THE CYCLE OF LIFE

Fort Macon, Emerald Isle, NC

So, other than ourselves, our bodies, hearts and souls; 

Other than Salvation, the gift of His Son and Life Everlasting; 

Other than love and desire, effervescence and time; 

Other than laughter and bravery and tears; 

Other than my repentance and your forgiveness

Or your regret and mine, 

(Christe Eleison, Christe Eleison, Christe Eleison)

Other than laughter and touching and tears,  

God also gives us Nature.  

How about that?  

Sets us square in the midst of this regal space.

Lightning and lavender and dark swirling skies.

Deep things and old things, rough things or smooth, 

Each thing a process (and so too are we).  

A space that can lift up our traumas and bury our cares.

We live in a metaphor, yes and a world

Actualizing without shame or blame.

A fox or a tree or the rain or the waves; 

Something that skitters you only can hear; 

A hawk big enough to shadow the field; 

The air moist or dry, or colder or close; 

Wind to blow savage and topple a tree; 

The cycle of Life is His gift, 

Our cycle of emotions too.  

Everything coming round and round and round again.

Never an ending once more to begin.

                               Nina Naomi 

IN THE DEEP MIDWINTER

 

In the deep midwinter, trees disrobe and views expand

From house to woods to meadow and back.

Cedars laden, tipped yellow-brown or berry-blue

Clustered, draw purple finch and mockingbird.

The gray squirrel too enjoys its feast. 

 

With woody branch and needles bluish-green,

Red cedars spread, heavy with the scent of pine.

I watch in my holly trees the robins tangle, 

Fluttering, swooping, eating, nesting.

Shiny green hollies, gleaming red berries, clear frost, the colors of winter.  

 

Over there the Lenten Rose in mauve or rich maroon or white.

Misty flowers, dark leaves splayed against the ground.

The downy woodpecker waits for seed.

Nearby the tufted titmouse with its touch of gold

Mingles its song with the nuthatch as the light hangs low. 

There's peace in midwinter but drama too, wild and windswept,

All out my window, all out my door. 

Bare trunks sculpted, jutting rocks and now rain, only rain. 

The creek rises to meet the lashings of water,

Gnarled roots criss-cross over the ground.

 

Deep down dampness, just a sliver of safety 

Behind these walls, the air cold and stark.

Later pale shadows, warm rays grace the forest.

Later still the winter moon sits high and lights the night

A deeper moonlit blue with stars so bright they look like ice.  

Beauty in bleakness, thrilling and sparse.

In chiseled shapes on wintry walks

Hushed by snow and silent lichen, or startled by geese at dusk.

While birds overwinter so do we,

Grateful anew for the wonders we see.          by Nina Naomi

THE EXTRAORDINARY

"Olive Trees At Collioure," Matisse, 1905

 Where do we find the extraordinary? 

Seldom in black tie and tulle, behind news desks or in our palms.

Earbuds and head phones scare it away.

No, the extraordinary likes the outdoors best.

It likes waterfalls and geysers, old-growth forests and thumb-sized red mushrooms.

It's in shadows of cedars on snow.

Where children play and trains whistle.

The extraordinary doesn't like crowds and cocktails, 

Humble brags or dropping names, "likes" or thumbs up.  No not there. 

Sometimes it comes indoors where lovers keep their promises and lie entwined.  

Or into words that startle.

It's in the voice of Maria Callas and the soul of Puccini. 

Artists find it and poets.  And then like God they give it away.

                                                Nina Naomi

 

 

 

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

 

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

 Wendell Berry 2012

WEATHER BROWSING, A SIMPLE PLEASURE

Hints of autumn today with a high of only 82°F.  That may not sound like much relief from the heat but in the North Carolina Piedmont it is.  Here the leaves don't change until late October.  They begin to fall in mid-November and the trees aren't bare until January. Late Fall, short Winter, early Spring and long Summer.  September will continue hot with rampant mosquitoes and the mighty chigger.  The idea of lying in the grass to star gaze would be folly.  Chigger welts heal slowly! 

