Bay, Wisconsin for a couple of days. We went to the National Railroad Museum. I was prepared to be blasé about a museum dedicated to trains, but, if–in your peregrinations–you ever find yourself in Green Bay, I recommend it.

Near Pawhuska, Oklahoma
The Tree That Escaped the Crowded Forest, the Price Tower by Frank Lloyd Wright, Bartlesville, Oklahoma

Old food service people that we are, Tom and I also keeping trying to find good restaurants and bakeries along the road. I just counted and I find that Tom and I have traveled in 47 states together so far. That’s a lot of states for the number of good eateries we’ve found. That’s okay; we are still searching.

kolache and apple fritter, Rise N Shine Donuts, Amarillo, Texas

I have a list of places we’ve visited that includes, national parks and forests, state parks and forests, trails, monuments, historic sites, museums, restaurants and wonders of all kinds. So far, this document is five pages long. On the other hand, our still-need-to-explore list is eight pages long. It carries a heading that indicates the complexities and course changes of the current era: “Points of Interest for Trips Spring/Summer/Fall 2019/2020/2021/2022.” In fact, I probably originally started the list about ten years ago. We keep hoping and we do what we can. Speaking of course changes, Tom and I had planned on heading west to New Mexico, at least, and then north to see friends before we headed home, but that didn’t work out. Instead, we got to watch the sun rise in Arkansas on our way home.

dawn, Mt. Nebo State Park, Arkansas

I look forward to our next trip. Maybe it won’t be the months long trips we used to take, or maybe it will. I remain optimistic that we will hit the road again together. I feel like we–Tom and I, our family and friends, and our country–are on a challenging journey. My wish for us all may be expressed (yet again) by the Beatles. I wish you good sleep wherever you are.

*You can read about last year’s roadtrip here.

More Clouds

Last week when I was writing the article about my salad days and Joni Mitchell, I looked at some cloud photos I’ve taken. Below are several of my favorites.

Front Range late afternoon, Denver, Colorado, April 2012
Kolob Canyons, Zion National Park, Utah, February 2013
The Needles Overlook, Canyonlands, Utah, March 2013
Sunset, Antelope Island State Park, Great Salt Lake, April 2013
Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado, April 2013
Pawnee Buttes, Pawnee National Grassland, Colorado, August 2015
Union Bay, Lake Superior, Ontonagon, Michigan, September 2018
Mathews Arm Campground, Shenandoah National Park, Virginia, September 2020
Bartholdi Fountain, Bartholdi Garden, Washington, DC, August 2021
Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore, September 2021
dawn Upper Mississippi River, Pikes Peak State Park, Iowa, September 2021
from the grounds of the Netherlands Carillon, Arlington, Virginia, May 5, 2022

August 2022: Both Sides Now

Clouds at Point Imperial, North Rim of the Grand Canyon, September 2018

Like some others, I have been thinking about Joni Mitchell this past week. Mitchell* performed at the Newport Folk Festival on July 24, 2022 after not performing an entire set for many years. Unlike some of my friends, I haven’t listened to her much this last week. Not sure why that is, but I think it might be because Joni Mitchell is already in my blood like holy wine.

Some of you have heard this story before (and some of you lived it with me), but I want to write about it again. I am writing this article sitting in my chair. No music now, but there are clouds off to the right through the balcony window.

my chair below the Joni Mitchell drawing**
our balcony with clouds and plants

I think I first listened to Joni Mitchell’s music in the fall of 1968 when I was not quite 19 years old. It is possible that I heard Judy Collin’s version of “Both Sides Now” before I heard Mitchell’s own version. I liked both versions–then and now. Soon after, I heard Mitchell’s albums, probably on one of my college roommate’s record player. Then and now, when I hear those words and that voice–or just think of them as I am doing now–I am transported to another place. There is pain in that place, but the words and the voice I hear sing a strong and healing magic.

For several years when I was young, I would sing Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, and Joan Baez songs. This was quite a feat because I can’t–and never could–sing well, so I sang when I was alone. I sang Mitchell’s “Michael from Mountains,” “Tin Angel,” and “Blue” thinking of Tom. Sometimes I would sing as I walked at Lone Rock beach at Lake Powell near where I taught or while I drove the back roads of the Intermountain West, where I often didn’t have radio reception.

