Lifescapes

Watersheds

MeadowKnoll is soggy, there's quite a lot of flood debris along Pecan Creek, and the only road out was impassable for a day or so, as you can see in this photo taken by our neighbor, Judy Cheney. (That's the road, not a stream.)

But things are getting back to normal here, if you don't count the slime mold that's threatening to engulf everything. And while there was plenty of sturm und drang for a while, there wasn't any serious danger here. We took these frequent flash-flooding events into account when we chose the place to put our house.

Things aren't normal in Marble Falls, though. Not yet. For some photos of the flooding along the Lower Colorado and the damage caused by creek flooding in Marble Falls, go here. Even the long-time residents have never seen anything like it, and no wonder: it's being categorized as a 500-year flood.

If you'll pardon me, I'd like to say that this is one of those times when the questions "What watershed do you live in?" and "Why should this matter?" become more than a little significant. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that these two questions interest me. Here's one post where I've raised the issue; there are others. Understanding the watershed you live in helps you understand your place in the world, what makes it a good place, what makes it (sometimes) a challenge. Unfortunately, we usually don't become aware of watershed until something unpleasant happens upstream: 20" of rain overnight; a chemical spill; a break in a sewer line; the destruction of trees and other ground cover that causes streams to silt up. There's more about the importance of watershed here and here. I'd love it if some of this would make you curious enough to find out something about the watershed you live in--maybe map it out (Google will be glad to help), take a drive with the kids to the creeks and rivers and lakes in the system, talk about why you love it and what you need to be on the lookout for.

Now I'll climb down from my soapbox. Took a day off from writing today (close to 60k words on Briar Bank) to do some shopping, pull some weeds, make some felt, do some knitting and reading: Gretchen Legler's On the Ice, a memoir of her visit to McMurdo Station in Antarctica, which just won the annual book award given by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. It's a beautiful book. Read it.

And speaking of awards, Linda Lear's biography, Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature was just named the Lakeland Book of the Year for 2007. It's the first time this Cumbrian literary award has been won by an American writer (if you think it's easy to impress those Brits, think again). Congratulations, Linda! A Life in Nature is also a beautiful book, but since I've been writing about it for months, I'm sure you have already read it. If not, there's a treat in store for you.

Reading note. This is Legler's description of walking across McMurdo, in a chapter subtitled "Bending Into the Wind."

The wind was so strong we could let ourselves fall into it with all our weight and were held upright by the strength of it. We curved ourselves into the wind, taking one clumbsy step at a time. It was enough to make you cry, or laugh, or both--at the futility, the naivete, the arrogance of those old explorers' efforts, but also at the human spirit--all that struggling with forces over which you had no control, trudging forward with some fantastic goal in your heart.

The Cowgirl, the Dragons, and the Ark

Some days, the bear gets you. Other days, it's the cows. And some days, it's the dragon.

Before he took off for New Mexico, Bill moved Texas, Blossom, and Mutton to the barn pastures, where the bluestem and Johnson grasses grow rich and thick. (Johnson grass has its virtues. At least, the cows think so.)

Yesterday, being smart animals, they figured out how to get the gate open and get out. I discovered their sleight-of-hoof yesterday evening, when I drove the ranch truck out to the end of the lane with the week's garbage (we don't want the garbage truck mudding up our driveway). It was getting dark, a storm was barrelling down from the north, the lightning was electric, and there were three loose animals, having a high old time in an unmowed pasture where there's even more bluestem than there is by the barn.

Mutton (the Barbado sheep) is fairly tame, although he has lately fallen into the bad habit of butting. (Want to see my bruise?) The cows are not tame, although they do seem to recognize me as their Main Mama, and will occasionally look up from their grazing when I call. Occasionally.

They do, however, have a hankering after a concoction called sweet stuff, a mix of sorghum, molasses, and corn. So I drove up to the barn, got a bucket of sweet stuff, and spent the next half hour yodeling, shaking my bucket, and trying to look irresistably alluring in the middle of what was cranking up to be a monster storm. Finally, the cows came home. In the rain, I rewired the gate. (The cowboy who wired it in the first place forgot to wire the crucial parts--we won't name him, but his initial is B.)

Then I went home, took a hot bath, went to bed, and spent most of the night comforting dogs who were not happy about the thunder and lightning and driving rain. We all woke up to a flood. Yep. Here be dragons, indeed.

