Category Archives: Meditations

Meditation

Thirty years ago this weekend, when I was sixteen, I climbed my first four thousand foot mountain in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The Whites were a very different place then. For one thing, you could drink the water from any mountain spring without needing any kind of purification; by 1978, giardia first started showing up in the Whites; and today you have to purify any water you drink, or risk giardiasis. For another thing, there were a lot fewer people on the trails back then; when my friend Will and I went hiking in the Whites in the late 1970’s, you could go a whole day without seeing another person, whereas today you’re lucky to go an hour without seeing another hiker. And for another thing, when you were up on a mountain top, you could generally see a lot farther then than you can today, because increasing pollution has cut visibility dramatically throughout New England.

It’s easy to lament, and wax nostalgic. But if you’re going to lament about what has been lost in the White Mountains since the 1970’s, why not go back further in time and lament the loss of the old-growth forests during the 19th century? Lamentation is all very fine, but it makes more sense to enjoy what we’ve got now, while we still have it, for as global climate change progresses, we’re going to lose all the rare arctic tundra plants that grow above the 5,000 foot line in the Whites; acid rain will continue to despoil the mountain tarns and streams; invasive insect species will decimate the forests even more than they have already. In this time of ecological crisis, lamentation seems like a luxury we can’t really afford.

One good thing about global climate change is that the warm-weather hiking season in the White Mountains has been extended by some weeks; it used to be that the winter hiking season began the weekend after Columbus Day. Maybe I’ll make a trip up there sometime soon, and enjoy the mountains before the weather changes.

Autumn watch

In this part of the world, this is the best time of year for food.

At the downtown farmer’s market on Thursday, the produce was incredible, and cheap. From Mary, I bought the usual dozen eggs and two loaves of her oatmeal bread, a few pounds of her freshly dug red potatoes, some other vegetables — and she had the first Westport Macomber turnips of the year: huge white mild turnips, originally a cross between radishes and more traditional turnips, which you can eat raw or cooked, a local vegetable that you can’t find outside of southeastern Massachusetts. This turnip is one of the finest fall vegetables and its arrival should be heralded with a trumpet fanfare: a fanfare for the uncommon turnip. From the fruit grower, I got several pounds of Cortland apples; I used to be a big fan of Winesaps and Northern Spies, but his firm white-fleshed Cortlands have a superb texture and make just about the smoothest and best apple sauce: substantial, not at all watery, and nicely flavored. From the Mattapoisett farmers, I got carrots and cantaloupe (they’re still picking cataloupes) and cauliflower and, best of all, cranberries — real cranberries, with little bits of twigs and tiny leaves from the cranberry plant, in all shades of red from deepest crimson to pale green faintly tinged with red: just as small blueberries taste better than the huge agribusiness blueberries you find wrapped in plastic in the supermarket, so real cranberries are more flavorful, both more tart and sweeter at the same time. The next day, we drove out to Alderbrook Farm in Russell’s Mills and bought some local honey, and I made a huge pot of apple cranberry sauce, made from the Cortland apples and the Mattapoisett cranberries and the local honey — it turned a warm reddish-pink color — and I spread it on the oatmeal bread, and ate until I’d eaten too much.

On Friday, Carol called me on my cell phone and said, would I like to go to dinner at the farmer’s house? Carol worked for a couple of days pulling weeds at a nearby organic farm this week; she needed to get out of the house and away from the computer and the freelance writing, besides the fact that a little extra money is always welcome in our household. So we went for dinner at the farmer’s house, with another couple we know slightly. Before dinner, we walked around the farm; it is in its glory in this season. The summer squash spill out over the edges of the raised beds, covered with flowers and half-grown squash; the celery stands large and robust; the fall beets have grown tall leaves, rooted in deep red balls shouldering their way up out of the dirt; the salad greens show bright colors against the dark earth, light green and dark green and deep red. And the herbs were just as beautiful as the salad greens — curly parsley and Italian parsley, rosemary (Carol had weeded the rosemary bed that morning), different kinds of sage, chives, and other herbs I couldn’t recognize. After we met young Murphy, an Irish Jack Russell terrier who is being trained to catch the voles which plague the farm, and Murphy’s owner who was plowing up one bed of the farm with a tractor-mounted rototiller, we went in for dinner. Dinner included New Bedford scallops sauteed in fresh leeks and herbs, boiled potatoes newly dug, sweet and tender, and some kind of wild mushroom I had never eaten before.

