Nature Blog #7: Pumpkins

Monday, October 26th, 2009
3:45pm

When I walked out onto my balcony this morning, a layer of dry withered leaves covered the cement floor. Blown into corners and vulnerable to flight, these leaves were the remnants of my surrounding trees. The honey locust in front still glows with fluttering amber, but I am starting to see its naked limbs jutting out into the open blue sky. I watch the leaves shimmy over the cement floor; their delicate outlines quiver at the lightest breeze. Today, the light is warm and bright. The sun has been out all day, balanced with a fall wind that keeps my ankles chilled and my fingertips dry. I notice that when I spend time out on my balcony during the afternoon, I feel more alone. Rush hour has not yet arrived and most people are sitting in offices, watching the second hand. It’s not that I am lonely, but rather I feel like I am the only one who is enjoying this light at this time of the day. It casts a glow above the dead leaves at my toes, shadowing the vertical bars of the balcony. I feel safe enclosed in their lines.

I bought a few pumpkins at the Bloomfield Farmer’s Market last week. I put two on the table where I am typing. A medium-sized symmetrically round pumpkin with a tall stalk that twists up like old vines accompanies a smaller flatter cream-colored pumpkin with orange crevices and extruding round creases. My husband always makes fun of me for buying pumpkins every year. We don’t have a nice front porch to display them on, or even young kids that get kicks out of carving them. But it is something more than decorative for me. Since I was a child, I have always loved pumpkins: the way they look all bunched together, bleeding their orange-ness into one another, taking hay rides to the countryside’s patches and sorting through vines to get the perfect one, pulling out their slimy seeds with my sisters and baking them with salt, watching my dad take a knife to their flesh where he’d cut out their triangular eyes and sharp-toothed mouths. As a child, they were one of my favorite holiday props, completing the lure of fall festivities with squash soup and caramel apples, candy corn and Halloween.

Now that I’m older, I am much more aware of why and how I buy pumpkins. I’ve learned that the pumpkin industry is not necessarily good for the environment. Our consumer driven society has heightened the demand for pumpkins in order to fulfill that “fall festivity” I marveled at as a child. As a result, thousands of pumpkins are sold during the fall months, used for 1-8 weeks as decoration, and then dumped in a landfill where they take ages to decompose. In order to benefit most from pumpkins, I’ve learned that instead of dumping the pumpkins in the trash after the holiday, it is best to eat the insides (pumpkin soup and baked seeds), and/or plant the gourd under a lawn or garden. The rooting nutrients are very beneficial and healthy for the soil.

I read an article recently that suggested using pumpkins to clean up soil contaminated with DDT. Phytoremediation is the term used to describe plants that clean up contaminated soil (just like the brown field sites in Pittsburgh that are being cleaned up with sunflowers.) Canadian scientists found that pumpkins “sucked” up the most DDT and in some cases, PCB’s as well. It made me feel better about my love of pumpkins and my need to have them to look at, eat and carve every October.

The light has shifted slightly as I sit out here on my balcony. My thoughts of pumpkins and the environment have diverted me from watching the small world around me. Though smells of burning brush and drying pine fill my senses, I must go inside to warm my body and mind. Fall will still be here tomorrow.

Response to Nature Poetry

I had a hard time choosing the most “successful" poem because I felt that a lot of these poems were successful. But if I had to choose, I would say that the two that stood out to me most were James Wright’s “A Blessing” and St.Germain’s “Why I Went into the Jungle.” In “A Blessing,” Wright appeals to me because of his simple language. Although he creates more complex, beautiful images like “bow shyly as wet swans” or “delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist” he maintains accessibility throughout the poem. I was pulled in because an event takes place. Wright describes the narrator and a friend walking into a pasture, an action that leads us to the ponies. Here he reveals an intimate moment with one of them, allowing the reader to take this journey with him. This buildup allows the reader to believe and feel the epiphanic moment the narrator has at the end: “Suddenly I realize / That if I stepped out of my body I would break / Into blossom.” Similarly, I felt St. Germain succeeds with simple language. Yet her language is strengthened by the mood or tone she sets. The poem is an answer to a “Why” question and I think that appeals to any reader…everyone wants to know why. This poem lured me in because of its cadence, as well. By strategically breaking lines, she creates a rhythm that when read out loud reflects an inner emotional discovery the narrator feels in the jungle. Whether the reader has been in the jungle or not, she takes one there through intense emotion.

