Alder Finds Quotes

Alder has an uncanny ability to show me things that I need to see. Sometimes it is slowing down enough during a hike where we find stones and spy animals others times it is his moments of stillness where all that he wants is to stare out the window and lay on my belly. Lately he has spent a lot of time taking books off our books shelves and handing them to us. During one short version he handed me two books, Red by Terry Tempest Williams and Earth in Mind by David Orr. Both of them were what I needed at that moment.

Earth in Mind was open to this quote: "...there is a danger that education will damage the sense of wonder- the sheer joy in the created world- that is part of our original equipment at birth. It does this in various ways: by reducing learning to routines and memorization, by excess abstraction divorced from lived experience, by boring curriculum, by humiliation, by too many rules, by overstressing grades, by too much television and too many computers, by too much indoor time and mostly by deadening the feelings from which wonder grows."

I watch this sense of wonder in Alder everyday. The joy that I see as he explores his environment, as he figures things out, and puzzles new ones, is something that I do not want to disapear. More than anyother reason this is why we have made certain choices in our lives.

The copy of Red was closed, I opened it and read bits and pieces and came across this: "I stop. The silence that lives in these sacred hallways presses against me. I relax. I surrender. I close my eyes. The arousal of my breath rises in me like music, like love, as the possessive muscles between my legs tighten and release. I come to the rock in a moment of stillness, giving and receiving, where there is no partition between my body and the body of Earth."

I have stood barefoot and welcomed the sun on the sandstone she speaks of in the Canyonlands. I have tasted the wall of a canyon as I hiked through it arms outstretched reaching both sides. I did not meet the desert until I was twenty four, but it was then that I came home. It may seem odd that I have left the west for New England, but my love of the desert is so consuming that I have never wanted to live in it. When I was close I would visit alone for weekends like some people visit lovers. The intense feeling of being there is not sustainable, I must leave or I think I might be consumed by the sandstone and sage brush.

Luckily, Kevin's parents live close enough to the desert that when we visit I can rendezvous with it, alone or with my family.

Rethinking Structure vs Love perhaps its Rhythm

A few weeks ago I wrote this post about why teachers and other adults often say that children need structure. My basic argument was that the structure was a substitute for love. A few nights ago I literally woke up from a dream thinking about this. It occurred to me that while yes love is realistically gone from school relationships that isn't what the structure is replacing. Structure is replacing rhythm.

Rhythms are natural they tend (but not always) to be cyclical and can easily be mistaken for structure if you aren't looking carefully. In our family we have a pretty consistent day but most of it occurs at certain times because that is when they work best. Naps happen when Alder is tired, and since he usually gets up at the same time they usually happen around the same time. Meals are eaten not by the clock but by our stomachs which digest food over a certain period of time, but in the summer when it is very hot we eat less and less often because our bodies need less and the kitchen is too hot to spend a lot of time in. In the winter we eat more and more often, not only are our bodies working harder to keep us warm but we are drawn to the warmth of cooking and the kitchen.

While I am not a proponent of schools for our family specifically I know there are schools out there who follow a more rhythm oriented schedule, both daily and over the course of the year. I would guess that the difference between those two settings are more subtle and more telling. That being said I would also guess if you were to look at a day in our life and a day in the life of a family who impose their own structure that the difference would be striking.

Scheduled families also seem to be families who live disconnected from the natural rhythms of the day and year. How could someone who isn't aware of the cycle of the moon, for example, be expected to trust in letting natural rhythms run their course. These people not only seem to look at children as different creatures but they themselves would be afraid to live with out their day planners filled. The current Mothering Magazine has an article about a mother choosing not to sign her four year old up for soccer. The pressures to fill children's time with directed activities isn't only part of the whole over achievement craze but it is also a result of adults who do not know how to spend time just living.

Work fills most people's days not only at the office but afterwards either through additonal commitments or stress, beyond that there are gyms to join, reading groups to be part of and I haven't even started to talk about any religious, political or service commitments people give themselves. At first look there is something of value in each activity but any of these loose their value when they are crammed into a week where relaxing with a cup of tea is considered wasteful.

