January 2014

“ His is the perfect strollers psychology. To his eye, everything is equal, to his heart, everything is fresh and astonishing; to his mind, everything presents a pleasant puzzle. Diversion is his principle direction, whim his master, the serendipitous the substance of his daily routine”

William Gass on Robert Walser

I’m getting walking back into my weekly routine. I used to only walk, or ride a bike, or a bus or train.  I came late to car-ownership, and commuting to work. Now that I live in the country I find I have to drive more and more to get what I need or to where I need to go.  Now that winter is here and work has slowed down for me, both out there in the world and here at the farm, I find I have time for long languorous walks some days.

The other day I was walking back home from Tolt MacDonald Park —it covers a beautiful bit of the Snoqualmie River basin and the bluffs above it—when I realized how nice it was to just wander mindlessly.  Dan Hurley the author of “Smarter: The New Science of Building Brain Power” writes “ One of the most surprising findings of recent mindfulness studies is that it could actually have unwanted side effects. Raising roadblocks to the mind’s peregrinations could, after all, prevent the very sort of mental vacations that lead to epiphanies.”

Though I am not always mindful, I do have a very full mind, busy with nonsense and survival both. A chance to flush what is often just noisy garbage rarely arrives while I am busy with those very things needing doing. But when I walk…

I walk slowly; always have; often to the disapproval of others. My mother used to call me “Pokey-Joe”. And any of my hiking friends always dread my innate ability to spot the tiniest blooming or creeping thing and stop to look at it. Goal is not why I walk necessarily. I walk to walk. I like the way my mind calms above the rhythm of my steps. I like discovering things, even old broken things. Or buds. Or bugs. Or blooms, if the season sees fits.  Even litter has a strange fascination for me. I love to say hello to fellow walkers, or pat a passing dog on the head. I wish I could remember to walk everyday, or make time to. Nothing pleases me more than to amble. I am a true disciple of Robert Walser.

I know one woman who was planning to walk across the state of Washington. Not hike, she said, but walk. She had set daily goals. And a final destination for the walk. I wonder if she ever did it. I lost track… maybe she just walked off somewhere and never came back.

I could see doing that.

Actually my retirement plans are to walk. Not from here to eternity… though I guess eventually all the walking will wind me up there. Just walk for the pleasure of it. To have that slow amble finally as the primary focus of my life, not as an antidote to my life. Sometimes I imagine myself like an Eskimo, so mindful as to know his end time, and wander off on my final walk and never return back home.

These are morbid thoughts to most.

But I’d rather not be driving at breakneck speeds when I finally come to a halt. I want to see every detail of the transition; and the time to practice is now.

Though I usually forego resolutions I do set hopes and I hope I will walk more this year than I have in years. I hope I will find time during the coming busy seasons to walk, weekly, even daily. I hope to write about it and post some of those writings here.

And some of the serendipitous photos of my peregrinations…

{This is not a riff on a carol; there just happens to be 12 months in 2013 and I have decided, as a sort of year-end flashback, to choose one day from each month. I wanted to avoid a “ best of 2013” or “highlights of an incredible year” sort of post. I wanted to write about something momentary, quite credible. I thought I would start by choosing an image from each month. I wanted a sort of random selection, but as you can see I have already “decided” and “chosen”,  not a random process at all. I made an effort to avoid “ big trips” and “successes” of the past year for mere moments.

My friend, the photographer David Perry, says a great deal of a photographer’s work is waiting for the moment. I guess you’d have to be ready for that moment; this is where the photographer’s craft comes in. I have very little craft as a photographer and a great deal of love of the moment as a writer. So many of these images are unskilled snapshots, a few I actually made an effort to capture a moment….can you tell?

In a way these moments feel like gifts, and in that way maybe I am riffing on the carol: here it goes; my true love gave to me…}

I

10 January 13

Carnation, WA

ROLLING STONES: I am hard-pressed to find a stone in our soil. I think the deepest we’ve dug here, 5 feet to bury our dog Sadie, revealed only more and more silty alluvial soil. We don’t have stones here; we gather moss, especially in the winter when they replace the lawn grass and weeds with a velvet blanket.

