From a walk through Millbrook Village, New Jersey yesterday.
I love the long shadows of winter and that bright blue sky.
The other day on my drive down to New Jersey I was listening to an On Beingepisode with Quaker singer Carrie Newcomer. It was the Thanksgiving episode where the interview was woven in and out of her folksy music; it was the perfect peaceful combination to listen to after a stressful semester.
Do you ever hear something or think something and feel the need to write it down before you forget it? During this episode, Carrie spoke about hope and I went back and found the transcript online to remember the words exactly. It goes like this:
"And then there's like a hope that's gritty - It's like, the kind of hope that gets up every morning and chooses to try to make the world just a kinder place in your own way. And the next morning gets up, and does it again. And the next morning, gets up, and you have been disappointed. And you do it again. I wanted to write about the kind of hope that's faithful, that kind that Niebuhr talked about: 'anything worth doing will probably not be achieved in one lifetime... so we are saved by hope.' And that's a harder kind of hope to live with, because it's easier to be cynical. I mean, when you're cynical, you're never disappointed."
When I think about hope, Emily Dickinson's poem pops into my head. Her rendition of hope is this:
"Hope" is the thing with feathers - (314)
"Hope" is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird -
That kept so many warm -
I've heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
I like holding the two of these together, thinking of hope as a belief that is a choice and requires faith, but also something that rests and perches inside of us.
Here's Carrie singing Betty's Diner, a Joni Mitchell-esque song about people in a diner. Being in New Jersey, where there's a silver diner melting on the corner of most towns, it seems appropriate to post this one.
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." John Muir
I woke up to a blue sky day and the ground covered in sparkling frost. There's something about waking up and either being outside or heading outside and grabbing some of that pure, fresh morning air. It was cold when I opened the door after putting on my boots and setting out across the driveway in my plaid pajama pants. The sun rises over the small hill in our backyard and casts shadows over our deck illuminating stripes everywhere. But this morning I photographed the grass across the way and the hill of our neighbors' property.
In the spirit of Frost, I thought I'd add a poem by Robert Frost.
Dust of Snow (1923)
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued
May the New Year bring many sparkling moments which change the course of our coldest days.
When I was out in the wilderness this summer, each week in the field, on the drive out, the other staff and myself would set goals for ourselves on our eight-day shift. Throughout the week, we would give each other feedback on how we were doing. I have often wanted to bring this practice into my "normal" life because I think it helped me be more intentional, purposeful and active.
As I've been trekking through Graduate School, there have been lots of deadlines that I've had to meet and academic hoops that I've had to jump through; it's exhausting. Although I'm exercising certain parts of my brain, other parts of me cramp up - my neck, my shoulders and the creative part of my brain.
(This is why committing to yoga is essential!)
In an attempt to be more reflective, creative and intentional, this year I'm committing to posting something daily, or every other day. I'm not sure where it will go... as Alice said to herself in Wonderland, "I don't see how he can ever finish, if he doesn't begin." (Lewis Carroll)
(A post from September 28, 2014 that I never finished)
I was inspired by a line I heard from an On Being podcast, something along the lines of perhaps happiness isn't always a pursuit, but sometimes we need to stop and let it catch up with us. I've found it hard to slow down in recent years, as there are always things that I feel the need to pursue: photography, travel, friendships, job, academics, or even just the nature surrounding me.
But today, I'm letting happiness catch up with me. I'm finally figuring out how to safely get the over 3,000 photos from the past 4 months off my iPhone. This has taken me longer than I would have liked, causing intense technological frustration. Thankfully, I went to yoga for 90 minutes this morning, which was a surprise to find when I got there, but welcomed. I organized my room a bit more, rearranging the haphazard organizing that occurred when I first moved in and I basically threw all of my belongings in drawers, on the bookcase and under my bed, not to mention stuffing all kinds of things into the my closet (my tarp from the summer is still bound up tight). My window is open and a warm breeze is coming through - probably one of the last ones as we are heading into Fall all too quickly. I've got candles lit and am thoroughly enjoying Lord Huron's Lonesome Dreams.