In 1973, I received a teaching fellowship for a Master’s degree in English at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. That was great (except for the stipend, of course, which was a meager $2,000 per year). Many of my Grand Canyon friends were in Salt Lake at the time and I met another lifelong friend there, my fellow teacher, Laura. I was still bewitched by the songs of Joni Mitchell and, because I wanted to study the English words that meant a great deal to me, I decided to write a thesis on the lyrics in Mitchell’s songs.

Many things happened: I taught freshman composition classes including reviewing hundreds of essays, I got married and shortly Tom and I were expecting a child. My plan on the thesis was to finish it before our first child was to be born in May of 1975. With one thing and another, I finally finished the thesis not long before our second child was born in May of 1977. Our friends from back in the day may remember me listening, writing, rewriting, stalling, obsessing, and worrying about the paper. I had elements of the thesis in various states of readiness for months, but the final version came together when I was able to spend a week working alone at our friend Sally’s apartment. My thesis was accepted and I remember the kind words of Professor Phil Sullivan–an aging hippie among the more standard issue faculty I had at Utah. Phil agreed with me that music lyrics could indeed be poetry. Rest in peace, Phil.

Note: You can tell how long ago all of this was because my thesis only covers Mitchell through Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975). It was also so long ago that I needed to hire a typist to type/format my paper into a form that the university would accept. That cost some money. What I remember most, though is how much it cost to copy the thesis. I wanted to make a copy of the thesis to send to Joni Mitchell. Each page back then would cost about one dollar to make a good copy. At a little over 100 pages, I didn’t feel I could afford to copy the thesis to send. I didn’t really know where I might send it anyhow. A Grecian Isle, a red dirt road in Spain, or California? Years passed. Mitchell kept writing, composing, and painting. I kept parenting, gardening, working (mostly in education), and listening to music.

title page

Mitchell sang “Both Sides Now” at the Newport Folk Festival on July 24. I did listen to it and I loved the rendition. Both Joni Mitchell and I are old now, so we have had ample opportunity to look at both sides of our lives with all those illusions and that winning and losing. I don’t really know life at all, but I am okay with that. I remember and still believe what Mitchell said in “Woodstock”: “I don’t know who I am but life is for learning.”

With all the years of  loving, winning, losing, and learning in my life, I was happy this morning to see that I still agree with the final sentence of my thesis: “Joni Mitchell, for her part, writes song poetry the way Dylan Thomas would have it, as ‘the rhythmic, inevitably narrative movement from overclothed blindness to a naked vision.'”


*When I started writing this piece, I automatically started writing “Joni” instead of “Joni Mitchell” or “Mitchell.” I don’t write “Will” for William Butler Yeats and I realize I want to equally acknowledge Mitchell’s gravitas, so I have written about her here formally.

**Artist and friend Howard Brough drew this portrait as a wedding gift for Tom and me in 1974. Howard also drew illustrations for Mitchell songs and two more portraits, which were included in the thesis. Thank you, Howard.

Almost Summer 2022

I have so many people and things to be grateful for and so many things to be worried and sad about that I find my thoughts and feelings ricocheting around in my aging brain. Because I feel lousy today (two negative Covid tests so far, but, who knows) I am trying to settle down and write. Note: It is now two days later and I am still feeling a little weary, but now I have bored myself so thoroughly, that I am writing again.

Grateful I know I have written this litany before, but here it is again: Family, friends, nature.

Worry and sadness Some part of me has felt worried and sad since the 2016 election. I take that back: I was worried and sad before, after Sandy Hook in 2012. Surely, I thought, we will change our laws and our society now. I had similar thoughts after Abu Ghraib. Heck, I thought things would change after Mai Lai. I must have told you this before as well: I thought we good-hearted and idealistic people would put an end to war (and ethnocentrism, inequality, etc. ) back in the 1960s. I am, of course, reeling over the pandemic, Ukraine, Uvalde and all the rest.

I also worry and sometimes feel sad about those on the my “grateful” list. I worry about my family near and far, friends here and there, and nature everywhere.