But the animals and I are okay. The barn meadow isn't flooded, and the cows and sheep are wet but safe. Serenity (that's the name of our house) sits high and dry, an ark in bad weather. But it's a different story over in Marble Falls, where people are perched on the roofs of their houses and sleeping in the high school gym. Our rain gauge overflowed at 6" (I emptied it before the storm), but there's a verified report of 17.5" about ten miles south of us, and the doppler radar shows 18" here between midnight and six a.m.. I haven't been out to look at the low-water crossing above the lake, but my neighbor says the road is under water.

The dragons are out and about. It's be a good day to stay in the ark and write.

Reading note (a longish one), from Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World, by Scott Ruseell Sanders:

What did the Ohio mean to the Mound Builders? . . . I would guess that the river was a god to them, a brawny presence, a strong back to ride through the forest, a giver of fish and mussels, flowing always and flooding when it took a notion. If you look at the most stunning of all the earthworks, the sinuous, quarter-mile-long Great Serpent Mound in southern Ohio, with its coiled tail and gaping mouth, and then look at the twisty Ohio itself, you can see that the river is a snake, the snake a river. . . If you are going to survive in the land, if you are ever going to be at home, you must know and honor the local powers, and nothing in this region is more steadily, undeniably powerful than the river.

Landscape art

Landscape art? Well, not quite. Not yet. But yesterday, Diana Gray (who does a lot of fiber art other than rag rugs, which is how we first met) sent me some photos of the felted landscape art she has been creating. I've never felted, mostly because I haven't been terribly fond of the felted wearables I've seen, which are knitted or crocheted first, then felted in the washing machine. In fact, I had a bad experience with a pair of felted slippers. Not worth the work, I thought.

But this is something else altogether. I studied Diana's photos and the instruction sheet she sent me (thanks, Diana!), and surfed around the web looking for other ideas. Then I got my stuff out and began to play.

This photo is my first effort, crafted as a study piece so I can see the way the fibers behave. I loved the process, and am intrigued by the product. What's more, it will give me a chance to use some of the fiber I've been hoarding, and prompt me to get back into dyeing again. I've more or less stopped dyeing, because I made some lovely colorways, and then spun them into lovely yarn, and haven't yet found the right knitting project for them. So much yarn, so little time to knit!

But this kind of felting will allow me to go directly from the dyed fiber (I can even see how I can use my carding machine to create the layers of fiber color!) to the felted piece. It even fits into my increasingly passionate preoccupation with landscape. I'm anxious to do more of this work.

If you'd like to try this kind of felting, here's an online tutorial, posted by Rebecca Hillman, a felter who lives in County Leitrim, Ireland (don't you just love the Web?). Rebecca is creating other felted art, but her photos and text will give you an idea of the way this kind of felt is created. If you have other links to share, please do!

And just to let you know that I'm not neglecting my needles, I'm into Fair Isle tams, like these. I did one in solid blue as a test piece, to get a feel for the shape, and have started on another, in shades of brown, ivory, orange, red.

And Briar Bank has stopped sputtering and is now moving right along. Peggy and I have finished the new Cottage Tales website. Go have a look and tell me what you think.

Reading note, from Animal Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, which I finished last night. In one chapter, Kingsolver is writing about the fad diets "convulsing our bookstores and bellies":

What the fad diets don't offer, though, is any sense of national and biological integrity. A food culture is not something that gets sold to people. It arises out of a place, a soil, a climate, a history, a temperament, a collective sense of belonging." [In other words, food and landscape are integrally related. And although modern technology and transportation have given us the ability to separate them--to eat food out of season, imported from distant places--this is not always a good thing.]

Stay-at-home dad

My son Michael has just published the second in a series of columns he's writing for the Juneau Empire. This one is about an important decision that he and his wife Sheryl made a couple of years ago: that he would stay at home with the kids until they went to school. I'm glad he's been able to do that--it's good for Michael, good for Sheryl, and especially good for the children.

And it's always interesting (sometimes comfortable, sometimes un-) to see my children's perspective on the life we shared when they were still at home. It's also interesting to see him write so honestly about his relationship to his first family. I have the feeling that many of us find ourselves being more transparent (less self-protective? less defensive?) in print and online, than we used to be. I can't help but think that's good.

Here be dragons

From Wikipedia: "Here be dragons" is a phrase used to denote dangerous or unexplored territories, in imitation of the infrequent medieval practice of putting sea serpents and other mythological creatures in blank areas of maps . . .

At the "Land/Stories Conference" a couple of weeks ago, I led a workshop called "Here Be Dragons," where we talked about the challenges and (sometimes) terrors of place, and another called "Personal Mapping," which asked people to become more aware of the physical aspects of the place they live.