I find it very difficult to know a poet’s true intention when sitting down to write a poem. However, it is by recognizing their approaches that I can begin to understand what they are, at least, trying to do:

For Pattiann Rogers, it seems her approach is to set up a hypothetical. She obtains this by using sensual imagery that is full of a lot of energy and passion.

Wright’s approach is simpler. He tells of an action that the narrator takes, a simple yet meditative action that in the end, reveals some epiphany or revelation.

Merwin’s approach seems more old fashioned, reminding me of Wordsworth or Shelly. He uses repetition to reveal the act of logging everyday, and the mundane physical labor. Although he never actually says “tree” it is through the concept of shadows that he reveals his point, an environmental one.

I appreciate Maurice Guevera’s more conversational tone. His approach stood out not only because his subject was different than the other selected poems, but he tells an emotional story in order to move the reader.

Lucille Clifton’s approach seemed the most experimental (or unique) to me. She empowers this poem by writing out her dialect. Although at first glance, the ideas or images seem common and easily overlooked, her language holds the weight of what she’s saying. Through her dialect she reveals her culture, past, and sense of place.

Galway Kinnel reminds me of Wright in how he approaches a poem: by telling an event or action that took place, bringing together the human and non-human world. For me, Kinnel empowers his poem through his imagery.

Laurie Kutchin’s poem “Walk in Tick Season" challenged my relationship with the non-human world most. Her approach of taking a simple and unpleasant creature such as tick and almost glorifying it to another level was impressive. I am someone who loves almost all creatures including spiders, snakes and insects. Or at least I am not bothered by some of the nastier ones. Yet I have no patience with ticks. They gross me out, freak me out, and the thought of them makes me itch all over. I make my husband take all the ticks off our dog after a hike in the woods because I don’t even want to touch them. I think that is why Kutchin intrigued me most. After reading this poem, I had a different view on ticks. I saw them as equal insects in the non-human world, “crawling as lightly as the morning breeze…carrying the grey-green blush of the sage.” I like how she genders this tick (maybe seeing it as a female affects my opinion) and connects her with me, the reader. She will fall from my skin after taking my blood, yet I feel happy to give it to her (though I think she most certainly will die) because I am then much more connected to her world… “her land pushed deeper into the blood of me.”

Sheryl St. Germain empowers and propels her poetry with emotions of longing, desire, and grief/pain. The rhythm of her poems seems extremely crucial in evoking the feeling at hand. For each poem, she focuses on one element of nature, whether it be a fish, a turkey vulture, a buck, or a tomato vine. Often, this element is taken to a deeper level through an intimate experience or interaction; this allows the narrator to reach a meaningful emotion. Her sensual language and strategic diction connects these non-human elements with the reader, a human who knows all emotions.

Response to Mary Oliver's "Blue Iris"

I was excited to step into the world of nature poetry this week, as we have primarily focused so far on prose in this class. Although I do not consider myself a poet, and I spend most of my time reading prose, I find certain poets and poetry moves me to understand writing on a different level, an often deeper and riskier level. Oliver succeeded in challenging my writing mind, and offered me beautiful language and images that I am still thinking about now.

I feel this collection of poems is an extremely important and influential work that all nature writers should read. While reading this collection, I felt like I had become the flowers, plants and animals, etc. I felt Oliver was talking to me, conversationally and endearingly. Although she does not always use the 2nd person, I think what made me feel this interaction was based on how she describes things. Many of her flowers and trees are personified, rendering the line in a human emotion and gradually merging the non-human with human. She “talks” to elements of the natural world as though they are god-like, spiritual teachers. Yet, what I find important is that she makes this human interaction a daily notion.