I love my weather app.  Our temperature is always about the same as in Rome.  High there today 86° F.  No coliseum here or motor bike rush hour; no il primo pasta course or il secondo meat or fish course.  No house Montepulciano.  But we do have similar weather.  

London, where I wish I could live one month (or more) out of every twelve, is pretty dreary weather-wise. Mostly wet or less wet.  Sun at around 3 p.m.  Although right now late afternoon it's 64°F with blue skies.  Really lovely for London.  Even with the pandemic Londoners must be enjoying their outdoor cafes.  Somehow the weather seems irrelevant when we're there.  Some places we love rain or shine don't we?  

In Keswick, England, a market town on a tranquil lake called Derwentwater, it's raining and 51°F.  No doubt it feels colder.  We spent one glorious chilly week there in full rain gear tracking down a stone circle from the Neolithic era.  After a long hike we found out we could have taken a tourist bus.  So glad we didn't! I've got exuberant video of sheep clambering on the stones, their bleating outdone only by the relentless wind.  

And it's always fun to check Fairbanks, Alaska.  Right now it is 43°F in Fairbanks.  Not bad at all.  (Post: "Slow Journeying Through Alaska," 9/9/17) When I check the weather in places I've been or lived it brings back memories.  Living in London where our daughter was born; a wonderful visit to here or there; a sabbatical year . . . .  I know we can't travel right now, but I've enjoyed weather browsing for years.  It's not just pandemic-yearning, though there is some of that I'm sure.  

Maybe the pleasure springs from the miracle of nature, the changing seasons and the beauty of the world.  Maybe a small detail like the weather in Yellowstone National Park (Post: "Adventure Therapy," 3/31/17)  sparks the imagination.  Or Bryce Canyon, Utah (Posts: "About Awe," 10/18-20/19) where the temperature swings 40 degrees in a day! 

Bryce Canyon

People everywhere enjoying the sunshine, looking for rain, foraging for food, lighting outdoor fires, bundling against the cold and seeking the world's wonders.  Our commonality.  

It's a good hobby.  A simple pleasure.

                                                                         Nina Naomi

 

 

  

LIVING BETTER

Hellebore or Winter Rose

It's been muddy here where I live.  We've had so many damp warm days that the daffodils have popped up too early.  The Hellebores, though, are right on time.  Also known as the Lenten rose, the Christmas rose and the winter rose, but they only resemble a rose, they aren't one.  Last Spring my brother transplanted some for me from our woods where they couldn't be seen without traipsing over rotting logs and dodging the stickery overgrowth.  Leaves, stem, flowers, sap and roots--the whole plant is so toxic that the deer leave them alone.  Last weekend my husband brought a few more closer to the house.  The main erosion prevention where we live is rock.  Rocks partly buried, rocks under the earth, rocks wherever we place our spade.  So we got a little rock pile out of the holes he dug.  Since I've loved playing in the dirt since childhood, it was a happy day for me.  If you're a gardener too, don't you just love kneeling on the wet earth? 

January has brought loads of suggestions for living better.  Gadgets, technology, energy savers, mood boosters . . . .  but I'm thinking that being outdoors trumps them all.  Bundled up or stripped down--whatever the weather demands.  I read about rates of depression climbing among teenagers and young adults, women, veterans and just about everybody else.  So anything we can do for ourselves or for others, deserves our attention, don't you think?   Otherwise health or family issues, job or money issues, or plain old unhelpful thoughts can push us toward our limit. 

These ideas are ones that bear repeating--I can't remind myself too much.


1.  Take more time for ourselves.  Not so easy I know.  I remember when I had no time for anything but putting a meal on the table, supervising homework and getting ready for tomorrow.  Feeling like I couldn't carve out a minute. But that wasn't so healthy.  Experts say that time alone helps us regulate our emotions so we can better deal.  A sort of Time Out I guess. And where better to have this Time Out than outdoors. There's actually measurable evidence that solitude can be restorative, build confidence, help us set boundaries and boost our creativity and productivity. Solitude isn't loneliness. It's time to enjoy our own company, to please no one but ourselves.  Have you noticed how you're not lonely when you're on a walk, taking a hike, by a waterfall, rowing a boat, whatever it is you like best in nature to do?  Some days for me that might be just reading on a bench or sitting by the fire pit.  

