better living through bibliography for dark days

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages will show."

--Charles Dickens

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all...

--Emily Dickinson

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."

--Mahatma Gandhi

One regret, dear world,
That I am determined not to have
When I am lying on my deathbed
Is that
I did not kiss you enough.

--Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky

"I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dryrot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."

--Jack London

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

--Mary Oliver

california dreamin'

i'm getting ready - again - to head to california soon, and i'm absolutely thrilled. i answered a little questionnaire the other day that began "what was your favorite place to visit as a child?" and i had to put: california. where did i go this past summer? california. where did i go last spring, the first recreational trip since moving back to the states? that's right. california.

i've got mixed feelings about california in general, just like i've got mixed feelings about a lot of things - like america, and religion. but that doesn't stop me from loving the hell out of it.

as a kid, california represented the golden land of opportunity to me - just like it does to so many other people. the first time i ever went there, i must have been about 10 or 11, to sacramento. i didn't care so much about opportunity and golden lands at that time, but i cared about food, and they had orange trees, right there on the street! i was blown away. i took one look at that, and figured a person would never starve in california - you could just walk down the street, eating oranges all day. and oranges meant two other things, besides free food: sunshine and warmth. there had to be sunshine, and warmth, and lots of it, for there to be oranges, just growing along the sidewalk like that. what can i say? i fell in love. even though, as an oregonian, i had been raised on california-hatred with my mother's milk, as they say. i was born in the tom mccall era, for chrissakes. you know, the whole "Come visit us again and again. This is a state of excitement. But for heaven's sake, don't come here to live." A-1 on our shit list, throughout the 80s and 90s: californias, and all the property-value-increase and fancy-lettuce-demanding that went along with the consistent steady stream of in-migrants from that state to the south.

so i tried to fight it, that first inkling of forbidden fruit. but who can fight true love? the second time i fell in love with california was when i was 18. i drove down the coast with a friend. we landed in LA, rounded up some friends, and headed east to joshua tree in the middle of the night. although i was mesmerized by - and a little frightened by - my first night in the desert, it was when the sun rose that i fell completely, head-over-heels in love, this time with the california desert.

the room! the space! the crisp air! to a northwesterner, there's no bigger contrast to our cramped, moss-covered, excessive-plant-exhaling atmosphere (i mean, really...who needs that much oxygen?), no bigger contrast to our choked, can't-move-through sea of intertwined vegetation. i woke up and saw that i could see, could actually see, for miles and miles. i could have run for miles and miles, with nothing, nothing to stop me! in the oregon coast range, you can't even walk across the landscape. it's slog, pushing with all your might, against the dense salal and ferns, and step high over the impenetrable thickets, and then - there's a damn 8-foot diameter tree down right in front of you, that you have to walk 200 feet along to cross, or scramble over. there's no running, ever. there was only one word to describe that awakening, up with the sun, lookin out across that vast, beautiful expanse of openness - magical, truly magical. i was spellbound.

the best description i've ever read sums it up in this sentence:

no, wait, i can't just skip to the end. the whole post is too good. it's from a brilliant blog that hasn't been updated since 2008, which is too bad. here's the gist of this post though (see http://feemus.blogspot.com/2008_02_24_archive.html for the whole legitimate thing):

"I live now in the Northeast, but I’m from the Northwest. And if you’re from the West, and anywhere north of Monterey, I think it’s encoded in your DNA to believe that Los Angeles is the place where quality of life and human decency go to die. 
...I went on my vacation, which coincidentally was a hiking trip in California's central coast area. My hiking buddy is an old friend who lives in the Northwest but is French. We got to the top of some very pretty mountain which looked out over a beautiful valley, the sparkling ocean, and about four other gorgeous mountain ranges, and he asked, "So why exactly is it that everyone hates California?"

My first reaction was to clarify: "We don't hate California, we hate Southern California." But he pointed out that two years ago we had an equally terrific hiking trip, and a more visually stunning one, in the Mojave. He also pointed out that I actually like Los Angeles when I'm there, just not when I think about it.

So I tried harder to explain why we have this fascination with and simultaneous antipathy toward Southern California. ...

