Morning Pages: Navigating the In-Between Road

I just finished reading Marc Hamer’s luminous book Seed to Dust, published in Canada by the great folks at Greystone Books in Vancouver and printed by my favorite book printer, Friesens (shout out, as always, to our wonderful friend and rep there Donovan Bergman!)

I was telling a friend and client of mine this morning (a wise lady farmer), that I have not been able to stop thinking about the book since I finished it.

I had recommended it to her and she ordered the audiobook to listen to while combining. (She and her team in southeastern Saskatchewan still have 3,000 acres to go, so she has lots of time for audiobooks!) I said to her this morning, “One thing Marc Hamer has reminded me of is the importance of journaling my observations.” She agreed.

I never had a great memory, and the clarity of his details bespeaks someone dedicated to doing the best possible job of description. He couldn’t have written any of his books, including the wildly popular previous book, How to Catch a Mole, without constant journaling. There is just so much more we see than we can recall without help.

The Wall Street wrote about the book in May, and said this: “Seed to Dust is an invitation to read this world as Mr. Hamer does—with a close eye to what changes, and what does not. “In the end,” he decides, “all we are is our attention, there is nothing else.”

This means something to me. As a person with attention deficits requiring medication just to keep track of the ping-pong score, I work so hard to stay present, but mostly resort to taking pictures, making notes, and using other tricks to supplement my brain’s limitations.

Water finds its way

I went for a walk this morning, down the steep hill from our place to the shore of Puget Sound, the second largest estuary in the United States, after Chesapeake Bay. The waters lapping up on our little stretch of beach have come all the way from the Strait of Georgia, around the Gulf and San Juan Islands, thru the Strait of Juan de Fuca, where the basin narrows substantially into Admiralty Inlet and then through an even narrower passage, the Central Basin, down past Edmonds, Bainbridge Island, Seattle and finally Vashon Island. Some of those waters will make their way even further, down through the Tacoma Narrows (where a few weeks ago I witnessed a small whirlpool in the center where two currents intertwine), and then down to the South Basin, where they eventually peter off into various inlets and rivers around Olympia.

It’s a crisp September morning with a summer-like heat promised for later, hinted at already. I sit across from Vashon Island and watch some twenty small boats and a couple of canoes out on the bay. They rest quietly on the fullness of the high tide, where there is just a ripple on the surface of currents below. The sun spreads a cozy blanket of warmth over the chilly water. Underneath are the fish–chinook, coho and chum salmon at this time of year. At various other times, you might catch sea-run cutthroat trout, steelhead, green sturgeon, Pacific halibut, cabezon or lingcod. (I don’t fish, that’s just what I’m told by those who do.)

A man pulls up in a beat-up Chevy with a canoe strapped to its roof. He gets out and busies himself with unstrapping it, flipping it off the car and onto his head, portaging his way through a few boulders meant to keep cars off the sand. It’s a private beach for the homeowners down here, and only a twenty-five foot wide strip interrupts their privacy, allowing others of us from up the hill to hike down and enjoy a small sliver of the beach.

“Morning,” I say from my perch on a giant petrified log. “Looks like you’ve got company out there.”

He sets the canoe down at the edge of the gentle lapping waves, straightens up, peering out across the bay.

“Yep, it’s a beauty.” He returns to his car and brings down his fishing supplies, a floppy straw hat and a lifejacket. He points his key at the car and the shrill beep-beep reminds the sea lions lazing out on a floating dock that man is forever, annoyingly, near.

“I’ve only got a half-hour,” he says as he pushes out, calf-deep, before stepping into the canoe.

“Better than nothing, I guess. Good luck.”

He nods and waves an oar at me. Within a minute he is out in the middle of the small fleet, collected at what must be a hot spot. I hear him shouting across the water to the others. Their muted voices travel back to me, refracted by the cooler water temperatures meeting the warmer air above. I can’t understand them, but I gather they’re sharing intelligence, a comradeship of fellow anglers.

Together, apart

I look at the time on my phone, and realize it’s time to start back up. The distraction from what at times is a painful forty to forty-five degree upward slope is the scenery. The more attention I pay, the more details I capture, the less I feel the smarting in my chest and quads. Nature is my fuel, my shiny thing that diverts me from focusing on the pain.

There are houses on the shore, and houses at the top of the hill, but on the rollercoaster of a narrow road there is only hill on the right, and deep, dark valley below on the left. Here, in the in-between, there is rarely another trekker, even more rarely a car. It’s only wide enough for one and a half cars; in the unusual case of two vehicles coming in opposite directions, they probably have to both edge their way carefully around each other, outside tires flirting with the ditch on one side, the drop-off to the valley on the other.