2.  When something is good, enjoy it! Wholeheartedly.  Sometimes when I'm enjoying the outdoors my mind goes to what I should be accomplishing.  As if nourishing our bodies and souls in nature weren't enough of an accomplishment!  Or I might wait for the other shoe to drop. This day or hour is too nice; what's going to happen to spoil it?  Or try to anticipate some future hypothetical disappointment so I won't be taken off guard.  Sometimes I do that right while I'm in the midst of having a good time!  Negative expectations they're called.  And what a waste those are!  When something negative does happen it's never what I was preparing for anyway.  In fact the worst things that have happened to me so far I could not have anticipated, not with all the foresight in the world. So, why not savor the good without worrying so much about what will come next?  Why not give ourselves a break?  Cradle our joy.  

Illustration by Lori Roberts

3.  Give mistakes their due but no more than that, our own or those of others who may have hurt us. 

Remorse - is Memory - awake -

Her Parties all astir -

A Presence of Departed Acts -

At window - and at Door

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

 

Remorse and regret are pretty much the same.  Not happy feelings.  One way to manage bad feelings is to accept them, knowing they won't last forever.  Just like our thoughts, our feelings come and go.   The more choices we have the more likely we are, apparently, to fear we've made the wrong one. And maybe we have, or someone else did and it's affected us.  Better to find a middle ground between avoiding something we wish hadn't happened and obsessing over it, whether it's something we did or that was done to us.  I've been working on this a while now.  Last night was the first of eight weekly classes on "Loving Kindness Meditation" at Duke Integrative Medicine.  That is a part of this effort.  And today I'll be outside again doing the quarterly maintenance on the mossy path I've made winding in the woods beneath the trees.  In other words staying with the present which is not where obsessions live.  

With much hope and expectation for living better this year.  Nina Naomi

  

 





 

THE NOWNESS OF LIFE

I was thinking about this--how much our life is more like a river than the top of the mountain.  How seldom we can say, "OK that's done."  Carly Simon has a beautiful ballad she wrote after her mother died.  The chorus is

I'll wait for you no more like a daughter,

That part of our life together is over

But I will wait for you forever

Like a river...

The first three lines are just a small range of even notes until her voice rises and soars on the word "forever," drawing it up, out and down.  It sounds like falls in a river.  I love the song, maybe now more than ever since my mother is gone.  

When we climb the mountains in our life, we never reach the top.  They're rugged and hard but they're beautiful and we love climbing.  We see wonderful views along the way and find treasures, but we also love coming back down.  Then we can follow the river, float, swim, survive its currents and climb another day if we want.  These are good choices.  They last. 

So what are these things that are never over, the tops we don't reach?  You know them.  Forgiveness is one, ourselves or others.  That takes forever, sung with our own voices rising and lingering on the word.  Understanding our children is another.  Or our partner.  Or even ourselves--maybe especially ourselves.  We never say, "OK that's done!"  

Making a home is another.  That's why we feather our nests over and over.  We add a blanket or a new plant.  We rearrange our collections.  We paint a room, plump the pillows, or even move and start over.  We don't want our homes to be finished.  We aren't, why should they be?

Enjoying nature is another one.  Yesterday I read an article called "In Life's Last Moments, Open a Window," by Dr. Rachel Clarke.  She works in palliative care in Britain. She says that even (or maybe especially) the dying want the experience of nature.  When the doors and windows of their rooms are opened their spirits lift, they're more peaceful, accepting and calm.  They want the sights and sounds of birds, of leaves rustling, and the feel of the breeze.  The idea seems to be that in our last days the trivial and the important merge.  Perhaps we need nature to remind us that we are part of its cycle.  She quotes a writer who said about his ending, "The nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous."  I think being on a river or climbing, pausing, climbing, pausing are wondrously in the now. 