My assignment In high school, I was noted among my friends as a “stable” person. Not sure what that actually meant. Most of the time through the years, I have continued to be a glass half-full sort of person. I lean toward the hopeful side. I think I lean that way because my loved ones modeled that stance for me and it has helped me throughout my life. So, now, that I have used this post to clarify my thoughts and feelings, I need to drink from that half-full glass again.  My soul drinks in words, photos, and music.

Words

I have been thinking about William Wordsworth lately. That’s partly because my friends Donna and David will be walking in the Lake District this June, but also because my brother Dan loved Wordsworth. Plus, I think Wordsworth has some words for us:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn. (circa 1802)

sign seen at Van Aken Market Hall, Shaker Heights, Ohio

Photos

native spiderwort, Hillside Park, Arlington, Virginia

redbuds, Sky Meadows State Park

tulip poplar flower

pawpaw flower, Sky Meadows State Park

pawpaw flower, Sky Meadows State Park

pitch pine, New Jersey Pine Barrens

planting common milkweed along the W & OD Trail, Arlington, Virginia

Cook Forest State Park, Pennsylvania

swallowtail–first of the season

Photo and music

oak trees Westbound Van Aken Boulevard, Shaker Heights, Ohio

oak trees Westbound Van Aken Boulevard, Shaker Heights, Ohio

Because,” John Lennon and Paul McCartney, 1969

 

 

 

 

Spring 2022

I find myself thinking of the other two springs of our pandemic (e.g., the last trip to the museum in March 2020, the relief with the second vaccination in March 2021). Now, I think about war and children, family and friends–many here and some gone away. Some mornings, I find it hard to get out of bed. This week, however, I can still blame it on the recent change to Daylight Savings Time. I do, by the way, get out of bed–usually by 6:15 A.M. or earlier. I have my coffee and toast with peanut butter and banana, I do my old person stretches as the sun rises, and then I try to do useful things through the day. Generally, the more I do, the better the days are. Now that the weather is warming and the daylight is increasing, I feel more hopeful–in spite of the loneliness of missing far away family and friends, sickness, war, and social strife. I think I am feeling more happy because it is spring in this still beautiful world. Happy Spring!

arugula seedlings
crane-fly orchid, Piscataway Park, Maryland
pear tree and fence, National Colonial Farm at Piscataway Park
Potomac River at Piscataway Park, March 2022
lobelia on our balcony
cherry blossoms and branch, Tidal Basin, March 22, 2022
morning, Tidal Basin, March 22, 2022
Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, March 22, 2022

Happy New Year, 2022

When I first considered writing this article, I briefly thought about calling it just “New Year, 2022.” This would be my snarky comment about the state of the continuing pandemic, our national politics, climate disasters, and just about everything else. My terse title would say: nope, not expecting happy things this year either. Almost immediately, though, I remembered that snarky and cynical don’t look well on me. More importantly, I see that all jumbled up with my weariness and anxiety are bits of happiness (or contentment or, at least, acceptance).*

January 31 As it is, I have put off finishing this post until the last day of the month. Luckily, Lunar New Year is beginning, so I am coming in just under the wire. Here is a list of things that make me feel better about going into a new year. I need this list to remind myself of all the good parts of my life.

The people abide. I walk by playgrounds and I see children playing as they always do. Parents are keeping an eye on the kids as parents do. Every time we go to the National Mall, Tom and I see people enjoying the museums, gardens, the ice rink, and food trucks. Despite the continual dose of disturbing news–let alone the wars and rumors of wars–I see helpers and kind people around me every day. I see the workers at my condo and my local grocery store, and those who seek out and help all the lost and lonely ones.

Mosaic Park, Arlington, Virginia

My county still has heart. Tom and I first moved to Arlington County, Virginia in June 1978 and have lived here on an off since. Our children went to school here. In the 1980s we lived a couple blocks from Arlington CentraI Library where I worked part-time. Later I taught immigrants and refugees in Arlington. We were here on September 11, 2001 and saw the Pentagon burning. Again, three decades later, we live a couple blocks from Central Library. Now, in Covid times, Central Library has free WiFi for all in the parking lot, a food pantry, a vegetable patch, and is surrounded by a native plant garden. Most importantly, perhaps, is the library’s strong stand as a safe place for everyone in the community.