Mostly, you can walk up the middle of the road if you choose. I do this, and stop to take a few photos on the way for this post. And, I can’t lie, for a few seconds’ break. On the first rise and bend of the road up from the beach, a stand of various pines, including Pinus flexillis, sturdy limber pine, reach up from the sides of the valley. There are more than fifty species of trees in the Pacific Northwest. Many are pines, and some of those are nearly indistinguishable from each other without a close examination of their cones or needles. Aromatic Thuja plicata, the Western red cedar, is perhaps the most iconic of the region. Its contribution all the way from to ancient native American culture to today’s lumber industry is unmatched. Western hemlock, Tsuga heterophylla, and several oak varieties are also part of this inter-species growth.

They prosper in this little forest valley in profusion, limbs braided intricately like lovers, leafy top boughs tangled together. The trees don’t concern themselves with standing only with their own kind; nature doesn’t care for segregation here. They are part of a bigger family, a very old one, a community of ferns that cool their feet, ivy that covers their trunks, morning glories that wind around their branches and burst into bloom at the touch of the cool, thin fingers of morning sun that manages to filter through the canopy. We are so much more prudish than nature, even as we posture progress and enlightenment, we still shift uncomfortably when we get too close to equality, insisting instead on our individual uniqueness, on our right to keep a distance.

Chaos is a myth

I note that this seeming chaos is full of mostly invisible pattern…predictable, relational, if-then design. If it there is a late frost in spring, my Libernum will likely lose its nascent Goldilocks lengths of flowers. Where there is water, moles will follow. These things are not chance, and what horticultural research has learned over time is far less than there is to be learned. So, I try to slow down the obsessive desire to Google every question that pops into my brain, and work instead to breathe in the marvel that I don’t understand, perhaps never can, and am likely better off not knowing anyway.

As I come to the blessed flat stretch of road in between the first and second slopes of the road, sunlight spills over a boulder on the far side of the valley, casts a spotlight on a swath of vegetation. The overhanging leaves reflect the light from their undersides, turning a brilliant spring green, as they looked in March when they first unfurled. I snap a shot on my phone camera, and the next second the sun inches away again, and the valley is cast back into its multitude of dark, velvety greens, yellows, blacks, browns.

On the next upward rise, I change perspective, turning to the right side, the hill side. There’s no guardrail on this side as there is on the dangerous valley side. Here the fallen leaves of fall collect in piles, the ferns spread, touching the edges of the asphalt in some places, tentative fingers wondering at the unnatural surface. Lichen covers tree branches in green fur. Blackberry bushes are stragglers down here where there’s not much sun; they won’t die, stubborn and infiltrating as they are, and their few berries are small and hover undecidedly between red and black.

Two ladies power-walking down the hill (I’d like to see them do that on their return) wave cheerfully at me. I start to say hello then realize they both have earbuds in and are listening to something other than me, or the birds or the skittering of something in the underbrush. I feel sad for them, but then dismiss that judgement; it feels dirty on my skin.

The road in-between

Once they’re past me, treading purposefully downward, I return to the hillside, spying an almost-spent thistle, half-hidden in an arching Japanese knotweed. It’s probably some version of Arctium minus, sometimes called a beggar’s button, or sticky button. I think, as I often do, of the arbitrariness with which we categorize objects. Weed or flower. Harmful or helpful. Frightening or comforting. Good or bad. We do the same with people. We make judgments, often in a snap, with little or no corroborating evidence. We know nothing, yet we pretend otherwise. Maybe this judgey behavior has seeped into our DNA over the centuries, the spite, the selfishness. Maybe babies are born with the tendency toward a self-inflating ego today, and if they aren’t nurtured away from it, will grow into haters. With that Darwinian excuse, we can hardly blame ourselves for our species’ moral and ethical decay, can we?

I’m puffing a bit now, with exertion and with vexation for the poor thistle, so maligned. Yanked out by its roots to ensure it doesn’t return–so stupid we can be. Here’s the truth of thistle: “Native thistle provide important habitat and food sources for native fauna. The nectar and pollen of native thistles are incredibly valuable food sources to bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.  Many insects feed on the leaves, stems, flowers and seeds, while some songbirds also feed on thistle seeds. These nectar sources help support pollinators year-round, and can help to increase yields for many valuable crops.” And that’s just for starters. Also, dammit, they’re just as pretty as a tulip, in their own weird way.

I can feel myself gaining the summit of the slope just as I can see it. The strain in my legs lets up, little by little, my steps get faster on their own. I have made it, and I am not having palpitations, after all. As I make the u-turn to our street, also a narrow road, I reward myself by stopping to check out our neighbor Jim’s pumpkin and sunflower patch.

The sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) will make excellent dried flowers if Jim chooses to cut and hang them upside down with yarn or a piece of jute in a dry, dark place. Though it probably would’ve been better to do when they were in their prime, there are still a few lookers. Jim’s pumpkins are getting humongous. I’m not sure I could lift most of them. The sight of them puts me in an autumn mood, much more so than the fact that the grocery store already has a huge Hallowe’en display up, and I find myself humming as I turn into our driveway. My wind restored, my pulse calmed, I’m now ready to get to work.

I’m full of the pumpkins and the thistles and the man in the canoe and the sea lions and the sun on my shoulders.