The Trouble with Transcendence

It was a fine weekend, cool and sunny, and gardening was on our minds. I sometimes file such thoughts under the heading “futile gestures,” based on decades of experience, but it did seem to be worthwhile addressing the large bald spot in the front yard, brought on by laziness, neglect, and two years of drought. And it’s hard to resist the urge to head down to the north-side downtown farmers’ market when the sun is low and bright and the neighborhood great-crested flycatcher is shrieking.

We arrived before eight only to discover that construction work has obliterated our favorite parking spots, and we ended up under the freeway overpass, happy to have found a slot but slightly worried if we’ll be able to get out of it later.

But these are fleeting anxieties when there’s life and color everywhere and your heart is swelling with the joy of the morning. We wandered the three long aisles, where the stalls often spread out into the street. Ignoring the vegetables, we focused on herbs, tomatoes, and those ever-illusive annuals that will grow well in shade yet offer bright summer-long color. Such plants don’t really exist.

Hilary had already planted some impatiens. We rejected the begonias and the torenia, and arrived back home with tomato plants and herbs. (I’d forgotten about browallias—my favorites—entirely!)

The wonderful smell of grilling bratwurst was everywhere, but we prudently returned home to a perfect late-spring lunch of bruschetta and grapes, after which we set to work planting. I prepared the soil in our little vegetable garden alongside the driveway, pouring on half-empty bags of manure and “soil enrichment” and then working them into the bed. Then Hilary got to work planting while I went out back to dig up some of the lily-of-the-valley that’s slowly creeping toward to deck, year by year.

At one point I noticed that Brendan, our neighbor across the street, was loading his canoe into the back of his pick-up, and I went over to chat.

“It’s such a nice day,” he said. “Sara and I are going out in the canoe. Have you heard of a place called the East Mississippi River Flats? It sounds like it would have lots of backwaters to explore.”

“Yes, I have heard of it,” I said. “I used to run a parking lot down there. But I wouldn’t recommend it as a launching place. It’s just a straight shot down the river from there. And how would you get back to your car?”       

We kicked around a few other ideas. “How about the Rice Lake Chain of Lakes? Or a simple paddle on Wirth Lake, which is practically right down the street?” Then we got to discussing what to do with our lawns. His looks pretty good. “You’ve got so many trees,” he said. “No wonder your lawn is struggling,”

“Yours is pretty good,” I said. “And Chad’s looks great. But he has full sun, and Sean told me the fertilizer company has already done four applications.”

We were soon on the neighborhood news—“Did you hear that Elfie’s furnace went out last winter?” By that time Brenden’s wife, Sara, had come around the house, and she and Hilary were already deep in conversation.

I realize there’s nothing extraordinary in all of this. On the other hand, maybe it’s a vision of perfect harmony, peace, and light, albeit on a very small scale.

While I was turning over the soil in our garden strip, I was reminded of a scene from Woody Allen's great early film Love and Death. One of the characters, I don’t remember who, says with great enthusiasm: “I have a piece of land…and I plan to build on it someday.” He’s holding a small piece of sod in outstretched hands.

On a loftier scale, I’m just now reminded of a few lines from T.S. Elliot’s Four Quartets. that I became acquainted with at about the same time.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Even way back then, those lines irked me. Why not start knowing the place right now?

 

Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe, Minnesota-style

Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party or Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe offer us an appealing vision of relaxation and conviviality in a semi-rural setting. These scenes look idyllic, but of course, we sometimes find ourselves in a similarly leisurely and delightful situation.

Take last weekend. The weather was near perfect, sunny and cool in the mornings, sunny and warm in the afternoons. The trees were in bloom, and anyone who went outdoors was likely to be assaulted unexpectedly by a waft of perfumed air. I was, several times. Chokecherries? Crabapples? Lilacs?

How did we spend our time? Mostly outdoors. That’s the key.

We drove up to Wild River State Park on Friday morning and took a hike along the river. The birds were sparse, though we saw our first kingbird of the year and heard a blue-winged warbler and several rose-breasted grosbeaks.

From there we drove a few miles up the river to the Will Swanson/Janel Jacobson Pottery Studio in Sunrise, where he, Janell Jacobson, and several other potters were exhibiting in the open air as part of the annual St. Croix Valley Pottery Tour.

Hilary bought two coffee mugs, and she also ran into several of her teachers and friends from the Minnetonka Art Center. I saw a lot of people that looked like people I knew, though they weren’t those people: men and women of about my age—liberal, artsy, outdoorsy. One of them looked at me briefly as if he recognized me, too: the ex-husband of a former friend and colleague. No, it couldn’t be him.

We next stopped in at Guillermo Cuellar’s studio, once again to admire the pots—the shapes, the glazes, the decoration. We didn’t buy any, but later bought a bag of Tostidos at a gas station in Askov and were back in town in time for me to pay a visit a poet-friend who was in need of a bit of conversation.

Saturday morning, after a cruel half-hour on the tennis court, we drove down to the Lake Harriet gardens, where scads of people were out picnicking and taking photographs of each other. It looked like a big communal wedding. Orioles seemed to be singing from the top of every tree in Roberts Bird Sanctuary, though we only saw one. Our best sighting was of a coy warbling vireo ten feet away at eye level.

The day deepen as we sat on the deck looking out into the yard. “I think I’ll water the garden,” I said. Hilary was reading a Bruno mystery on her Chromebook. “Maybe you could water over by the fence, too,” she said. Sure.