Then I realized something. I told my friend: "California is for us what the US is for Europe." If Oregon is California's Canada, then California is America's America: big, rich, powerful, and vulgar."

well, that's it, right there (with a slight modification): oregon is america's canada, and california is america's america. i love it, and hate it, for all the same reasons that i love, and hate, america: the vast expanses of open space; the impression of bounty neverending; the desert, mountains, ocean, trees; the whole complicated, convoluted history: gold rush, mining, shenanigans, land grabs, tribal decimation, spanish influence; diversity of people and thoughts; the modern era of hollywood and the good life and yes, arugula - california is all the crazy best and worst all jumbled together in a huge, chaotic mixing pot that occasionally explodes, but still - is "working on things". and working on things means the hope that the golden land exists, that opportunity is there.

i don't live there, it's true. in some ways it's exhausting just being around all that possibility, and i like the quiet life up here. our history is not so colorful, our population not so colorful, which is to our detriment, it's true. but for all that, i'm glad to be next door. it's like living next to the most lively, popular person in town, the one who has the most beautiful house, the most fabulous parties, that you can go visit anytime, but can leave when the drama all gets to be too much. when you don't feel the need to run, run, run anymore.

we were just back from europe 3 months when we went to california in 2008. heading back across the desert on the freeway between LA and las vegas, we encountered a traffic jam. according to the radio - truly - a semi-truck full of salsa had overturned on the freeway and there were thousands of pints of salsa spread all over the two lanes headed east. the why wasn't important so much. we had been camping in the backcountry of the mojave national preserve and for the past two or three days hadn't seen a single person. now i got out of our little rental car, amidst the unexpected complete stop, and basked in the sheer wonder of america. and by this i mean: the people everywhere were popping out of their cars, they were chatting, they were laughing, about the stoppage. they were comparing notes. there were at least 3 or 4 languages wafting on the cold spring desert morning air. there were at least 4 colors of skin mingling. everyone was in it together on that east california freeway, folks from the south, folks from the north, local folks passing though, people looking for solitude, people looking for sin city, all of us looking for the promised land, all of us not minding being waylaid for those few moments.

my heart wears a black turtleneck (or, my inner french soul)

i was having a nice conversation the other day with my tarot card reader, who happens to be french (i mean that in the real way, like born in france and even has an accent, not the american way, like some one of his most recent 32 ancestors was french), about views on life and the like, and he said, "but you're french!"

he clarified by explaining it this way: "you know french movies? there is never any closure, and in french books, you finish and look around for the gun."  his point was that some people are by nature very positive, seeing the bright side of things, and some are by nature more negative; and that some cultures are more positive, literal, and emphasize the bright side, while some more naturally emphasize introspection, the grey areas of life, and...make you want to shoot yourself, i guess.

i laughed, because i thought it was a funny thing to say, especially coming from a french person. but i should have said, "i'm not french, i'm from the oregon coast!"

the second best book about the oregon coast is uncle mike's guide to the real oregon coast, by michael burgess. it is geared to the first-time visitor and has things like this in it:

"Don't bother putting your best foot forward. Your villagers are simply too miserable to care. Nothing you do, not even throwing your life away and joining them, will change things. These are humans who, from the cradle to the grave, never really get warm and dry, and it's foolish to think their inner child is somehow nourished by the gloom and damp."

"The first rule is not to try and fit in...Your best approach is to regard the nasty bit of nowhere you've come to as a theme park for the depressed, and the villagers as hired rustics with wet blankets to sell".

which came first - the personality, or the environment?

and the ennui of france & the french - or anywhere in europe, for that matter - that world-weary, nuanced view of the world that comes with having been a country, in one form or another, for thousands of years. thousands of years of experience with wars, revolutions, religions, fads - that will make a society a little grey around the edges.

which came first, the personality or the society?

it's funny, because as i was thinking about this post, i remembered some writing i was doing while on the train in france, my first visit there, in 2005. what struck me was how america is really just a teenager on the globe - and, how like a teenager, we - as a country - are loud, impetuous, impulsive, exhuberant, with little ability to think through what the implications of our actions will be, little knowledge of or empathy for others, self-centered, anti-intellectual, and living for the moment.

from my journal that day:

it seems strange but i love the absolute human-ness of the landscape. i love the quiet, settled human dominance, the lack of struggle for supremacy - both supremacy over nature as well as supremacy about whether the preservation of wilderness has any merit in and of itself. it is a moot point here; the issue has already been decided by 2000 years of settlement, during which time most of human effort has been dedicated to eating, having children, and surviving wars with each other. people smile less. but they are not so naive, so full of youthful impetuosity. i used to love that aspect of americanism most of all. now maybe as i see its negative effects on others, it's only natural that i should also seek out a more somber, serious place, without the predominance of absolute rhetoric, without the lack of responsibility for the health and welfare of others, without the emphasis on freedom at all costs...