Arlington Central Library, Arlington, Virginia

Nature comforts me. I find both wonder and solace in the plants, animals, rocks, and sky that I encounter.

sycamore, Theodore Roosevelt Island
oak tree, Arlington, VA
frog at Long Branch Nature Center
Shenandoah National Park, 2021

Dawn comes. Every day we see the morning light. We follow that light through the day until it is evening. All the light warms us.

dawn comes

We have family, friends, music, and food. I remember the many good parts of my life. I also remember those who have gone. I have listened to Tom play Mozart sonatas almost every day of the pandemic and I feel lucky. It’s the time of year when I remember “Auld Lang Syne.” I shiver or cry or both when I hear the song. I want and need that cup.

For old acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind
Should old acquaintance be forgot
In the days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne
We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet
For the sake of auld lang syne

Hope is still around here somewhere. So many words from the wise ones exhort people to live for the day, be in the present, etc. I am on board with that-not that I can do it all that much. I still spend plenty of emotional time in the past and the future, and I am not sure that is all bad. Just a couple of weeks ago, I made camping reservations for early June in Arizona and Utah. Tom and I don’t know how we will feel or how things will be shaping up with the pandemic. We don’t know much of anything. However, we remember the places and people we love from the old days. Maybe we can get to the North Rim another time. Maybe we can visit Capitol Reef and camp on the Aquarius Plateau. Maybe we can go back to Fishlake National Forest and be near Pando (a clonal colony of quaking aspen considered by some to be the largest single living organism on earth) one more time. Maybe we will drink a cup of kindness again with the friends of our youth (now of our age). I am hoping.

I recently bought a new head lamp. I am hoping it will lead me through dark nights to bright dawns.

my new headlamp

*If I were grading this essay, I would comment on the need for more specific language than “happiness” or “contentment.” I hope the examples and the photos add some heft to the words. Happy New Year! (Added 1/31/2022: Chúc mừng năm mới).

U.P., Up, and Away

the view from our campsite on Lake Superior, Ontonagon Township, Michigan

Tom and I have been taking road trips together since 1971: fifty years in and we still love them. We went on another road trip from September 1 to October 2, 2021. This trip could be fairly summarized as: nine family members, three great lakes, two pleasant peninsulas, fourteen states, and 4,500 miles. Also, Tom and I went on six hikes where no one shared our trail;  we saw old growth trees including giant, healthy eastern hemlocks and hundred foot birches, and we learned to love the bluffs of the upper Mississippi and the river itself.  Our trip was balm to our societal-disintegrated and pandemic-battered minds, souls, and bodies. We mostly took short 3 to 5 mile hikes, punctuated with longer hikes (11+ miles at Sleeping Bear). Still, I was happy to see that my hiker’s leg muscles came back.

Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore

eastern hemlock, Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, Michigan

I have other photos (see below) and stories: happy times visiting brothers and sisters-in-law and nieces and great-nieces; plus eating those delicious camp meals again–hummus, chips, carrots, local sausage, and Amy’s chili. Once we got to the Upper Peninsula, we left the poison ivy behind and found ferns, flowers, and fungus galore. On part of the journey, Tom and I traveled along the Great River Road along the Mississippi River. We had never heard of this road and, now, we have another part of the country to love. A young bald eagle soared near us as we stood on the bluffs above the Mississippi River at the Effigy Mounds National Monument.

dawn, Upper Mississippi River

Other Parts of the Journey Tom and I–fully vaccinated since March–both contracted the Delta variant, probably somewhere in the Upper Peninsula.  Also, three of our loved ones died. This trip, even with its aftermath of illness, death, and mourning was fabulous.  My major struggle lately has been trying to write the words about the ones who have gone away.