Another thing that's going on in the back of my mind, is that I'm reflecting back over the summer and the girls that I worked with out there for a couple eight-day shifts. Recently, Emma Watson gave a speech at the UN about her organization He for She about feminism, which I found myself resonating with - nodding my head at my iPhone as a I watched it. She talked about how feminism became such a dirty word, but all it means is to believe that women should have the same rights as men - that's it.
Now, I'm not going to focus on feminism per se, but I will focus on the girls I saw this summer. The girls who struggled with esteem - having to try and convince themselves that they were enough, worthy, and should stop trying to bear the emotional burdens of their families. The girls who constantly smiled and sought to rescue one another from their negative emotions, saying "sorry" for what was not their fault. To me, these are symptoms of girls growing up in a world where they may be encouraged not to be confident, to expect less, and keep on smiling. They feel shame for never ever being good enough and call boys who treat them without respect their boyfriends if they happen to text them back.
Recently, I was listening to This American Life, a story about a woman who was a federal regulator, speaking out about the irresponsibility of Goldman Sachs. It was a fascinating story, but what frustrated me most was hearing a recording of a supervision session with her boss, where he told her that she was "breaking eggs" and her "shoulders were too sharp" and she was "arrogant". What I wondered was if she had been a man, would she have been called arrogant, or confident?
I don't really know. But what I do know, is that girls are courageous, strong,beautiful, and smart. I think this is one of the reasons that I love seeing girls out in the wilderness, where their bodies and their personalities are accepted as they are and they have the space to challenge themselves. It's true even for me: I feel the most beautiful when I am the most dirty. We're talking I rub my hands and peels of dirt come off dirty. It's not the dirt that causes me to feel beautiful, but it's because I'm in a place where there is no pressure to be anything more than all my imperfections combined, because it's those qualities that make me who I am. It's not until I'm there that I realize the intensity of the pressures we walk around in daily that nudge us towards believing that we are not enough... and girl are those forces strong.
It is when I find my way back to that place of enough-ness (often a tricky place to find) that happiness can catch up with me. Here's Lord Huron's Lonesome Dreams and some drawings from my time out there. Enjoy :)
"She was standing at the periphery of her own life, sharing a fridge and a toilet, a shallow intimacy, with people she did not know at all. People who lived in exclamation points. "Great!" they said often. "That's great!" People who did not scrub in the shower; their shampoos and conditioners and gels were cluttered in the bathroom, but there was not a single sponge, and this, the absence of a sponge, made them seem unreachably alien to her (p.156).... There was something unquestioning about her roommates' lives, an assumption of certainty that fascinated her, so that they often said, 'Let's go get some," about whatever it was they needed - more beer, pizza, buffalo wings, liquor - as though this getting was not an act of money (p.157)... The world was wrapped in gauze; she could see the shapes of things but not clearly enough, never enough (p.160)." - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
Going out into nature feels like venturing into the "real world" and unwrapping the gauze of the everyday luxuries. This gauze can hold me hostage from experiencing how life really operates, causing me to feel an empty kind of captivity by that white noise of routine and sense of expectation of the present and future. With the students out in the desert, it seems that substance abuse is a response to feeling like they couldn't meet parents' expectations, coping with a divorce, a death, and wanting to escape their own memories and thoughts. Going into the desert is like going into the deep end, sharing emotions, digging up realizations, and working out who you are within the backdrop of the natural, unpredictable forces surrounding you. It is sobering to me; it is my therapy.
***
In the desert, there is so much sage surrounding us all the time. We walk over it, step on it, smell it, use it's branches to make wooden spindles and fire boards to bust a fire. To bust a fire, you need a bow (a juniper branch with cordage tied from top to bottom) which you lodge a spindle (thin, long, piece of sage wood) into by twisting it in the cordage. Then you carve a small hole in the fire board (a larger, round trunk of sage wood) in which you lodge the spindle and slowly move your bow bow back and forth, back and forth, backandforth, backnforth - faster, faster, faster - until, your spindle starts driving out smoke from the fireboard - more and more smoke! Faster and faster, until, you create and ember. You then place this ember into a little nest of dried sage bark and pieces. You move your hand, holding the smoldering nesting (with a fire glove on), in a figure eight motion, allowing the wind to potentially ignite that nesting, eventually blowing into it, until you finally see a flame. There you have it: you have made fire, without a match or a lighter, but with force, and with the help of some sage and juniper.