Time passes. Clouds appear, then vanish. As I wander the “grounds,” I spot a baby rabbit feasting on the Virginia waterleaf in the cherry orchard. More power to him.

Once I’ve given the garden a good soak, it occurs to me it would be a good time to divide and transplant a few hostas to the back corner of the garden, a shady patch of solid clay where nothing else seems to do well, no matter how seriously we try. I bring over a few fronds of ostrich ferns for good measure.

These light tasks being completed, I feel that I’ve accomplished something, and sit on the deck looking idly up through the branches of the venerable silver maple that anchors the “woods.” There’s movement. A shaft of sunlight is striking a leafy branch that a squirrel is feverishly wrestling into place on a new nest, as if winter were right around the corner.

It’s well past six by the time we go inside to make some quesadillas. Hilary blackens the tortillas perfectly, and that appetizing aroma adds a final touch to the woodland atmosphere.

Moss Landing

Best known, perhaps, for its nuclear power plant, Moss Landing  might seem like an odd choice for a two-night vacation stop-over, but it served us well. It’s located roughly half way around the curve of Monterey Bay, midway between Santa Cruz and Monterey itself. The estuarian waters of Elkhorn Slough enter the bay nearby, and the Nature Conservancy owns the nice chunk of hills and woods and fields it flows through before it arrives. Sea Harvest Fish Market and Restaurant sits on a pier at the mouth of the slough, with Monterey Kayak Rentals at the far end of the same parking lot. On a gray day, you can visit the Santa Cruz Marine Biology Research Center on the west side of town. It’s not the Monterey Aquarium, but it’s nearby, and it’s free.

But what kind of a “town” is Moss Landing? The old river bed of the Salina River slices through it lengthwise, parallel to the ever-busy two-lane Highway 101 that runs along the landward edge. There’s a peculiar “main drag” with a colorful—and popular— Mexican restaurant, and a Shakespeare Museum—closed— that seems to have been lifted from Dodge City, Kansas. There’s a port lined with muscular pleasure craft and utilitarian vessels seemingly over-equipped with heavy duty fishing rigs and antennae, and to the north and west, a warren of pole barns and dusty sheet metal warehouses. The Pacific Ocean is invariably just a few feet away, a three-minute drive down the street or a short climb over the grassy dunes.  

We booked a room at the Captain’s Inn for two nights on the strength of a few pictures on Air BnB. You couldn’t see the ocean, but the rooms looked out over the old riverbed, where we had hopes lots of shorebirds might congregate. But two days? Well, we wanted to explore the Nature Conservancy property, which we’d been to twice before, but both times in a rush, an hour before closing. And we wanted to kayak up the slough, which is often teeming with sea otters and harbor seals, to get a view of the same heavenly terrain from a different angle.

Hilary was especially keen to do the kayaking. I was also in favor … but only if conditions were right. So our first stop was to the kayak rental. The man behind the counter—he had an English accent—led us over to a large and attractive screen where we could see the predicted wind and tides for the next few days in a panorama of overlapping blue digital waves.

He pointed. “Tomorrow morning at 9 or 9:30 would be perfect,” he said. “You see. The tide will just be coming out, so you’ll be fighting that a little…” At this point I felt it appropriate to interject that we’d canoes for miles in fierce wind In the North Woods on the Canadian border and against the current of the Mississippi. “Good. The wind will be light, you won’t have any difficulty, and once you’re ready to turn around, you can drift all the way back.”

He seemed far less concerned that we’d be carried out to sea by the tide (it does happen) than that we’d get too close to the otters and seals. Also a good sign.

We spent the afternoon at the Nature Conservancy property. The main trail through the fields leads down the hill to the estuary, where there are usually plenty of shore birds feeding. It’s a three-mile loop, and you’re likely to see some interesting things in the woods, too. As we were starting out from the visitors’ center we met up with an elderly couple who live nearby. They told us they’d recently seen a great-horned owl drinking water out of the dog dish outside their back door on more than one occasion!

I won’t bore you with the details of our walk, but for the birders in the crowd, here’s a smattering of what we saw: Brewer's Blackbird, Least Sandpiper, Lesser Yellowlegs, Long-billed Dowitcher, Marbled Godwit, Long-billed Curlew, Oak Titmouse, Common Raven, Black Phoebe, Acorn Woodpecker, White-tailed Kite.

The next morning we arrived at the kayak rental in plenty of time to be convinced we ought to wear the plastic pants they provide for their guests. It was a good idea. We paddled in an open plastic two-person vessel past the seafood restaurant, turned east, and headed up the slough, entering a realm of solitude and silence populated by long, sausage-like creatures—seals and otters—that we were mildly fascinated by but had been instructed to avoid.

There were quite a few exotic birds, too: Pacific Loon, Western Grebe, Eared Grebe, Forster's Tern, Common Murre, Black-bellied Plover, Common Yellowthroat, White-crowned Sparrow. The individual species meant less, however, than the exhilaration of a bright warm morning in March, low to the water on a red plastic kayak, paddling against a gentle tide.

We’d brought neither cameras nor binoculars. Too risky. And the fact that we’d seen so many birds from land the previous day made it an easy call. Just breathe the air, soak in the surroundings, keep paddling. Or drift.

We are lunch for a second time at the Sea Harvest, why not? But now, looking out over the rail at the entrance to the slough, we knew a little more about what lay beyond.