Equinox: Light in the Corner

After all these years, I still have difficulty differentiating a solstice from an equinox. I grasp the distinction, of course, but the proper word arrives only fitfully. Yet isn't it the same with east and west? It's easy to tell "left turn" from "right turn," and as you approach a freeway interchange you know which way you want to head, but a moment of panic sometimes ensues as you try to match the phrases "I-94 east" and "I-94 west" to the appropriate directions in your head.

The fall equinox arrived this year like clockwork, which it is, in so far as the solar system can easily be described as a gigantic clock. Oddly enough, the weather also proved obliging. Daily high temperatures had been in the eighties. Suddenly they dropped to the high sixties. How delightful. Pull out a few sweaters; separate the wearable jeans from the threadbare "emergency backup" jeans. Hunt down the stocking caps: the warm fleece one that look slightly ridiculous and the handsome Irish one that's sort of breezy.   

Add to these events a morning concert of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, now that the new season is underway.

Of course, the evenings grow darker. The other day we moved a floor lamp from the bedroom into the den. We have never had much light in this corner of the house, and I'm enjoying the sight of books in the bookcase nearby that I haven't seen up close in years: a coffee-table book called Tile Art, an Edward Abbey collection called Down the River, The Year of Magical Thinking, George Steiner's Grammar's of Creation.

On page three Steiner writes:

There is, I think, in the climate of spirit at the end of the twentieth century, a core-tiredness. The inward chronometry points to late afternoon in ways that are ontological—that is to say, of the core, of the fabric of being. We are, or feel ourselves, to be later-comers. The dishes are being cleared.

Steiner elaborates this theme for three-hundred-odd pages, casting his net of references widely, as usual, but drawing special insight, to judge from the index, from Dante, Shakespeare, Heidegger, Plato, and Kafka. Faced with such a topic, and such a line-up of intellectual luminaries, I'm tempted to reply with the punch-line from the classic joke about the Lone Ranger and Tonto: "What you mean 'we,' white man?"

The truth is otherwise, I thnik."We" planned, prepared, and ate the meal of industrial liberalism, but neglected to clean up after ourselves .The youth of today have arrived to find that no one has cleared the dishes. The future is in their hands.

Meanwhile, I think it might be worth exploring whether the "core of being" is precisely the same as the "fabric of being," as Steiner so casually suggests. Might it not be more accurate to suggest that the fabric of being clothes the core of being? Or is this, too, a fallacy obscuring the fact that there IS NO CORE—the fabric IS the reality. But what fabric? A weave of space and time, of affections and antipathies. We're entering the world of the Pre-Socratics here, a world of ever-shifting cycles rather than beginnings and endings.

Hilary and I spent a beautiful day recently—cool and sunny—touring the seven-mile drive at Sherburne Wildlife Sanctuary. Though the bird life was meager, it nevertheless took us about two hours to complete the circuit.

There were plenty of sandhill cranes flying around and  a few feeding alongside the road, and other interesting wildlife, too. (See photo of young coyote above.) A flock of Franklin gulls flew in. You don't see those too often in the metro area.

From there we continued west on minor highways past St. Cloud to St Joseph, where we ate lunch at a New Orleans-inspired restaurant called Krewe. They called it a "jazz brunch" though I didn't hear a single  jazz-inflected passage in the music they were piping in. The food was good.

Our final stop was St. John's University, seven miles away, where we sat in the famous cathedral for a while, admiring the massive poured-concrete shapes and thinking good and hopeful thoughts about the dear people in our lives. Almost like praying.

Then we wandered the campus, including the library, where numerous books were on display. I sometimes wonder why we don't do this at home. There was an attractive first edition of Out of Africa, complete with dust jacket, in the bookcase I mentioned earlier, for example.

I always enjoy seeing young people silently studying, surrounded by books, though I never think, "Boy. I wish I was back in school."

Life is a big schoolroom. We're all in school.

End of Summer Walkabout

The weather report described the upcoming day as "sunny," but I noticed, looking at the more detailed hour-by-hour report, that at no specific time was the sun actually predicted to be shining. Hmm. In any case, cool, dry, and overcast sounded good to us, and we headed down the parkway, intent on seeing what the day would bring.

We parked on the west side of Lake Harriet and proceeded on foot along the north side of the lake, catching snippets of bourgeois conversation along the way as we passed the yoga class in front of the bandshell and then the beach, where two or three people were swimming,  Bicycles, dogs, and runners were everywhere, but it was a pleasant scene. We might almost have been in Argenteuil.

 A regatta seemed to be taking place on the far side of the lake. We could see a few buoys and two fishing boats that might have been carrying officials in the midst of ten or twelve single-mast boats—Class C, if I recall correctly from my non-sailing youth on White Bear Lake.