hack away at that hypothesis - it's full of holes, i know. i'm just telling you that when i was riding on the train through france, in the aftermath of bush's reelection, that is what i was thinking of, and a little fucking societal perspective on the grey areas of life sounded pretty damn good.

was i ready to move to europe? you bet your ass. i just didn't realize it was maybe in part because my inner frenchy was longing for some native soil - that my oregon-coastal soul had found a society to match out there. because maybe for those of us from the coast, the environmental greyness of our youth produces the same personality effect as historical greyness of a society.

i also didn't realize that it was in fact the first step in my patriot retraining program (PTPtm). but more on that later.

more learning - imagine that!

the great thing about being in school is that you're constantly learning new things.

(of course, the downside to being back in school is that you're constantly learning new things, too. for example, my math professor is fond of saying, "consider a set..." or "consider the relationship..." which, in my opinion, simply begs the retort: "how about we don't consider it, and go home instead?" this reached the maximum of ridiculousness at our recent midterm, which i no doubt failed. the last question began, "consider an arbitrary universe...". you can perhaps imagine what my impulse response was. hint: it wasn't the answer.)

anyway, originally i was going to write this about the great things i'm learning in a fire management class, but that got preempted by a seminar i attended the other day. the main speaker was a man who, at age 88, is mostly retired, but who has been a major force in the rural studies field. he had an interesting talk about a conceptual frame for considering rural places, something i'm genuinely interested in.

then the discussant got up. a professor at psu's urban studies program, he proceeded to talk about regionalism in general, and where we could go from here as a rural studies program. in his brief talk, he said several things that were so fabulous i intend to steal them and run with them in my own future work. until then, i at least have to give them breathing room here.

first was the notion that perhaps, as technology advances, place becomes more important, not less. part of the difficulty in advancing a philosophy of 'place matters' is that, with our increasingly homogenized landscape, we may be moving to a future in which built places are no longer so different from each other. his point, however, was that increasing technology has enabled more choice in people's location decisions - thus, enabling place to matter more. if i can choose to live anywhere, that says more about where i do live.

he also talked about the fact that, along with this, as people choose more consciously where to live, the importance of place is allowed to interact more with their lives. as an example, he used a jazz musician in portland; a world class caliber musician who chose to live in portland and is now, instead of seeking to make his music more cosmopolitan - instead of striving to be more truly urban and fit into the music capitals of the world - is seeking to identify, purposefully, what role living in portland may have on his music. in other words, letting the region influence his music and work. a la dvorak, coming to the US - but maybe the first time a classical musician went to portland to be influenced by the region.

two classic views of regionalism are that you can define your region in opposition to the whole - rural is what urban isn't - or, you can define by what it contributes to the whole - rural is the things that it contributes to the overall state. here the discussant also made an excellent point about oregon in particular. we have an outstanding opportunity - should we want it - to explore this idea of rural and urban in our own little exemplary, non-standard place - oregon. not only is our one urban area not very urban, in the grand scheme of things, our rural areas also aren't the typical rural. portland as an urban area doesn't even register on the national or global scene. and certainly, one of the defining things about oregon is their interconnectedness - a rural resident can easily drive into portland and be comfortable, and our urban residents surely spend more time than the average in rural areas. isn't that outdoor lifestyle what Oregon's all about?

well, for those of us excited by ideas but getting lost in the math sometimes, and forgetting the magic of possibility and thinking of ways to redefine where we are and how we identify ourselves, all this was a much-needed motivational shot in the arm. at least until the midterm grades come back.