So what if today is the autumnal equinox? So what if the nighttime will be longer than the daylight for the next six months? So what if winter is coming in? This is the best time of year for food, the best time of the year to be alive.

In the grand scheme of things, it’s such a small matter. But it’s a matter that has been looming large in my consciousness. I have to go for gum surgery tomorrow. It’s not that bad — they will cut up my gums, stitch them back up, my mouth will be sore for a couple of weeks, then I’ll be fine. I have to get up an hour earlier than usual tomorrow morning for the appointment. I actually had anxiety dreams about gum surgery last night. I can’t get settled down to go to sleep tonight. It’s such a small matter when compared to the grand scheme of things, but it’s immediate enough that it doesn’t seem that small right now.

Two trees

The last thirty days have been dry here. The dirt in our little garden beside our building is powder dry, and half of the flowers have died from thirst. When you walk around our neighborhood, you can tell which people have automatic watering systems for their lawns, because their grass is green and soft, while everyone else’s grass is golden brown and crisp.

At church today, we had our usual ingathering worship service, where everyone is invited to bring a small amount of water from their summer adventures and add it to a communal bowl. When the worship service was over, we took the bowl out beside the church, and the children of the church helped spread the water around the big old cedar tree growing there.

More water probably got on the children than got to the tree, and as soon as we were done, the children tore off to run around in circles once again. Cora and I stood there watching them, and we talked about how dry the last month or so has been. Cora said that she had heard that trees older than a hundred years are beginning to have a hard time with the lack of water. She pointed out some of the signs of lack of water on our big old cedar tree: loosened bark and cracks in the wood, which can provide access to insect pests.

Trees are having a tough time of it in general these days. Trees face a variety of invasive pests — the Eastern Hemlocks are dying from Woolly Aldegid infestations, and if the Asian Longhorn Beetle escapes its present quarantine in New York City, we’ll lose the maples, willows, horse chestnuts, and more. There’s global climate change, which some people predict will adversely impact many trees. And trees face other human-caused problems, like road salt which builds up near roads and kills trees. It makes sense to keep our trees as healthy as possible, so that they will have a better chance of surviving road salt, global climate change, and invasive insect pests.

So I said to Cora that I guessed it would be a good idea to ask our church sexton to put a hose out this week and water our big old cedar, and the oak tree, too. She said she thought that would be a good idea. We went back to watching her daughter and the other children run around under the trees, and it occurred to me that Cora had played under those same two trees back when she was a child growing up in our church.

Autumn watch

We were almost home after having taken a long walk on a warm and humid afternoon.

Carol looked at her watch. “I thought it was later than it is,” she complained.

“What time is it?” I said.

“Five thirty,” she said.

I glanced up at the sun. “It should be seven thirty,” I said. “The sun is setting way too early now.”

We continued complaining about the rapidly shortening days. It still feels like summer, but it’s starting to look like autumn.

Lifting weights

I hate lifting weights.

Well, actually I don’t hate lifting weights. Once I get started, I kind of enjoy it. It feels good to work all those muscles that tend to get neglected because I have a sedentary job. It feels good to get my blood moving and it even feels good to break a sweat. Lifting weights is a little boring, it’s true, but it’s good to just turn my brain off for twenty minutes while I lift weights. And then when I get done lifting, I feel good and I always sleep better that night.

So lifting weights feels pretty good, once I get started, and after I finish I promise myself that I will lift weights again in two days…. And next thing I know, a whole week has gone by and I haven’t touched the barbell or the dumbbells.

Carol, my partner, likes to say that her body is really a farmer’s body, and she feels best when she has to do lots of physical labor. I think that’s true of all of us. Our bodies are designed to be outdoors most of the day, hunting and gathering and getting lots of exercise. I spent five years working for a carpenter, and during those five years my body loved getting a good eight hour workout five days a week.

