January 16 and 17, 2007

Snow is falling again. Our recent long stretch of frigid, snowy weather might not seem particularly remarkable were I writing from New England or the Midwest at this time of year, but here at the Nature Center, it is a full-blown meteorological anomaly. Since moving to Lost Valley nearly ten years ago, I have never seen snow stick on the ground down at our valley-floor level for more than a few days at a time, although snow in the hills surrounding us has been a frequent (though not constant) wintertime sight. This year, after spending two weeks visiting family in usually-snowy Ohio and New Jersey, and seeing not a flake of snow there, I am struck by the winter-wonderland quality that set in here soon after I returned ten days ago. Over the last couple months, high winds and storms have toppled some trees and caused brief power outages, but most of us have had little reason to complain about the "real winter" we're now experiencing. To what extent it's a symptom of global climate change, we can never be sure. (However, if you haven't seen the "special features" on the recently-issued DVD of An Inconvenient Truth, which provide updates on the material in the original film, I would recommend them highly.)

Birds have been evident in abundance--sometimes ground-feeding in full force at midday when the sun has come out and temperatures have inched above freezing. A wide variety of sparrows, ruby-crowned kinglets, American robins, northern flickers, chickadees, and others have been busy seeking calories amongst the vegetation. Flocks of colorful varied thrushes--more than I have ever seen together in one place--have been exploring the trees and ground around my cabin and near the lodge, while a downy woodpecker has been attempting to excavate below my eves. Many buds are starting to swell--including those of red-flowering currant, osoberry, and sweet cherry. Eating snow off of drooping fir boughs, while contemplating these subtle red and green hints of spring amidst the browns and grays of deciduous branches, is one of life's pleasures--and it's not available every year.

Over the past month, weather, travel, our extensive community visioning meetings of last week, and my gradually-healing knee injury have reduced the amount of time I've been able to spend on the trails, but allowed more time for reading. Last e-newsletter, I mentioned The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner. I followed that with Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Ruth Wall Kimmerer--a poetic, edifying book which combines science, indigenous knowledge, cultural observation, and personal reflection. Beautifully written, it offers a new view into these fascinating organisms that are often below our scale of normal perception. Botany for Gardeners by Brian Capon, while more of a typical plant textbook and reference, is nevertheless wonder-inducing as well, explaining some of the mechanisms and phenomena at work in the plant world, including the simple fact that despite our cleverness, we have still not figured out exactly how plants do some of the things that they do. David James Duncan's God Laughs and Plays may have struck the deepest chords of any of my wintertime reading materials. Duncan's thoughtful, evocative storytelling and reflections on everything from fly-fishing to preaching also cut to the core of many of the fundamental questions of existence: the nature of human experience, where we fit in relation to the rest of the living world, where we can look for guidance, what anything means, and why we should care.

I also had a chance to read two memoirs by one of my father's high school classmates, Ruth Mugridge Snodgrass. Dark Brown Is the River and On Goes the River paint pictures of a very different time (the 1930s and 1940s in Hollsopple and Somerset, Pennsylvania), in which life seems much less frenetic, technologically (and medically) advanced, media-saturated, and full of seemingly endless choices than it is today for most of us. In that world, one's family, neighbors, community, and home bioregion (including occasionally dramatic weather events like the Johnstown flood) seemed to form the basis of one's reality and be the crucible of one's identity. An apparently much greater awareness of and sensitivity to the natural world (and to what one needed to do to survive within it, as a vulnerable species prone to obviously "hard" as well as prosperous times) necessarily accompanied this way of life. But some of you reading this already know this far better than I do, having lived through it. With the end of cheap fossil fuel and of the illusion of boundlessness that has gotten our species to where it is today, perhaps, whether by choice or by necessity, we'll rediscover that "small is beautiful" ethic, the power of personal story, and the importance of building community locally. If we are to leave any legacy other than "crash and burn" to the generations which follow, I suspect it will be because we rediscovered some of the wisdom that guided our ancestors in coping, collectively, with the challenges of their times--and because we recognized that our own lives are, in fact, significant, even if they never make headlines.

These books have all helped shed light on various potential projects here at the Nature Center. Additional writing and documentation are obvious next steps in the Nature Center's development, but (as was true when I attempted to write a "straight" organic gardening guidebook eleven years ago, and ended up writing a gardening songbook instead) I cannot seem to wrap my talents around the conventional, scientific way of writing about things. Even focusing simply on natural history in these e-newsletters can seem like a stretch, because my vision fluctuates between "outside" and "inside," and (though I have never been institutionalized for this) my hearing shifts between the sounds of nature, embodied or disembodied music, and my inner "voices" (like the one that is dictating this e-newsletter).