Dr. Clarke says that people often imagine a hospice to be only about the dismalness of  death.  But it isn't, she says.  It's about "the best bits of living.  Nowness is everywhere. Nature provides it."  We want this all the time, don't we, the best bits of living, nowness everywhere, nature providing?  I'm going to do my best to put myself in a place where this can be true for me.  A place in my river or on my mountain side. 
                                   

NOURISH YOUR SOUL AFTER A RAIN

Amanita Jacksonii

This is a truly beautiful mushroom with a brilliant red cap.  They are sprouting all over the woods. It is not poisonous, but some look-a likes are deadly.  So we can't eat them! I'm pretty sure I have this labelled correctly, but . . . . this is my first foray into identifying wild mushrooms.  I am way beyond my comfort level.  I could have gotten them all wrong or all right, no telling.  Still, don't you love trying to learn something new? Gills, spots, stalk, cap, bruising, spores--all part of a specialized vocabulary.  Plenty of web sites to help.

 

We've had so much rain in North Carolina that the fungi are exploding.  The amount of rain, in fact, is rather alarming.  So are the fires in California, the melting ice in Glacier National Park, and the grieving mother Orca holding her dead calf for 17 days and 1,000 miles.  It all makes me more than a little nervous.  I'm trying to do my part.  But the rain has definitely brought it's own beauty.  Some friends saw the sprouting mushrooms first when their headlights hit a cluster.  Since then I've been spotting them everywhere, in every shape and size.  I love it! Look at the one below at 7 inches!  And the little thumb-nail sized one.  We must have a hundred of those!

Amanita Jacksonii

The Amanita Jacksonii is usually solitary, but sometimes occurs in scattered groups. Doesn't that description sound more like an animal than a plant?  The Russula, below, is a very complicated genus, with more than 750 species I learned.  Wikipedia says that "Russula is mostly free of deadly poisonous species, and mild-tasting ones are all edible."  Well, that kind of sounds like I'd have to taste one to know, and that makes me nervous too.  I'll have to learn more. 

Russula Mushrooms

The one below is edible, at least it is if I've identified it correctly.  Chicken of the Woods.  Obviously tastes like chicken to some people.  We have a lot of Chicken of the Woods on fallen trunks and heavy branches.  

Chicken of the Woods

But the Northern Tooth fungus is not edible.  It's a combination shelf and tooth fungus.  Since it is a parasite, it causes the central core of a living tree to rot.  Then a strong wind will blow the tree over.  Not surprisingly I found this fungus on a trunk on the ground.  

Northern Tooth Fungus

The next one I've nicknamed Pancake.  It looks like a stack of these with maple syrup and butter would taste just right.  But I'm not going to experiment!  It's enough fun just to hunt these out and photograph them.  Because we have white-tailed deer, who apparently can eat at least some amount of even a toxic mushroom, the ones around our house keep disappearing after a few days.  This too is a subject I'd like to find out more about.  

The ugliest mushroom I found is apparently nicknamed Old Man of the Woods.  Not sure why old men are the butt here.  The ones in my life are as handsome as ever.  But here it is.  It grows alone on the ground with a layer of woolly scales on the top.  

The other treasures in the yard that the rain has helped are the heaps of wild mint and the spreading carpets of moss.  Both now come right up to our patios. Wild mint after a rain smells so wonderful.  

Chasing down these mushrooms and finding more and more squishy new moss is a silent adventure. So much of nature is noisy--the chattering of the birds, the deafening cicadas, the deer snorting, the boisterous foxes that were under our deck (Post:  "Make Your Life a Little Easier, Especially In Your Head"). Finding mushrooms is calming.  They're as beautiful as flowers.  They grow silently out of matter we often think of as dead--thick layers of fallen  leaves. But the natural compost is rich and good.  Pico Iyer (b. 1957), British born travel writer, essayist and novelist of Indian descent, says, 

It's the open spaces in any life, I suspect--

the moments when you lost yourself--

that make for happiness, peace, and clarity.

Each day, by the time I have taken all the pictures of mushrooms that I want, my body is relaxed and my mind quiet.  I've been totally absorbed.  My mind isn't trying to be still; it just happens. 