"all that the rain promises"

i'm not a good sleeper. i often spend a large portion of my nighttime awake. lately it's usually a cat or a kid inside, or a screeching raccoon fight outside, that wakes me up. once awake, there are then a million things that can keep me awake: hooting owls, random thoughts, the rain and wind.

last night, trying to get to sleep at about 1 am, all i could hear was the sound of the pouring rain. it had been pouring steadily for hours. once i focused solely on that sound, i was suddenly overcome with an extreme feeling of peace and contentment. i'm so happy we don't live in the middle of an apartment building; it is the unique patter of heavy, solid rain on the roof above and broad green leaves - like the large rhododendron outside my bedroom window - that is the sound i remember from my childhood. rain is never far from a northwesterner, from anything we write or talk about; and suddenly a phrase popped into my head, clearly connected in some way to something literary: "all that the rain promises". what was it from? it's not from the usual rain-soaked PNW literary oeuvre ("The Good Rain", by Egan; "It Rains All The Time" by Laskin; etc etc). finally i remembered: it's nothing more nor less than the title of a mushroom identification book by everyone's favorite wacky mycologist, david arora.

still, i love that phrase. it seems somehow so meditative and evocative and hopeful. it kept running through my head last night (this morning), resonating something deep inside. all that the rain promises. all that the rain promises. what does the rain promise (apart from mushrooms)? why do i love it so much?

to me, it promises green, growing, living things; it promises the need for a hot cup of coffee and fires in fireplaces; it promises books to read and a repetitive sound to lull me to sleep; it promises flowers and trees and yes, mushrooms, streams and fish; it promises a slowing down, a rest, a family pulled together for the fall, winter and spring.

what does the rain promise to you?

in the interest of time

let's face it, loyal (15) readers, this going-back-to-school thing is kicking my ass, no two ways about it.

i have several posts in line but can't seem to find the time to complete anything these days, not even simple knitting projects.

but just to keep y'all interested, i'm going to take a moment to promote a blog i stumbled across and love:

http://www.weathersealed.com/

i don't know how this guy can do it - or exactly what it is - but it's almost invariably great. be sure and check out the recent post on everyone's favorite governator and an uncanny coincidence in a letter he wrote...

http://www.weathersealed.com/2009/10/30/wild-coincidence/

and especially, if you look at nothing else, read this enormously clever look at regional speak via word clouds from internet-harvested blogs and social sites, comparing the relative frequencies of words used in the northeast as compared to the south...

http://www.weathersealed.com/2009/10/07/of-mason-and-dixon/

there, now you have something to read this long afternoon. enjoy! i'll be back soon to promote the blogs that i love that are actually produced by people i love. how fabulous that is!

in which i finally, really, give a shit about climate change

i can't stop thinking about the redwoods. before this summer, i hadn't been there in quite a while, so i was awestruck anew at them. redwoods are awesome. they are superlative in size, incredible to see in person. they are masters of their environment, overseeing all other trees. they are like nothing else on the planet.

in looking for more specifics to understand redwoods, i turn to the dry but essential 1965 version of "Silvics of Forest Trees of the United States", old Ag Handbook No. 271, from the USFS. they have this to say in part about the fantastic coastal redwood, a.k.a. Sequoia sempervirens:

"This redwood belt...is an irregular coastal strip about 450 miles long and generally 5 to 35 miles wide. ... The frequent summer fogs which blanket the redwood region seem to be more important than the amount of precipitation in delineating the redwood type. ... The range of this tree is limited to areas where heavy summer fogs provide a humid atmosphere."

our friends at the USDA forest service (this edition compiled and revised by one H.A. Fowells) go on to explain to us several key facts, eventually: that redwood trees grow from sea level to about 3000' in elevation, but don't tolerate ocean winds, and so don't grow directly on or facing the ocean; that they reach their maximum development on alluvial soils (i.e., floodplains); that redwoods sprout from the stem or base if the top is damaged or removed; that they are, indeed, the tallest trees in the world, maxing out at 368' (in 1956); that redwood stands are dense, supporting nearly 1,000 stems per acre at 20 years; that redwood trees have no major tree-killing diseases; that old redwood stands show evidence of three major fires per 1000 years, but that old trees survive by virtue of their foot-thick bark. foot-thick! there's no exclamation points in the original, as you well may guess; Fowells et al do not let themselves tend toward exuberance. that's ok, because anyone reading it must pause at that statement, and exclaim to whomever is sitting near, while holding out their hands just so: foot thick bark! that is astounding!

the far more entertaining and poetic "A Natural History of Western Trees", by Donald Peattie, with an original copyright of 1950, at least attempts to capture more of what is so awe-inspiring about redwoods:

"In all the world there is no other forest growth like that of the Redwood. It is at once the tallest and the densest of stands - not dense like the jungle's tangled quantities of trees, lianas, and undergrowth, for the Redwood groves are spaciously open to your footsteps - but dense in the sheer volume of standing timber. ... The [transition into redwood forests] is like stepping into a cloister, one infinitely more spacious and lofty than any raised by man, and closing the door behind you on the bright secular world. ... Your footfalls make no sound on the needles and moss that have lain there for centuries. Your body makes no shadow in that green, lake-like diffused light. ... But this solemnity is not like that of a church or tomb; it is enlivened by the soft dispute of a stream with its bed... And now and then the treetops utter a slow, distant sea-hush, a sigh that passes, and then comes again, as if it were the breathing of a life beside which our lives are as a single day. ...