Talking Leaves magazine, which we published for eight years, seemed to provide a perfect outlet for this kind of orientation. It originated in the deep ecology movement, with the insight that we are all a part of nature, and that the boundaries between the small, individual self and the larger Ecological Self are permeable and in fact illusory. It grew to become "a journal of our evolving ecological culture," encompassing an increasing emphasis on community. In all its forms, it never lost the inherent understanding that personal reflection and natural history are not incompatible, but (in order not to suck the life out of either one) are inseparable--at least among those of us who need to look at and listen to both the "outer world" and the "inner world" to experience balance and fullness in our lives.

This integration necessitates many paradoxes: on the one hand, especially when trying to determine appropriate courses of human action in relation to other species and the rest of the planet, most of us have a commitment to the scientific method, including a conviction that there are truths in the natural world (in animals, plants, earth, air, fire, and water) that are quite independent of our ideas about them, which we can discern only if we can remove our "human" filters and inner prejudices as much as possible. On the other hand, most lovers of the natural world also experience feelings of connection that can make "objective" reality itself seem illusory, sterile, and unnatural--like one skin cell doing a scientific study of the one next to it. Spirituality, art, and story seem to be just as vital as pure science in helping many of us rediscover the natural world and our place within it; and gardening, farming, and other activities on the land geared toward meeting basic human needs are among the most powerful connecting forces of all, becoming arts in their own rights, incorporating spirituality, science, self-expression, and community connection.

Within this big picture, composing a simple scientific "trail guide" seems like a challenge. I might still be able to do it, without turning it into a songbook. But I believe that if I created a column or book entitled "The Self-Involved Naturalist," the writing might come like a flood, rather than a trickle. And part of me believes that that's what is needed. Honestly, outside of fanatically committed naturalists, how many people willingly read straight natural history textbooks that do not have a personal angle? On the other hand, page after page of purely self-involved navel-gazing can be just as boring to many readers (although, scientifically and even mythologically speaking, navels are in fact fascinating). Most of us are somewhere in between, not only in what we like to read and learn about, but in how we are: thinking about our family one moment, and (if we're botanically inclined) the flowering pattern of Spiraea douglasii the next.

This integrative approach might break the hard nut of writing about the natural world in a way that is appropriately humble and acknowledges all that we don't know (revealed increasingly even as we reach each new level of scientific understanding). It could also breathe life into what we do know: that the natural world is a mysterious, fascinating place, and that the parts of ourselves that find resonance with it are nurtured by that relationship and cannot be separated from it. Most of the books above accomplished that for me (with Duncan's and Kimmerer's books being particularly outstanding in that regard). I suspect that there are many "self-involved naturalists" out there ("deep ecologists," "meditative biologists," "ecological artists," "earth storytellers" might be other, less potentially loaded terms), waiting for permission (from all camps) to be themselves. If you've made it this far through this rambling off-trail digression, I'd appreciate any feedback about this idea--what kind of writing you'd like to see (or do), and in what form, as part of, or as an outgrowth of, Lost Valley's ever-evolving Nature Center project.

Reflecting on the past year, I've heard much appreciation of the plant identification signs we've erected along the Nature Trails, the maps and directional signs, and the e-newsletters. Event planning has not been as easy. I am hoping that our planned Native Plants and Permaculture gathering (May 11-13) can manifest as smoothly and vitally in reality as it did in the initial visioning stages among some of us over email, in conversations, and on the phone. While much preliminary work has been done, at this point the event appears to need some crucial infusions of energy from outside participants and co-organizers in order to happen at anywhere near its potential. We particularly want to bring in more people from the Native Plant community in order to craft a balanced event, and we could use assistance with logistical details as well. Again, if you can help with planning, outreach, or any other element of this envisioned springtime "gathering of plant enthusiasts" (see www.lostvalley.org/nature2007may [0] for a description), please contact us. We hope to publish a collection of writings/presentations on the subject, and invite submissions for that as well.

We also plan a Spring Ecology and Social Permaculture Open House at Lost Valley on Sunday, March 18. Details will be forthcoming.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading!

Hope you are enjoying the winter, and Happy New Year,
Chris