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND NATURE

"I believe in God only I spell it Nature."  So said Frank Lloyd Wright (186-1959). "Stay close to Nature. . . . It will never fail you," he told his students.

"Just connecting to beauty is consoling.  You see that people don't only make wars; they can also create great works of art."  Marieke Nijmanting

We were fortunate this winter to realize one of those life-time goals we all have. We visited Fallingwater in rural Pennsylvania.  The day was a lovely, crisp 18 degrees.  But the waterfall over which the house is built kept on flowing.  The noise of nature a constant for the people who lived there.  Somehow the freezing cold for two North Carolinians made it just that more memorable.  This picture is taken from across the creek, looking back at the cantilevers that jut out from the body of the house and follow the waterfall itself.

A fire burned in the open hearth and the furniture was swathed in fur rugs and blankets.  A true house built upon a rock. 

The shadows cast in the winter sunlight were stark with symmetry.  See how they crisscross?  It seemed like a very livable home, one that, even with the expanse of open space would cozen you in winter and free you in summer.  We were awed. 

Later in the week we went to the Guggenheim Museum across from Central Park in NYC.  It is said that Wright was inspired by the nautilus shell in designing the spiral ramp.  As someone with a twenty-year collection of sea shells, I resonated to that.  The museum seems to be a spiritual place, with rhythm and movement, unfolding like an organism.  Look at the rotunda skylight, letting in the sunshine through glass panes fashioned with the symmetry of a spider's web. 

Central to the rotunda is an Alexander Calder (1898-1976) mobile called Red Lily Pads.  After we saw it, I did some research.  It reminds many of leaves skimming a pond.  Ovoid disks floating parallel to the earth in a way that echoes the unpredictable activity of nature.  What amazingly simple beauty.  We took the elevator to the top ramp then walked slowly down, enjoying the mobile from every level.  Something millions of people from all over the world have done.

So much to be thankful for.  Great architecture and art.  The freedom to visit and enjoy it.  Armchair travel.  Photography.  The seasons.  Some days blessings abound. 

NATURE 1 STRESS 0

Being in nature doesn't solve our problems; but it does make us less stressed about our problems. When Stress and Nature are pitted head-to-head, Nature always wins, hands down.

We have been spending the semester an hour outside New York City and commuting in.  The other day I took this photo of One World Trade Center, a beautiful building.  No nature in sight in this picture, right?  But it's one of the world's greenest buildings and as a beacon is visible for 20 miles.  

View of One World Trade Center

This building is at the epicenter of our nation's remembered stress.  I was thinking about this the other day when we visited the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.  After we visited, I read all about the site at www.911memorial.org:  the sustainable design; the forest of trees; the waterfalls that line the footprints of the Twin Towers, almost an acre in size; the Oculus, a train station designed to look like a dove in flight.  By interacting with nature, the architects have created an oasis of respectful calm where once terror reigned.

WTC Oculus, Waterfalls, Names

On our walk around the area, we paused by hundreds of tulips blooming in front of a waterfront commercial building filled with commuters and shoppers. What a lovely natural environment for stress relief after a commute into the City or long day at work.  There are tables and benches open to everyone, no one was being run off. The waterfront itself is so inviting, filled with grownups and kids enjoying the outdoors.

Brookfield Place, Riverside, NYC

Spending time in a city with so much concrete and bustle, I wanted to know why physiologically being in nature is good for us.  It turns out that being in nature boosts our immune systems.  Like singing and exercise, just being in the natural world produces hormones that reduce stress.  Walking and breathing in fresh air stimulates our circulation.  Flower fragrances calm us.  People find that being in the natural world makes them happier and helps to banish feelings of loneliness or depression.

St. Paul's Chapel Graveyard 

There's a graveyard just next to the 9/11 Memorial.  So fitting. Graveyards abound in almost every old city all over the world.  They too are places of respite.  I read that President George Washington retreated to this Chapel to pray just after his inauguration.  Some of these graves would have been there then.  Don't you also find graveyards to be a calming part of our natural world?  People of all ages were rambling through this graveyard, noting the old stones and the loving remarks carved in them as the living remember the dead. No one looked stressed.