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!"

A Visit to Rural Japan

A visit to the current show at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, "Dressed by Nature: Textiles of Japan," may bring a wide range of thoughts to mind. At least, it did to me. The title refers to the fact that the robes, vests, shoes, jackets, hats, and ornaments on display have been fashioned making use of materials harvested from the fields and forests roundabout. Then again, silk is made by worms and derived from mulberry trees. But there are no silk garments included in the show, as near as I can recall.  This suggests that we need to emphasize the close connection between environments, communities, production, and use. It is that proximity which makes the focus of interest so attractive.

The chief draw of the show is the beauty of the garments on display. But on small video screens positioned throughout the exhibit, we can watch, for example, villagers out in the woods stripping the inner bark off of elm trees. They then scrape this "bask" with various tools to separate the finest and most delicate strands, which they then nimbly tie together into long strands. (I wouldn't want to do it.) These strands are then spun into thicker, stronger, and more uniform threads before being strung up onto the looms on which a particular fabric is woven.

Well, I guess this in the way most cloth is made, in one way or another. But the absence of heavy machinery, and the fact that the people making these clothes will be wearing them in ceremonies and also out in the fields, appeals to our atavistic, 1970s, back to the land, North Woods aesthetic.

Other mini-documentaries are devoted to the production of indigo dye, and yet another depicts a sophisticated wax-resist method of dying cloth

And did I mention the variety and beauty of the fabrics and garments on display?

Years ago, and not for the first time,  I stepped into Indigo—a shop in the warehouse district of Minneapolis that traded in folk art from Africa and Asia. At the time Nodin Press was located in the same building, right across the lobby. John and Mary owned the shop. I mostly saw Mary off taking their Airedale for a walk. John was behind the counter. They used to stock utilitarian bowls from the Machiko kiln in Japan, and we bought several; they were among the few items in the shop we could afford. (I used one of those simple but elegant bowls tonight, forty years later, to make the salmon spread we're having for dinner.)

 Maybe they still do stock those bowls, though they moved their collection to NE Minneapolis when their very attractive long-term lease (signed in the darkest days of the pre-yuppy warehouse district decline) was up. They could no longer afford the rent in that location, and besides, by that time, so many of the warehouses had been converted to high-end condos that there was no longer any free parking to be had nearby.

On that bright morning I spotted a pale blue Japanese vest on a table. It looked like a small rag rug with sleeves. I was on the verge of trying it on when John, kindly as always, spoke up from behind the counter: "Er, that's a collector piece."

I knew what he meant. Something to be hung on a wall, not worn all day in a rice paddy. And more obliquely, something I probably couldn't afford. Sure. I understand. No offence taken. Because what John had said was true. Ragstock was three blocks down the street, out near the Salvation Army and the garbage burner. But I was in Indigo.

And now here I was, standing amid a large, impressive, and well-interpreted multi-room display of such garments. It was grand.

Throughout the exhibit, I found my thoughts drifting in the direction of concepts like "pattern" and "fiber." Yes, vocabulary is destiny. The origin myths of many cultures, including the Hopi and those of the Indus valley, if I'm not mistaken, are tied up with notions of spinning and weaving. We look for fiber in our diet, but do we look for it in our conduct? In our lives?

Maybe that's why young people of my generation were so enamored of jeans. One thing the exhibit makes very clear is that as far as tie-dying is concerned, the rural Japanese surpassed the hippies by light-years. 

One garment on display that appealed  to me especially carried images of a few big carp. I thought this garment might be appropriate for me to wear when I go down to Bassett Creek to measure the water clarity. There are often a few big carp swimming around just upstream from the bridge. This presents a challenge to the researcher because when the carp sees the yellow bucket being dropped into the water from the bridge, he swishes his tail in an effort to get away, thus raising a huge cloud of debris off the creek bottom, and that skews the measurement.

Another attractive aspect of the exhibit was the emphasis on islands. Japan is a nation of more than 6,000 islands, and those pockets of isolation foster native arts and regional idiosyncracy. The Ainu of Hokkaido in the north will be wearing robes made of thick leather and sturgeon skin while the denizens of Okinawa, two thousand miles to the south, are wearing airy clothing woven of wisteria reeds.   

It was just our luck that a guided tour came by while we were at the show lead by the curator Andreas Marks. His tone was bright and his anecdotes were pithy, both of the garments themselves and the adventures of the connoisseurs who had collected them. And there is something charming, and  also strangely ennobling, about listening to a man with a German accent, in the middle of the North American continent, share his knowledge of the banana-peel cloth crafted on remote islands of Japan 

After viewing the show, Hilary and I had lunch on the terrace at the Longfellow Grill. I ordered the seared, sesame-crusted yellowtail tuna salad, with spinach, mixed greens, blistered tomatoes, cucumber, green onion, ginger wasabi dressing, peanuts, and citrus unagi. You can see why.

Later, back home, I pulled a few books off the shelf: Memories of Silk and Straw: A Self-Portrait of Small-Town Japan (c. 1987) and The Kimono Mind: an Informal Guide to Japan and the Japanese, by the iconoclastic architect and cultural historian Bernard Rudofsky (c. 1965). I couldn't locate our copy of  The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty by Yanagi Muneyoshi (c. 1972).

In case this all sounds a little out-of-date, well so are the folk robes of Japan. And let me assure you that in preparation for our visit, we spent several evenings watching the cutting-edge, more than slightly vulgar and outrageous, six-part Amazon Prime series James May in Japan.