There wasn't much wind. Each of the boats held a single sailor.  No one seemed to be trying very hard. But it's hard to tell; maybe the race hadn't started yet.

When we reached the Rose Garden, we were astounded by the riot of color, both within the garden and along the outer border, where an impressive late-summer planting of blue, magenta, and white flowers was in full bloom—lots of ageratum and sweet alyssum in varying hues, along with other larger shrubs I couldn't identify.

Inside the enclosure, the roses were also doing very well. I was just taking a whiff of a "Queen Elizabeth" blossom when someone said, "Seen any golden-winged warblers lately?"  

I turned around. The man was standing nearby, tall and gangly, slightly Frank Zappa without the heavy mustache. T-shirt, running shorts. He'd spotted our binoculars. 

"Not lately," I replied. "We saw a few this spring. Lots of them nest in Minnesota."

"I know. But your golden-wings migrate to Mexico. The ones farther east migrate to South America. Where could I find one nearby?"

He seemed to know his birds. His name, he told us, was John Edward Myers.

"Well, do you know where Elm Creek Reserve is?" I said.

"Don't worry. I can find it," he said.

"Go to the Eastman Nature Center and head north along the bike path. Cross the road and down the hill. There might be some hanging around there. Are you from around here?"

"I grew up here but I've been living in Columbia for the last fifteen years. I work for environmental groups. Build eco-programs, trails. Make films. Have you ever been to Latin America?"   

"Not really."

"Go to Costa Rica. It's close. It's safe. The programs are well established. And the birds are fabulous."

Not a bad idea.

But for now, we were content to continue our stroll, past the muted Zen garden and on up the hill to the trial gardens, which, under the bright gray skies, possessed an unusual intensity of color. At one point we spotted three hummingbirds feeding at a flowering bush—our big bird sighting for the morning.

In recent years I have found myself entranced with increasing frequency by the forms, the patterns, the intricacy of plants. This is true in the deep woods, where the various forms of goldenrod and aster and club moss, for example, display their remarkable form and stature. And it's no less true in a highly cultivated garden. Many of the plants in our shady, dry, and woe-some yard are looking bedraggled. Not here under the sun and care of local garden clubs.

Our next stop was Magers & Quinn. The religious historian Karen Armstrong was interviewed recently in the Star-Tribune  under the title "A Spiritual Solution to Climate Change?" Hilary was curious to see if her new book, Sacred Nature, was in stock. No luck.

Nowadays, when I visit a bookstore,  it mostly just reminds me of books I already own that I really ought to read. Umberto Eco. Ken Wilber. Upon learning of the recent death of Javier Marias yesterday, I pulled my twenty-year-old copy of Dark Back of Time off the shelf and started in. Now's the time.

On the bargain rack outside the bookstore I saw a paperback describing the 100 best hikes in northern Oregon. Tempting....but I resisted the urge.

Our final stop was the terrace of a pizza place back in the Linden Hills neighborhood called Rosaria. It had just opened for the day and the after-church crowds hadn't shown up yet. I ordered the  Funghi: mushrooms, gruyere, porcini crema, scallions, chili flake, in honor of all the wild mushrooms we saw during our hikes on the North Shore last week. Hilary went for the classic Margherita.

I was slightly disturbed when another couple sat down at a table nearby. It wasn't the big, chocolate-brown dog that accompanied them. It was that I recognized the woman, but couldn't place her. How embarrassing. Did I work with her on a book of poems, years ago? Should I say hi?

Near the end of our meal Hilary went to the restroom, and when she got back she said, "That woman is our senator, Tina Smith."

As we were walking back to the car, Hilary said, "I wanted to walk over and tell her what a great job she's doing....but I didn't want to spoil her lunch."

 

Books for the North Shore

I was having breakfast with a friend (and brother-in-law) at the Colossal Cafe on Como Avenue the other day, and he asked me what I was going to bring along to read on my upcoming trip. He knows me well, and therefore, knows that I read "odd" books. I tried to explain to him, not for the first time, perhaps, the dilemma I invariably face when selecting an array of books that might include something to match whatever mood I happen to be in—a mood quite different, in all probability, from the moods I pass through here in the city. The problem is compounded by the fact that when spending time on the North Shore, I don't want to be "drawn in" too deeply to the world of crime, or adventure, or romance; science would be okay. Thus the emphasis tends to be on essays, poetry, and philosophy.

Yet I recall that on the first canoe trips I took to the BWCA, back in the mid-sixties, I was enthralled not only by the scenery, but also by the Edgar Rice Burroughs paperbacks I brought along—Carson of Venus, Tanar of Pellucidar, that kind of thing. (Tarzan? No.)