Randi Tom and I camped in Pike’s Peak State Park in Clayton County, Iowa for three nights. Yes, this Pike’s Peak was also named for Zebulon Pike who explored the upper Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains in the early 1800s. The park was an unexpectedly lovely oasis and one of the highlights of our trip.  On the first afternoon at Pike’s Peak, we pitched our tent and headed out for a walk. We headed to a lookout point high above the Mississippi. We took a hike to see (and to feel) the Bear Mound (a ceremonial burial site constructed by indigenous people of an earlier time) and to take a look at the Bridal Veil Falls. All of it: the forest and the sun and the clear air and the whiff of fall caught us up into a perfect afternoon.  Chinkapin oaks and hickories and butternuts had already been dropping their acorns and nuts. Hearty and vigorous squirrels crashed through fallen leaves with, it seemed, some delight. I had a strong vision of Randi (our daughter Sarah and son-in-law Mike’s dog) and how she would love this forest.  Randi, a beagle/basset, likes nothing more than smelling squirrels, barking much louder than her weight class.  I didn’t say chasing squirrels: Randi just loves smelling the squirrely trails; she doesn’t need the squirrels themselves. I thought of Randi at least twice on that walk and mentioned to Tom how Randi would love this high forest near the great river.  The next day an early morning text came from Sarah. Randi, who had been suffering with late stage kidney disease had died.  Through tears, I told Sarah about the prior day’s thoughts about Randi in the forest. The sun and air had been special–as it can be in a cathedral forest. Sarah and I agreed; maybe before Randi left this particular reality, we think maybe she stopped by to share our perfect afternoon.  What do I know? I am an old woman crying in a Panera as I write this.  One thing I am pretty sure of is that all dogs go to heaven.*

Randi visiting us December 2019

Randi visiting us December 2019

Will I didn’t know Will Bagley very well, but I did love and do love him. Will married my lifelong friend, Laura in 2003.** A few years after that, I was going to be conducting professional development workshops for adult English as a second language (ESL) teachers somewhere in the west–maybe Montana. I can’t remember.  What I do remember is that I had a stopover in Salt Lake City where Laura and Will lived.  They said they would pick me up at the airport and drive me down to Zion National Park. I was exhausted from my workshops and I slept part of the way.  We reached Springdale in the dark of the night and I woke in the morning surrounded by my old friend Laura, my new friend Will, and my red rock refuge for the first time in twenty years.  We three walked and talked and I bought a pair of socks at the Zion Lodge gift shop. I haven’t been able to throw away these worn-out holey socks because they remind me of friendship, love, and refuge.

Paraphrasing Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web: It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Will was both.

desert socks from Zion National Park

Tom and I got back to Arlington on October 2.  In Arlington we tested positive for Covid-19, which was no surprise.  In the latter half of September, I had felt like I had the flu with a little cough and aches and chills. At first, it was a little difficult to tell what I had because we were tent camping and a few aches and chills go with the territory. Tom followed with similar symptoms. A couple of day after we got home, we got the call that my brother Dan had died of Alzheimer’s disease.

Dan I have a lifetime of memories of Dan: from early years in Detroit and Milford to the middle years in Ann Arbor, Dodge City, Kansas and Lemoyne, Pennslyvania to the later years on our Deep Creek family reunion weekends. For all his brilliance–and he shone brightly with style and grace and rock and roll songs or poetry ever on his lips–it is Dan’s kindness I remember most. Circa 1970, when Dan and his wife Jeanne lived in Ypsilanti they watched over the baby sister–me–eight miles away in Ann Arbor. They hosted my 21st birthday party in their small apartment. A few years later, Dan and Jeanne’s home in Dodge City was my beacon as I crisscrossed the country between Michigan and the Intermountain West. I could go on, but I I don’t know if I can trust my own words to do justice to this good brother. A couple of months ago, on this blog, I dedicated Dylan Thomas’ Fern Hill to Dan. While not exactly a prince of our apple town, he was the fair-haired and bold youth with the golden ’36 Ford with the corvette engine.  Enough. Let Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey say the words.

These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man’s life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

 

*Maybe you caught it: I wasn’t quite able to write all of Randi’s verbs in past tense. Not yet.

**Laura is not exactly a “lifelong” but since our teaching fellow days beginning in 1973; close enough.


Lake Superior, Ontonagon, Michigan

Lake Superior, Ontonagon, Michigan

in the Upper Peninsula

in the Upper Peninsula

yellow patches (Amanita flaoconia?) near Cascade Falls, Ottawa National Forest

yellow patches (Amanita flaoconia?) near Cascade Falls, Ottawa National Forest

asters, Wyalusing State Park, Wisconsin