My bias is to say that a lot of this has to do with American's disconnect from nature. As animals we are bound to these rhythms but our intelligence has, as it often does, gotten the better of us. We are beyond conquering we have banished it to a picture frame next to visits to grandma and baking. The result of this separation is a constant searching for ways to fill the gaps, schedules take the place of rhythms, organized activities take the place of socializing with your neighbor. The one I always find the saddest are the people who go to the gym to run on the treadmills or ride the bikes while watching the Nature Channel or reading Outside Magazine when they could just as easily step out their front door and experience the world for themselves.

Love may not equal rhythm but for children being trusted to have their needs and feelings, and those of the families as a whole, to lead the way in the way that the day goes is a form of love. Alder may only be a year old but I already let him to for himself what he can and one of these ways is letting him choose when he is tired and when he is hungry. Every day he adds another thing that he does for himself, or chooses. The other side to this is that he knows that we are there to take care of every need he has, that he will be cuddled when he is cuddly, changed when he is wet, and loved always.

SPC Engaging With the Earth

When I was young I went to a camp in the Adirondack Mountains in New York. When the mountains were in reach and we were driving up highway 73 I was be shaking like a dog with excitement. As soon as the car would pull into the camp I would run from the car checking to make sure all my favorite spots were still there. It wasn't until I had sat on one of the boulders did I feel grounded.

As an adult I still feel a connection to rocks, of all sizes. Having a rock beneath or a stone in my hand makes me feel more alive. I even have a small stone from years ago that I still lay on my tongue and get a certain calmness. Some people are enlivened by scenery or animals for me it is the stones.

Dolores LaChapelle

The following is my next article to be published at Travels in Paradise.

The first winter I was in Colorado I took an avalanche course at Hesperus Ski Hill, a one lift hill where cows grazed in the summer. It was not the full course that they gave up at the Silverton Avalanche School but it was a solid start for someone who liked to cross country ski in the backcountry. Among our instructors was a married couple who were full of stories of the old days of backcountry skiing. As the years have past the memory faded. Until the other day when I was reading a magazine and there was an obituary for Dolores LaChapelle. In thinking about what I know about her life I believe the couple was her and her husband.

LaChapelle is among a group of environmental writers who shared a philosophy known as Deep Ecology. As Alan Drengson of the Foundation of Deep Ecology explains Deep Ecology is "the long-range deep approach involves redesigning our whole systems based on values and methods that truly preserve the ecological and cultural diversity of natural systems."

Dolores focused on the sacred connection between people and the natural world. She explored this through ritual, backcountry skiing and the sacred connection between the earth and women. Her writings were hefty and academic and her ideas we spiritual in nature. She felt that "If we are to truly connect with the land, we need to change our perceptions and our approach more than our location." LaChapelle lived out her philosophies in Silverton Colorado where she divided her time between writing and directing the Way of the Mountain Leaning Center. In her spare time, Dolores also skied the back country.

As a mother I find myself looking for spiritual connections more often. LaChapelle's belief that ritual as a form of connection to the earth and ones community has infiltrated our life. She saw the connection between our lives and the planet we live on in a feminine way. How was I to know who the funny old woman with her tales of teaching members of the Army Corps of Engineers how to detonate avalanches in the seventies had so much more to teach.

As a family we are creating our own rituals, we hike in the canyon with the apple trees every spring when they are in bloom to welcome their sweetness. As my son is drifting off to sleep I sing him songs of the mountains and seas. When choosing our wedding date we decided to coincide it with Lammas which is the celebration of the first wheat harvest in the Celtic tradition. To recognize both our marriage and Lammas the spot where we were married has a garden that blooms around that time.

It is my understanding of the importance of these rituals that we seek out that is the gift that the words of Dolores LaChapelle gave me.

One of her articles is here

For more information on Deep Ecology you can find it here

On Nature and Our Move

While walking back from the pool the other day we walked by a school yard, one we pass by on most of our walks. It was one of the first outside days and one of the young teachers had taken advantage of this to bring her class outside for some project. It was obviously a special deal since all of the kids were having a hard time doing their work. What I though was telling was that most of the children chose to position themselves along the fence looking out at the rest of the world.

It made me think more about how I want to bring up Alder to love being outside but never to have to ration it. I imagine some of these kids haven't been outside, except at recess since autumn. I had this great image of a six or seven year old Alder reading a book sitting on a porch. Since it has been so snowy this year there has been less outside days in Denver (something that there are usually plenty) the children were all ghostly and probably won't regain their color until May.