It's hard. It doesn't happen right away for most people and I don't even like the process very much! When a student gets a fire, they begin to tally them. If they get 15 fires, they can earn a flashlight. During introductions, students often include the number of fires they've made and miles they've walked. I've busted just one, with the coaching of two students. But this serves as a key metaphor out there for hard work and success - turning embers into flames.
"Ah, a Juniper berry.... Let the gin-making begin!" said one of the boys, imitating some kind of British-type accent, making me laugh, as he looked at one tiny periwinkle Juniper berry on a branch in front of him. He's been out there for 6 or 7 weeks, sitting with his thoughts, entertaining the group with his stories - choosing to identify himself as a drug addict, to his own surprise. Despite regular use and selling, he had never thought to identify himself as an addict, but more as just a high school kid and then college freshman. He took Honors Philosophy in high school and read the 1500 pages of Atlas Shrugged, similar to another one of the group members. Yet drugs had been taking over his brain and he has only now realized that he can digest more words of a book than he has been able to in years.
We walked through the sage to a dried-up lake bed to play Ultimate Frisbee and then Capture the Flag. The earth out there is so cracked, stepped on by herds of cows - and baby cows! - drinking from the small puddle of a lake in the middle, into which dried up cow patties and rocks are thrown. Afterwards, we sit under a Juniper tree where one of the boys begins to lead a group surrounding one of his therapy assignments to write a letter of accountability for everything he's done. Some of the others checked in, sharing their feelings, thanking us staff for the games, saying, "I forgot I could have fun while sober." Then the student begins to read aloud his letter, where he states everything that he's done that has brought him to this place - DUIs, lying, drinking, etc. Everyone listens and everyone gives feedback, noting areas where he could say more and areas where we all can relate. As we speak, we play with the earth, the cow shit, and the plants that surround us. We thank him for sharing and the group is closed; we head back to camp.
On the way back, I converse with another student - about his family, how he was bullied from a young age, how he owns three cars and crashed one in a suicide attempt, how he began drinking when he lost his sports scholarship. We get into camp and the dinner cycle begins. We begin by washing our hands and feet - I sit on a log using my pocketknife to clean up the backs of my heals which have layer upon layer of dried skin. I walk back to the fire, sit back in my crazy creek (outdoor chair) and watch and listen around me of busting of fire, boiling of water, cutting of vegetables - joking, reading, frustration, laughing - carving of spoons, writing, drawing... whatever it is that they are working on around me. I feel like life is fresh again - reduced to its most basic parts: relationships, surviving, and growing.
We are then left with the fire, as the night sky moves into a navy blue tone. We acknowledge the people and things that we love (family, yoga pants, the ocean), share resentments (the cold, addiction), people who need our amends, say what we did well today and what we could do better tomorrow - we share how we're feeling. Then we put our packs back on, walk out to the tarps in the sage and tied to Juniper trees that are serving as shelters. My co-leader picks up the guitar and starts singing Johnny Cash, Radiohead, Phantom of the Opera, and ends with a Cowboy tune that incorporates Coyote sounds. Four of the boys join us in the center of the sage stage, in the middle of the desert, and begin to do "ballet" - throwing their arms up in the arm, resembling a quartet of syncronized swimmers out of the water, finding themselves on the land - no longer drowning - high on life. I laugh and smile and laugh and smile, but don't sing - just take in the growing night sky and the shadows of the mountains and the sounds of play.
"Goodnight! And remember... Oregon....
(and this is where there is disagreement)
HATES (some yell)
LOVES (some yell)
YOU!"
I seal myself up in my sleeping bag, take one final look up at the big dipper, and bury my head inside. Goodnight, goodnight and goodnight to this crazy unpredictable world.
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