The themes that resonate most for me revolve around ideas of death, existentialism, interaction, observation, teaching, eternity, song, and light. I felt a constant warmth, or yellow golden light that pervaded the poems and provided a constant energy. Thinking back to these poems, I remember images described by shades of gold, amber, orange, yellow, and butter. They evoke a warm vitality. She focuses on turning the natural world into a school; she makes it about going into the classroom (the woods or fields) and learning from the teachers (flowers, plants, animals). What seems most important is that her readers see and ask questions of the natural world. That is where life is, that is where you learn about death. Oliver uses the life cycle of certain flowers to portray eternity. In “The Bleeding Heart” she talks of the bleeding-heart plant living on through many generations, past her grandmother, and budding during her own life. Here, the “hearts” connect the narrator to her grandmother, grounding themselves deep in the earth so that they may sprout once again each spring. She also talks about a “sense of ever-ness” in “Upstream,” a place where she recognizes the lasting power of smelling damp, fresh earth. It seems the everlasting is where the narrator wants her readers to find happiness.

Another constant theme is existentialism. Oliver often focuses on the “being” of flowers. It is as though she connects humans to flowers through the “souls” of being. One cannot truly know or feel nature unless they put themselves “in” it. In “Black Oaks” she writes “why don’t you get going? / For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees. / And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists / of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money, / I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.” It’s as though she wants to speak to every reader through her poetry by telling them to live like the flowers, to live humbly and attentively before we are gone forever.

Although I like many of the poems, one of my favorites is “Poppies.” I think this one spoke to me because I like how it contrasts the good with the bad. I like how Oliver introduces a negative or dark side into her bed of “yellow hairs” and “orange flares” and “spongy gold.” This realistic notion of the dark empowers her images of warmth, light, and happiness by contrasting them. I like how she portrays light as “an invitation to happiness”. Many of my most memorable experiences with the natural world have been watching the sun set at our cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It is there where I see colors of the sun I have never seen before, colors that exude not only warmth, but like Oliver says, happiness and holiness. I remember sitting on the big rock in front of the cabin, looking out over the valleys, watching the light birth into the horizon and I, too, felt “washed and washed in the river of earthly delight.”

Nature Blog #6: Fall Frost

Monday, October 19, 2009
11:00 am

I bundle up, grab a cup of warm coffee and head out to my balcony. Today is one of the first sunny days this week. I embrace the heat of the sun as it warms my typing fingertips. The leaves of my honey locust are hanging lower than normal. Their long thin petals are turning from green to yellow to gold. They flutter ever so lightly in the passing breeze; its cold fall air bites at my nose. The birds are loud today. I think they have come out for the sun. Their calls remind me of spring, yet the air is cold and the foliage is full of color.

As I scan the ground below me, everything is green and dry. The past few days of rain seemed to have cleansed the earth. This morning when I took my dog to the park, the ground was still covered in frost. The grass looked coated in a silver sheet, frosted and fuzzy like sage. As the sun rose, I watched the line of light gradually melt away the frost. The minted gray turned green and wet. Pillars and columns of frost still stood out, shadowed by chimneys and trees. It looked like the reflection of a skyline in the glib waters of a city river.

One of my friendly groundhogs is scurrying just below me. He is walking along the edge of a European buckthorn, trudging his plump body back and forth as he grazes. I can barely tell where his head meets his body. He is a large groundhog with a tiny nose that peers out into the open, smelling for something to nibble. His hair shines in the morning light, black and auburn and brown streaks that hover like a log over the newly mowed grass. I have never seen him for this length of time; usually he darts from one hole to the next, hiding from noise or people. Up the steps he scurries, reaching the top of parking gravel, turns quickly and darts back down under the buckthorn. I think a car scared him. I wonder where his companions are. I know there are at least three groundhogs that live in the vacant lot next to my balcony. It seems he is also out today for the sun, to bask in its warmth and vitamin D.

The air feels heavy today. It is a clear fall morning, but as I scan the horizon I notice all the trees merge together. There is a slight blur between their silhouettes and the sky, a friendly haze that the sun proudly illuminates. I close my eyes and let the sun warm their lids. The tips of my eyelashes create halos of iridescent light as I slowly open them to the day. Trucks speed down Washington Blvd. and I am reminded of all I have to do today. For a moment, I wish I was far away from this noise, out in the middle of the countryside. I think I’ll take a trip this weekend, to the woods, or the mountains. This balcony is my place to come and think, but today I want to be some place far away, some place where the groundhogs never hide and where the morning frost would last longer, quiet and still as it melts slowly into the land.