II

23 February 13

Milwaukee, WI

PRAIRIE SCHOOL RULES: Frank Lloyd Wright designed a series of small affordable houses on the, then, west side of Milwaukee. Now they’re in the middle of the city and being renovated after years of dilapidation. I wonder what Wright would have thought of air conditioning units, chain link fences and plastic recycling bins. I think he would have had a more aesthetically pleasing solution. Then again, he was a rule breaker.

III

11 March 13

Carnation, WA

LIGHT MY FIRE: nothing gets me going, as you know , like tulips. So forcing a few to coax spring on really snatches the darkness away from winter. Wapen von Leiden, and heirloom from 1760, suffering my photographic hijinks, gave me weeks of pleasure before spring ever arrived.

IV

27 April 13

Houston, TX

WHAT’S UP DOC? We have a hard time growing carrots in our heavy soils. And carrots are one of my favorite vegetables. So I am always in awe of those farmers—here in Texas— who can get those lovely long sweet tap roots to grow.

V

12 May 13

Carnation, WA

A TEDDY BEAR’S FUNERAL: I have amassed a small collection of Thuja occidentalis cultivars (American Arborvitae) over the years. (if you are a member of AHS you can read my article about them in Nov/Dec issue of The American Gardener)

Sometimes plants fail and ‘Teddy Bear’ did. It wasn’t snow but heavy rains that had it splayed out at the entrance to our garden. Off with it’s head; out with the roots. I moved the much tidier ‘Tiny Tim’ (in the back ground) forward to seamlessly fill the hole.

VI

11 June 13

Carnation, WA

JUNE WEDDING: Or is that June weeding? By the time June arrives with it’s late spring abundance we feel like were getting buried by weeds— morning glory, reed canary grass and creeping buttercup, to name the major culprits. I usually throw up my arms and head down the road for walk and revel in the beauty of the weeds wedded in an edenic matrix no gardener could match.  Here the lovely native “weed” Galium boreale (northern bedstraw) scrambles its way through the true weeds. Beautiful.

VII

22 July 13

Carnation, WA

COLLECTOR’S DILEMNA: There must be over 10,000 daylily cultivars by now, a fact Michael and I didn’t take into account when we started collecting them a few years ago. We have stopped before it got too serious but still have plenty. This year I decided to try to appreciate our collection instead of buying more, though I wish we had started out appreciating them first and then bought the ones we truly loved. ‘Pale Ale’ a 2010 introduction from daylily hybridizer Jim Murphy at Woodhenge Gardens I truly love.

VIII

18 August 13

Monroe, WA

POD PEOPLE: These lovely purple pods where created by sculptor and gardener Robert Fairfax. You can read an article about in in the Northwest Horticultural Society’s Winter 2014 GARDEN NOTES. (A few pages further on you’ll see my column The Story of Plants: Ivy).

IX

20 September 13

Medina, WA

SIGNS OF SPRING: Who would think that the first signs of spring would be in evidence before the last day of summer? After record rains this confused forsythia decided to bloom.

X

12 October 13

Carnation, WA

UP IN SMOKE: A little bouquet of Oneida Sacred tobacco flowers on my nightstand. I grow and cure small batches— enough for a pack of cigarettes— so I can have a little puff on my little pipe now and then. My homeopathic doctor says that just being in the presence of the plant could cure my woes; but I still like to take a puff.

XI

4 November 13

Carnation, WA

WUTHERING LOWS: Michael and I live at 56 feet above sea level, surrounded by foot hills and mountains; you’d think we’d be protected. But the Snoqualmie Valley acts like a funnel during windstorms.  The November storm stripped the trees of leaves, ripped the tops off trees and took the power out. We thought we were headed into a tumultuous winter season. Hardly. The benign days that follow, barely sunny, barely cloudy, the middling temperatures, all feel like suspension, not progression.

XII

27 December 13

Boise, ID

LET THERE BE LIGHTS: It was fucking freezing cold when Michael and I stopped on our way to our hotel to wander through this blue forest. Stunning though it was it made the night feel colder, though celebrating the holidays with Michael’s family was filled with all the warmth and cheer one could want of a holiday. Happy it was.