For example, we drew a schematic map of our neighborhood: that part of our city, town, or rural area in which we spend most of our time. And then we talked about the map, and about places we enjoyed living (and why) and about places we'd never want to live (and why). The responses were interesting . . . (The rest of this section of the post is on the Wildness blog, including a photo of one my local dragons. While you're over there, read Laura Girardeau's poem, and take a minute to tell her how much you enjoyed it.)

We're not having a flood of those dragon proportions right now. Yet. But we are totally, completely soggy. The dogs and I splash as we go for our W-A-L-K (as Ann put it in a recent email about her grand-dog Gus, who is living happily on three legs). The garden is gasping with disbelieving glee, and so are the weeds. The native turkeyfoot bluestem is blossoming wildly, but the farmers can't get into the fields to cut hay, and when they can, there's not enough sun to dry it out. Irony upon ironies: a great year for grass, but hell for hay.

And there's more rain on the way, with moisture streaming up from the Gulf and a string of small disturbances slipping down from Oklahoma, like fat green peas rolling downhill. Yesterday, the power went off about 11 and I decided to call it a day (writing-wise). Drove the Honda Element (our workhorse van) to Marble Falls to get groceries, and when I got back, the low-water crossing above the lake was nearly impassable. I wouldn't have tried it in the Civic, but the Element has four-wheel drive and is higher off the road. We swam merrily home.

Reading note. Each piece of land can tell a story of grief and loss--forests turned to wate and stone, lifeways dried up in spite of sacred ritual, the human heart ruined by war. And yet the land keeps telling another version of the story--that its cycles and processes are the final authority, that our hearts are constructed to love its beauty.--"Monarchs," by Alison Hawthorne Deming, What Wildness is This

Some days the bear gets you

This guy I was married to once (Jim, a man with a huge and wonderful sense of humor--the very best thing about him), used to say, cheerfully, "Some days you get the bear, some days the bear gets you."

Today was one of those bear-gets-you days. Peggy Moody and I have been working on the relaunch of the Cottage Tales website. We had it all figured out, until the artist didn't deliver the crucial piece, and didn't deliver it late, to boot. So we're scratching our heads and trying to see what we can salvage of what we've already done. A good plan gone bad.

We had a crack in our car windshield and decided to get it replaced. The guy who fixed it did a good job, but he thought it was okay to take the TX Tag (one of those electronic gizmos that allow you to zip like Batman and Robin in their Batmobile through the toll plaza without stopping to feed the greedy meter man) off the old windshield and glue it onto the new. No. Not. Three emails, two phone calls, some language difficulties, a lost TX Tag envelope, and a few harsh husband-wife words later, we now have a new TX Tag on our new windshield and are good to go through the toll plaza, zip-zip. (The moral of this story: do not replace your windshield, no matter how bad that crack looks. It's not true that the glass will fall into your lap or shatter across your face. All those tags and seals and certificates and parking permits pasted across it will hold it together and keep it from breaking. You and your windshield will live forever.)

Oh, and speaking of the car. Our nice little Honda Civic only has about 110,000 miles on it (we drive our cars forever) and is still in very good shape. Her name is Nancy (Drew, of course--the other vehicle is Ned). Nancy just needed a "little" work to keep her tick-tocking for another 110,000 miles, right? Wrong. Turns out that she needs quite a lot of work, about $1900 worth of work. And that little red light that says the passenger's-side airbag isn't working? Hey, it's wrong, too. Neither airbags are working. Add $499 to the bill.

And today was the day our cat was supposed to get her teeth cleaned. (What? You didn't know that cats needed dental work? Now you do.) Turns out that she has a kidney or bladder infection, though, we're not sure which. Discovering this and getting the antibiotic ran to $137, and the teeth still haven't been cleaned. That will happen in two weeks, after the antibiotic clears out the infection. Lovely cat. Teeth of gold.

Some days it really is just you and the bear, Jim.

But we're still blooming here. This is monarda, otherwise known unglamorously as spotted horsemint. And tomorrow is bound to be better. Definitely. Tomorrow the bear and I will come to an understanding.

Oh, and if you haven't checked out the new What Wildness group blog, there's no better time.

Reading note, from "A Full Life in a Small Place," by Janice Emily Bowers, in What Wildness is This:

I pick up my journal again. A white-winged dove calls from the telephone wire, its voice throaty and muffled. He sounds as though his head is buried beneath a pillow. The watermelon vines sliently plot to take over the backyard. Tiny blue butterflies spark from the zucchini plants. The scutter of an invisible bug under fallen leaves brings the cat to attention. If these ordinary miracles aren't enough, that's too bad, because this garden--this here and now--is all I've got. It's more than enough for a full life in a small place.