Hunt Hill Audubon Sanctuary

Our recent midweek visit to Hunt Hill Audubon Camp, an old farm that's been turned into a nature preserve twenty minutes east of Shell Lake, Wisconsin, was chock full of low-key events, which was just what we were looking for. The farm was purchased by a wealthy Minneapolis grain merchant a hundred years ago as a family getaway, and they built two modest cabins in the woods that you can now rent through AirBnB. The sanctuary today includes nearly 600 acres of woods and restored prairie, 13 miles of hiking trails, a few small ponds connected by a stream, and  a residential campus for environmental learning programs.  

The cabins are situated in deep woods at the top of a ridge, and from the small front yard of the lower cabin you can see only a hint of blue water far below through the trees. I can easily imagine someone checking in, oohing and aahing at the big stone fireplace and the wrought iron door hinges,  looking around for a few minutes, and saying, "Well, what are we supposed to DO here?"

One thing you can do is sit in a chair and look up at the trees, admiring their branching structure, while listening to the birds sing. It's getting late in the summer for that kind of thing, but throughout our stay we heard eastern wood pewees, red-eyed vireos, yellow-throated vireos, and chickadees, spiced up on occasion by sandhill cranes passing low overhead, a distant loon, or a lonely barred owl.

Of course you could read a book. I had brought along a book about the pre-Socratics, but the subject seemed out of place in such a verdant environment. (The North Shore would be better.)  I turned briefly to the Tang poet Du Fu and was soon inspired to write something of my own—the shy can try:

Wind rustling through the trees.

It's the loveliest sound on earth

on a hot August evening. Or can be.

Rising and falling. Here. Now there.

We wait for it to send that cool

air down to us.

And a pewee calls from the forest,

high-pitched and hopeful.

Nesting is over.

What is he yearning for?

Once we'd been settled in for a while, I said, "Let's go down to the lake." I'm sure Hilary was delighted to hear that, because I was nursing a sore leg and she had no idea how much hiking I would be able to do.

 

As we wandered down the leaf-covered path, we passed interrupted ferns, sensitive ferns, ostrich ferns, maidenhair ferns, and a diminutive species with delicate, almost feathery fronds that we named "delicate fern." At the waterfront there was a small sandy opening, not worthy of being called a beach, with a mass of purple pickerel weed growing nearby. Continuing down the trail, we reached a point along the shoreline from which we could see the quaint wooden bridge, but it was still a few hundred yards away.

 "I don't want to walk that far," I said. "Maybe tomorrow."

Hilary managed to pick four blueberries during our hike, about the size of BBs, which she shared with me. Were they good? Not really. But they were blueberries.

And to our surprise, as we stood looking away from Big Devil Lake into the marsh, we spotted two immature warblers—a yellow and a chestnut-sided.

The next morning we ate breakfast with some friends at their nearby cabin. After he retired Jim built a gorgeous wooden rowboat in his garage in St. Paul, and we went out in it together briefly. (Starting to contemplate my next book, maybe halfway between  "The Old Man and the Sea" and "Three Men in a Boat.")

We sat around chatting for a while, then we all returned to our place so we could show them the cabin interior.

In the afternoon a woman arrived to stay at the second cabin, which sits mostly out of sight farther up the hill. I spotted her through the window, and when we saw her again in the parking lot down at the main camp I said, "Aren't you the one staying at the log cabin?" We introduced ourselves and soon learned that we live not more than half a mile apart here in Golden Valley. She had a collapsible kayak in her trunk and was looking for the waterfront. We were headed that way, too, and she came along.

A few hours later she stopped by our cabin; we'd offered to show her the interior. "I kayaked the stream all the way up to the bridge," she said. When we went inside, she said, "Wow, this is spacious. It would be a good rental for a family." 

Pause. "But my kids aren't much into the outdoors."

"How about your husband?" I said.

"Him neither." Yet she had a fold-up kayak in her trunk. She wasn't complaining; she was exploring.

The next morning after breakfast—a reheated plate of rainbow trout and potatoes from the previous evening— we headed out early along a trail running between woods and field. It had rained during the night, with ear-splitting thunder, and in the glancing sunlight everything looked moist and gorgeous. At one point on the trail, as it knifed through some thick underbrush above a swamp, we flushed a mid-sized bird.

I knew immediately that it wasn't a grouse. The BRRRRRing sound it made as it flew up was only half the weight that a grouse would make.

"How about a baby grouse?" you say. No. I've flushed lots of baby grouse over the years, and they're always in large groups, football sized, with mama somewhere nearby.

Besides, I saw the bird's long, narrow beak during the instant that it was visible, flying off directly ahead of us along the trail before ducking for cover again.

I knew instantly it was a woodcock. A look at the bird guide back at the cabin later only confirmed the i.d. "Uncommon and inconspicuous on damp ground under dense cover within woods...Secretive and solitary; rarely seen in daylight...Wings produce a sharp twittering on takeoff."

The trail we were on led to a second bridge, but once again, we didn't quite get there. The trail was closed due to erosion. But you can see what an enchanting place this is to wander around in, like a Chinese painting come to life.( In fact, there's something appealing about those picturesque bridges you never quite get to.)

We spent some time out in the sunny fields, admiring the cone flowers and the pearly everlasting. And back in the parking lot we ran into a member of the staff.

"I love this place," he told us. "I retired from my regular job a few years ago, but I said to my wife, 'If a part-time maintenance job turns up at Hunt Hill, I think I'd take it.'"

Before heading for home we took one final trip down through the woods in front of the cabin to the big lake, and this time that bridge didn't seem so far away. When we got there, we even took off our shoes and wadded up the sandy-bottomed stream to get a better look at the pickerel weed.