If my body craves exercise, if I actually like lifting weights once I get started, why is it that I have such a hard time getting started? Why is it that I let a week go by, my body getting all cranky due to lack of upper body exercise, yet I won’t start lifting weights? I don’t know why. Certainly, that is sufficient proof that human beings are not fully rational beings; that we are ruled by habit and inertia far more than we are ruled by rational thought.

I don’t hate lifting weights. I just hope I remember that on Tuesday, when it’s time for me to lift weights again.

Autumn watch

On the drive from New Bedford up to visit my aunt and uncle this evening, we passed several trees whose leaves are already turning color. The very dry weather we’ve been having for the past two or three weeks has stressed many trees, and the leaves of some trees are turning brown around the edges. Other trees have reacted to the stress by already taking on their fall colors. I noticed one tree in particular, a small Red Maple at the edge of the highway, whose every leaf had turned a vivid scarlet.

On our way home, we drove through a chilly drizzle, blurring the headlights of the oncoming cars, making it feel even more like autumn is coming.

Random memories

We were driving back from the supermarket. “Here’s a totally random memory,” I said. “Fairly pointless, too.”

“Good,” said Carol. “I like pointless memories.”

“So when we were little, Jean and I — and maybe we were old enough that Abby was in the car seat — Mom used to take us food shopping at least once a week at Stop and Shop in Concord,” I said. Carol and I lived together in Concord for seven years, so she knew which supermarket I meant; Jean is my older sister, and Abby is my younger sister. “We’d drive down Liberty Street so Mom could avoid driving through Concord center, which meant we went right by the visitor’s center for Minuteman National Park….”

“OK,” said Carol, mentally picturing the route my mother had once driven, all those years ago. “I know what you mean.”

“So for some reason,” I continued, “when we got to the parking lot at the visitor’s center, Jean and I would start chanting, ‘Go through the park, go through the park,’ and Mom would drive us through the parking lot at the national park visitor’s center. I have no idea why we always wanted to go through the park, it was just one of those things that got started and then we always did it.”

“Oh, that’s sweet!” said Carol. “You probably wanted to go through and see all the cars there.”

“Yeah, I think at one point I was really into finding out-of-state license plates,” I said. “That’s probably what started it.”

“That’s really sweet,” she said again. “Those were more innocent times.”

“Actually,” I said, “I don’t think they were more innocent. When we got to the supermarket, we used to see this young woman who was anorexic. She’d always be there with her parents. Later, we found out the reason she was anorexic was that her parents were beating her.”

“How’d you find that out?” said Carol.

“When I was housemates with D—-,” I said, “D—-‘s sister was just married, and she and her husband rented a little house from them. The parents and the anorexic daughter lived in the big house, and D—-‘s sister rented what used to be the servants’ house. D—-‘s sister and her husband would hear the anorexic woman screaming when her parents beat her. She must have been thirty-five years old by then.” I paused, thinking about D—-‘s sister. “Not a great way to begin your married life,” I coninuted, Carol following my logical leap. “They moved out as quickly as they could. Anyway, I don’t think those times were more innocent.”

That was the end of those random memories. When Carol couldn’t remember if she had picked up the business card of the woman whom we had met earlier in the evening while sitting at the bar of our neighborhood watering hole, our conversation moved on to other things.

Autumn watch

The sun is setting noticeably earlier every day now.

I left the church just before six and headed to the natural foods store in the West End. As I drove west on Union Street, the sun was almost directly in my eyes, its glare drowning out anything in the shadows of the trees. I drove more slowly than usual, trying to figure out which cross street I was passing, when suddenly out of the corner of my eye I saw the four-way stop sign that I didn’t stop for; the car waiting at the cross street gave a little toot on its horn as if to say to me, “Wake up!”; I felt stupid, but I really hadn’t seen the stop sign in the glare of the sun.

By the time I got back home, it was half past six, and I realized that if I wanted to take a long walk, I had better leave now, before I cooked dinner. At the end of my hour-long walk, the sun had already dipped below New Bedford’s sky line.