"And they are mighty past telling. Their enormously swelled bases are buttressed with great lynx-like claws, as if the trees gripped the earth to keep their balance. ..."

what does all this mean? well, from an ecological viewpoint, redwoods are specialists. they fit so thoroughly, so completely, in their narrow ecological niche, they survive only in this almost-coastal, fog-belt laden strip 5 to 30 miles wide and 450 miles long. fires are infrequent here, but when they come, redwoods survive by virtue of the incredible thickness of their bark. one sees many, many still-living trees where the bottom has been completely hollowed out; first the heartwood was weakened by fire, but the strong sapwood remains, keeping the tree alive. floods are frequent here, so redwoods have enormously spreading roots to anchor them firmly into soggy soil and let them take advantage of the nutrient-rich floodplain soil. should they topple over, they sprout back up again from all around the stem. given no windthrow, catastrophic fire, or other such disturbance, they can live over 2000 years.

actually, redwoods are more than specialists; they are master craftspeople. lots of plants are specialists; little particular species or variants of species that survive in small pockets here and there, where some certain condition is just right. what really separates the redwoods from the rest of the endemic plant crowd is the way they are able to parlay their special environment into the most spectacular growth possible. like most conifers, they are able to photosynthesize long into the winter season; in the dry summers, they capture fog and drip it down to the forest floor to the equivalent tune of an estimated several inches' worth of rain. they are so successful that redwood groves can support incredible amounts of woody biomass.

what does this have to do with climate change? sure, i care about climate change, believe it's human caused, believe we should do what we can to mitigate it, etc etc etc. i toe the party line, so to speak. but deep down inside, i can't get worked up about the possible disappearance of some of the more obscure species at risk. i understand why they are important; that we never know in advance the possible ripple effects of loss of a species. who knew a little rabbit could wreak havoc on australia, or that possums could almost single-handedly defoliate much of new zealand? i understand why we should care. i even get really excited when i see an unusual plant. i'm just saying that, deep down inside, i'm not convinced that every species is equally important for ecosystem functioning. i've also been coming to appreciate more and more the impermanence of all ecosystems; even the old-growth forests of the oregon coast range have fluctuated greatly over time, settling on thier current form as recently as 1,000 years ago. things come and go; they ebb and flow. mass species extinction should be avoided, of course. but in many specific instances, it's easy to imagine that an endemic species could disappear with nary a blip in the ecosystem overall.

ah, but the redwoods - those highly specialized masters! what if the climate changes, the fog declines, the fires and floods increase, new insects that can bore through the bark are able to migrate into their habitat? what then? my world, minus a special bluebell - not so different. but my world, minus the redwoods? that would be tragic. to never again stand in those groves, taller than any other on the planet, taller than imagining? to never again touch the crisscrossing bark? to have them as dinosaurs, existing only in dreams? to never again be able to lay down in that perfect cathedral, hearing only the distant hush of the ocean? that would be losing something, for everyone. and standing there, contemplating the possibility of the disappearance of such a marvelous thing, such an ancient craftsman as an old-growth redwood, i suddenly could motivate my lip service to worrying about climate change. climate change appears like a coming industrial revolution, with the potential to render obsolete so many of our natural master crafters.

in the aforementioned book "A Natural History of Western Trees", the author discusses the initial preservation of redwood groves (which began at the local and then the state level, not the national) with these final sentiments. can we rally round the redwoods once again, with the threat of the possible loss of their ecosystem this time instead of chainsaws?

"...For the members of some of the sponsoring organizations live in Iowa or Vermont, in Geeorgia or New York. The great majority of them are probably not persons of wealth at all. They gave anonymously, they gave purely, they gave to the future, to people yet unborn; they gave not only to the country but to the world. And they gave out of a deep religious feeling that the beauty and the age and greatness that here have risen from the earth to tower above us are holy and shall not be profaned." 

amen to that, brother.