Ken Lamberton: Beyond Desert Walls

I could not put this book down. I think it is because he sets up a tension as early as the introduction by telling us he goes to jail. He reveals it in the first paragraph. I wanted to know so badly what happened? And why? And how did he write this in prison? Eventually, I forgot about my questions because I got so sucked into his writing. I admire Lamberton for his ability to weave nature writing with his story. He takes the external—the landscape, bugs, birds and trees and reflects in them the internal—his feelings, motives and fears. By the end of the book, I could read his descriptions of the desert and know that he was describing himself, or a part of himself. He didn’t have to tell me.

Lamberton uses a lot of themes that help tie the book together, themes that range from hunting and blood to adventure and escape. Each chapter orients around a place or a natural element, including insects and reptiles. There is a lot of scientific information that supports his profession as a teacher and naturalist. I found a lot of the information fascinating; it never felt boring or too scientific.(like how to get rid of chigger bites with a little nailpolish!-sounds a little too chemical though) Lamberton takes seemingly meaningless physical objects as well as massive landforms and projects his inner feelings onto them. Through old pottered containers he stumbles upon in caves or the Santa Catalina Mountains, Lamberton sheds layers of himself using his interactions with such forms.

There are wonderful metaphors throughout the book, such as on pg.39 when he writes “If, on a whim, the mountain shuddered, I would have become a fossil, curled in fetal position between limestone plates.” Or on pg. 22 when he writes “Deep into the canyon’s entrails, snowmelt collected in a string of stone basins like an ellipsis at the end of a slickrock sentence.” He takes his body and his language and weaves it into the land. I'm learning that’s what makes a good nature writer.

Although I truly love this book, there is something that drove me crazy. I wanted to know what exactly happened with the affair. He hints on it from time to time, revealing information that it was a young student, a girl student he kept close by, but he never puts it in scene. We never see or feel what actually happened, what decision he made that eventually sent him to jail. We know they ran off together, but that’s it. I wonder if that is partly due to the case itself. Often, information can not be disclosed during a trial, or ongoing investigation. I just felt a little betrayed at the end. It felt like he didn’t fulfill his promise that he left on page 1. (So much so that I did some research online and read an article from the journal in Arizona that did a piece on the entire story)

I found the last chapter of the book very interesting. It is in this chapter that Lamberton reveals a strong environmental tone. It is here that he reveals his love of gray hawks. I find this interesting because up until now, his feelings towards animals and the land have been almost ambiguous (minus the rattlesnake). It is in this chapter that he states his point of view on the environment. He reveals that he deeply cares about it and that it IS definitely worth saving. A long way from where we came in chapter one with him hunting and draining the blood of animals. “Why is it that even the footprints we leave behind cause harm? Why must human culture always have an impact?” He throws out logging, DDT, hunting, and consumerism all in one paragraph. I like what he’s saying but I guess I feel like I wasn’t expecting it so it felt rushed at the end.

I guess this revelation is part of his journey…that just like the land and the environment which he has learned to care so much about, he must do the same for himself and his family. He must learn to look at himself the same way he “sees” his natural surroundings and discover in him what he knows he will find in the land. Strength.

Response to Rants

I thoroughly enjoyed reading these rants. As a writer, I often get discouraged when a narrator doesn’t come out and say something they passionately feel. Reading these rants was almost cathartic for me. I say cathartic, but only half mean it because many of the points I agree with and some I was eager to argue.

Between Jack Turner’s “The Abstract Wild”, David Gessner’s “Sick of Nature” and Jamaica Kincaid’s “A Small Place” excerpt, I have to say that my favorite was Gessner’s rant. What I liked most about his rant was his conversational tone. I never felt talked down upon or condescended, but rather like he was talking to me in person. I appreciated his word choice such as “shit” and “bejesus,” words that slip right out in real conversation but are avoided in writing. I also think this piece spoke to me the most. I could follow his desire to “escape” society, to flee to a place of nature and solitude, and then realize the position he actually put himself in and admit to regrets and/or changes in his state of mind. He basically criticizes himself when he makes fun of his fellow nature writers, yet in writing the rant proves to truly care for nature regardless. His rant compared to the others focuses less on a “political” issue and more on the issue of writing genres. I would think any writer would appreciate his approach. It is true that by forcing oneself into a genre “box” limits the wildness in which one can explore and express. More than that though, his rant speaks to the bigger picture of conformity. Don’t be what they tell you. Don’t do what is expected. Be wild. Be free. Be you.