When you're sitting on a couch in a cabin looking out on the evening glow of light on Lake Superior, and you read: "If Being is divided, it moves; and if it moved, it could not Be." (Melissus of Samos) you can open your journal and spend half an hour slowly detailing how ridiculous such a remark is, as you wait for Jupiter and Saturn to emerge from the dusk, without destroying the luscious crepuscular mood.

But poetry tends to be even more fitting for that occasion.  

One of the most important tasks when preparing for such a trip, therefore, is to comb the shelves, both upstairs and down, for books you've ignored for years that might be exactly right for such a vacation. It could take hours.

Here is the collection I came up with, accompanied by brief descriptions.  

Autumn: Essays / Karl Ove Knausgaard

This Norwegian let's it all hang out.

What Narcissism Means to Me : poems / Tony Hoagland

A little too contemporary, maybe?

The Light Around the Body: poems / Robert Bly

Bly is both earthy and spacy. I've neglected his earliest work. Now's the time.

Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers

This collocation of one-liners, like the one about Being I mentioned above, is childish and primitive and "deep."

Infinite Thought / Badiou

These French guys are crazy, but I like the title.

Spinoza /  Stuart Hampshire

A key figure. Most philosophers are impressed by the mathematical format, and fail to observe that the book is mostly a description of human emotions.

A Frost in the Night: a novel / Edith Baer

A forgotten classic of Holocaust literature? Maybe. My copy has a mark-down sticker of $1.98, with a second sticker on top of it at $.99. Both of the author's parents died in the camps. Am I ready for this?

Some Lessons in Metaphysics / Ortega y Gasset

I was thinking of writing a little book about metaphysics myself ...

Diary of Andres Fava / Julio Cortázar

What I love about this book is its origin. It consists of the journal entries written by a character in one of Cortázar's other books that he later removed.

An Intimate Look at the Night Sky / Chet Ratmo

This is my go-to astronomy book.

The Greek Philosophers from Thales to Aristotle / W.K.C. Guthrie

Short and sweet.

The Celestial Hunter / Roberto Calasso

This long book is "about" Orion, the hunter, whose name, as it turns out, is closely related to the word "urine." Kind of spoils the majesty, don't you think?

This might seem like a lot of books, but the entire stack measures only about seven inches. It will fit in my JanSport bookbag easily, though the Calasso book, a 450-page hardcover, throws things off a little.

 But maybe I should add a collection of Chekhov short stories, in case I get bored. And where are the Chinese poets?

Myre-Big Island State Park

Many people head north during the hot summer months. We sometimes go south. A park like Myre-Big Island, a few miles east of Albert Lea, near the Iowa border, is virtually empty on a Sunday afternoon, and those who do visit tend to head for the "big island" where the picnic grounds are located.

That section of the park seems a little dark and dank to me, though on our recent visit we followed the Burr Oak trail for a mile or two in that direction. We prefer the upland areas near the White Fox Campground. 

There are hiking trails of moderate length throughout the park, my favorites being the Pelican Trail and the Bobolink Trail. The park is hilly and the trails meander back and forth between woods and fields. The birding isn't great at this time of year,  because the foliage is dense, the birds have quieted down, and most of them now lack their breeding coloration. I had put in mind three species that I wanted to see: a meadowlark, a dickcissel, and a shrike, none of which we've seen this year.

No such luck. On the other hand, we did see an olive-sided flycatcher, a Franklin gull, a blue-headed vireo, and a red-shouldered hawk—all new for the year. And we also came upon a mid-sized tree in the middle of a field (see above) that was covered with ten or twelve yellow bobolinks, almost liked winged bananas.

That was on the Bobolink Trail. I suppose I also ought to mention that on the Pelican Trail we caught sight of maybe 100 pelicans out on Albert Lea Lake, which forms the east and south boundaries of the park. 

Perhaps more interesting than the birds—and definitely easier to spot—were the wild fruits and berries we passed along the trails.

Among the fruits we came upon were crab apples. And how about these grapes?

Then we have the plums, more than a little past their prime.

And let's not forget the highbush cranberries.

At one turn in the path we came upon the most attractive bittersweet berries I've even seen.

Though the birds were elusive, we did encounter a curious family of deer. 

On one path the monarch butterflies were numerous and ever-present. But very hard to photograph.

I suspect this turtle was more comfortable than he looked. 

No one seemed to be eating the dogwood berries; I don't know why. Maybe they're the Lima beans of the bird world.

There were plenty of non-fruiting plants to admire, too, like this compass flower.

And how about this spectacular spray of whiteness, which might be a form of wild cucumber?

Lots to appreciate, in short, and only a short drive from home.

The ranger came by after dark, and we chatted with her for quite a while about park history, the diminishing bird life, and the web-based campground reservation system. (She doesn't like it.) "Why call the state to change your campsite?" she said. "I'm right there in the office. You can call me!"