Even then many of these kids will have maybe a week or two off before going to summer camps where most of their time is spent in the same class rooms. It is no wonder that children today do not feel a connection to the natural world. How can they when their only interactions with it are canned and curriculum driven?

As a child I was lucky my family would spend most weekends leaving the city and going to a cabin in the "country" most days I would wake up before my parents and head outside. It wasn't just our yard or property that I wandered on. I would go for miles and mile of regrown pastures. There was a river with the ruins of old mills, streams, a series of cliffs and plenty of imagined worlds. I would come home in time for lunch scratched up and hungry. No sooner was the meal done than I would be back out the door, unless we had something planned.

These weekends and summers of wandering helped me to survive another week in school. Sundays were always difficult, I still can't stand to hear Marion McPartland's Piano Jazz show because it was always the background to the start of our trip home. During those long drives home I would transform from the happy strong wandering soul to my week day self. But there was never any point in complaining, none of us wanted to go back to the city but grownup responsibilities made us return.

Now that I have my own son I am in the position to help cultivate his love of the outdoors. This becomes an interesting question when I think about where we are moving. There are many things that I want for myself and family that a city can provide, including less car time. But the distance from nature is not something want, nor could either I or Kevin handle.

There are obviously other constraints: feasibility for an acupuncture practice, proximity to my family, cost of living. When you add this to our love of hiking and being on the river our options begin to narrow. So we are down to five particular places and one more general region.

Hudson NY
Saratoga Springs NY
Brattleboro VT
Bennington VT
Pittsfield MA
and the general Hudson River Valley in NY

Of these places Pittsfield is the least attractive, but it is also the most affordable. Saratoga and Brattleboro are the most interesting but Saratoga is pricy. In the end we will end up weeding out the ones that aren't feasible and then going with what seems like a place that we will feel the most comfortable, and that will not be anything quantifiable.

What a process.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about our move this summer. I was all about moving to Hudson for a while. It's very cute and very much like that dream town I have where life is sweet, diverse, and busy. I pictured us living in a little farm house with a lot of land for Alder to wander on.

From Urban Draw

As the weather in Denver stops being as snowy I've been really enjoying walking around Denver and getting places. Kevin and I like going to see good films and being able to get a cup of coffee at ten pm if we want to. These aren't things you can do in a place the size of Hudson.

From Urban Draw

From Urban Draw

It has also occurred to me that in the ten years that I have been in Colorado that Denver has been the best place we have lived. I love that we can do all those things but also be on a hiking trail in a half hour (which by the way is shorter than reaching most hikes in Durango). I've also meet the people I've liked best here. They are a mix or artists, outdoor folk, and just other people loving their life.

From Urban Draw

From Urban Draw

From Urban Draw

From Urban Draw

From Urban Draw

In a city whose social is partially focused on which coffee house you go I find myself at home. To an outsider Denver seems "suburban" but but if you get out of your car and avoid the downtown that's when you will find the real Denver with it's history and it's plans. Too bad there are too many acupuncturists already here otherwise we would stay.

Where does that leave us with out move then. Well we are starting to look at small cities. Currently our focus is on Portland Maine and Albany New York. I still want to be East at this point in my life. Both those cities are small but close enough to "the country" that our need for a great deal of nature in our life is met.

I have been reading "Last Child in the Woods" by Richard Louv who is basically rehashing many of the ideas of biophilia in a more accessible read. One of his major points is that as people move to the cities and suburbs they are loosing their contact with nature. I would add that the children who are in cities (really towns and villages also) where they don't get every place by car actually have more interaction with nature than their suburban counterparts. This too is part of the draw to these small cities.

Alder will have more chance to explore parks, coasts and rivers when they are part of the immediate walkable (or at least bikeable) vicinity. Yes nature is everywhere but if you spend are always in a metal box going form one place to another you will miss it. This of course leads us to another reason that we like the idea of a walkable city, we are happy only having one car. I don't like the idea of leaving a larger pollution imprint than necessary and as it is here in Denver there are many days neither of us use the car.

After living in Paonia we realized that urban living was much more environmental and I continue to hold this opinion. Matching this with our want for an actual cultural life to the place we live, and of course a bevy of coffee shops, it seems that a small city fits more with our needs than a town like Hudson where things seem to close down at 5pm.

I guess I'm more a funky front porch in the city sort of woman.