Although I like all of these rants, if I had to pick my least favorite, it would be Kincaid’s excerpt from “A Small Place.” Maybe the reason for which I like it the least makes it, in fact, the best and most effective rant. First, I feel that her choice of the second person was extremely powerful, and at times almost too accusatory. By the end, I was frustrated and felt like I had to defend myself (as a white American who travels a lot). I wanted to write back: “Why can’t I go somewhere to learn, to see the ways and disadvantages others live, to understand, to care, and to come back home a better person because of it?” Not all whites or Europeans fall into the “tourist” category she stereotypes. And thus the point of her rant. I felt what she was saying. I think it needs to be said. She fulfilled the definition of a rant by using such a hostile tone and offending me, her reader. Her exaggerations are on purpose, and I believe they make their point. I am a defensive person by nature, and I’m writing this response after just finishing reading her rant. I am still heated up. Kincaid has done her job.

I can’t end this response without commenting on Turner’s “The Abstract Wild” because I truly loved it, and I felt it provided an entirely different focused rant. I like how he began the essay talking about anger and rage. He defines the words themselves, given in the root and derivative forms which makes the words that much more powerful each time he uses them. He successfully relays example after example of specific environmental degradation being done, so to provoke emotional response from the reader. It’s ironic that his words (or art) evokes an emotional response from me, the reader, even though he goes on about how photographs, movies, zoos, and national parks are not able to evoke the level of emotion needed in order to truly care about the wilderness. His tone is less conversational than Gessner and Kincaid; his voice is more academic and serious. I like how he touches on human characteristics, behavior, and psychology. I’m not sure if his rant would be as accessible to all readers, but appreciate his level of intelligence. It makes me want to think like him. Again, another challenge of the rant well done.

Nature Blog #5: Thoughts of Foliage

Monday, October 5, 2009
3:30 pm

The clouds are moving. Their large cumulus and stratus puffs blow through the afternoon sky. The sun highlights the western side of each cloud, blinding the shapes I see. This is the coldest it has been yet, since coming here to my balcony spot. I feel the October air on my ankles. I can smell the cold in the wind; it smells like wet hair after a shower with hints of lemongrass and aloe. I am covered by the rooftop and guarded by the honey locust. And I’m jealous of the clouds’ open space, their exposure to sunlight, their ability to move freely. Every time I look up through the fluttering leaves, I see a different cloud of white, a different shape and sense.

I just got back from a trip to Vermont. My husband and I drove through the mountains and trees that make up the state. It was “foliage” weekend in South Burlington, where we spent our time. As we approached the state, the landscape turned richer and richer with color. It was like watching a blank canvas go from potential to painting. The leaves transformed into amber and gold, red and deep pink as we drove further north. I thought back to the trees in Pittsburgh, saw them following this same path soon. For miles, I stared at the multicolored canopies. The trees bled into one another with colors and hues that merged like a mosaic. I felt full of apples and honeysuckle, warmth and nostalgia, hay rides and hikes just looking at them. The landscape of trees was so vast, so brightened by the afternoon glare that we did not have to slow down to see the colors. They radiated a joyous glow that permeated the land and bordered our road of travel.

As I sit here on my balcony, I envision what these trees will look like soon. I wonder if they’ll emit that same clarity and color that the trees of Vermont possess up north. It makes me think of how seasons move. Growing up in Pennsylvania, I’ve always known the seasonal time line that this state experiences. I never think about how the seasons shift from state to state. I can see the cooler air coming down from Vermont, slowly wiping out all the green and lush and leaving the colors of fall. If I slow it down, I see the black spruce to the left of my balcony slowly fade into brown and trickle to the ground. I see the quaking aspen to my right blend into shades of orange and blonde. I see what I believe to be a chinquapin oak transform its shiny teethed leaves into shades of red far more beautiful than any lipstick.

Vermont gave me an early sighting of a change in season that is on its way. Like seeing into the future, I know what transformations this circle of trees has coming. I look forward to their coloring and anticipate their change of clothes. But for now, as the sun moves stealthily between these trees, I’ll enjoy them in their envious green.