A new community blog

I launched a new blog yesterday for contributors to the anthology What Wildness is This, and Paula Yost put up a new post, "Women in Wild Places." I'm hoping there will be frequent posts by other writers whose work is included in the collection. Bookmark it and subscribe so you don't miss any posts. I'm looking forward to seeing how this develops.

Reading note, from Cindy Bellinger's "This Land on My Face" in What Wildness:

This land requires you to withstand--externally and internally--rockslides, searing heat, blizzards, and drenching rains. If you don't turn away, but turn toward the sun, the land finds a way in. It seeps under your skin, coursing through your veins like footsteps following old mountain trails. Before you know it, the land settles on your face. And you know you're home.

Where in the world am I?

Dani Greer (fellow SCN member, fellow member of Women Writing the West) invited me to blog over at her new group blog, "Love of Place." I've just put up a post called "Where in the world am I?" Come on over and check it out.

Work notes. Back on the job, on the book, The Tale of Briar Bank. I've had over a week off, so I've gone back to the beginning and am working my way through the text, crawling, actually, at a speed of about 25 pages a day. It's a good time to do this, since I'm just about halfway through the book. By the time (a couple of days hence) I finish this revision, I'll be eager to dive into the second half. That's the theory, anyway. It's worked before. It'll surely work again. Won't it?

Reading note, from Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark" 

He had brought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased
when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.

Black swallowtail

Ferne Mizell of Austin TX sent me this lovely photo of a black swallowtail, the butterfly that is the next step in the lifecycle that begins with the caterpillar on the fennel. Ferne says that this butterfly was moving slowly and seemed reluctant to fly, so was perhaps just newly hatched; a neighbor, though, thought that she was perhaps laying eggs. Either way--just starting out or beginning the end--it's another important step in life's ceaseless journey.

The conference is finished and I'm recovering. It was an exciting, joyful two days (three, for those of us who participated in the field-writing workshops) of discovery. I think we all came away with the idea that knowing our places, learning this earth, becoming conscious of our connections--these are the most important things our species can do. This is our responsibility. Kathleen Dean Moore gave our keynote address, and (in part) read from her book Holdfast. Here is some of what she read:

"You can put down roots by staying in one place. But my hope for my daughter [who had just gone away to college] is that there is another way to be deeply and joyously connected to the land even while she's on the move, a way for Erin to feel at home in the natural world, no matter where she is. It's a kind of rootedness that has to do with noticing, with caring, with remembering, with embracing, with rejoicing in the breadth of the horizon and taking comfor in the family smell of rain. In the sliding, shifting world my daughter lives in, this may be the closest thing to bedrock."

I think I speak for all those who were at the conference this weekend when I say that we know we must take this as our task: to notice, to care, to remember, embrace, rejoice. And to love, protect, and speak for, to hold the land's stories as dear and as important and tragic and hopeful as our own.

Today, answering emails, cleaning house, doing laundry, restoring the refrigerator to some sort of order. Tomorrow, if I'm lucky, back to writing. If I'm luckier, I'll see a black swallowtail in the garden.

Reading note. How can I understand that what is absent is not gone, that what has ended is not finished, that what is taken is returned as more than memory?--Susan Hanson, "Why Write About Nature?"

Lady and cancer

We got the lab report today. Lady has squamous cell cancer in her toe (outside digit, right hind leg). The vet amputated it last week. I'm very angry about a missed diagnosis from another vet a month ago: a month's earlier amputation would have improved her chances of survival. But she's a tough gal (unless it's thundering, of course, which is another story altogether). We'll hope for the best.

I wrote back in March about the disappearing bees here at MeadowKnoll, and have been following the story since. "Who Killed the Honeybees" appeared in Salon last week. You may have to fiddle with the link to make it work (try google if it doesn't). It's worth the effort to read the article, which debunks the cell phone and microwave tower myths and offers a much more realistic explanation--a "perfect storm" of deadly factors, culminating in a very serious situation. Our wildflower bloom is the best we've had in years, but without bees, will there be any wildflowers next year?

Big storms here, lots of rain and wind but no serious damage. They're predicting better weather for week's end, which is just fine with me, because we're having a day of outdoor field-writing workshops as part of our conference. We closed registration, since we reached our limit (if you were putting it off to the last minute, you missed your chance). We're looking forward to a unique experience. To those of you who emailed me about posting my "personal mapping" workshop material, I'll let you know what's available after the conference.