I suppose all history, by definition is ‘old’, but in the case of our new/old home and neighborhood, the word ‘history’ takes on very personal meaning. This is not only the place where I grew up and the woods in which I played, it is where my grandfather was instrumental in founding a communal arts and crafts community at the turn of the last century. It is where that group of young idealists built a number of stone bridges to crisscross the small neighborhood ‘run’ and where they dammed the stream to form a swimming pond deep enough to skinny-dip. Just downstream and nearer to my grandfather’s old house, the run joins a creek that once powered a snuff mill built by white landowners in the 18th Century and alongside which the Minquas Indians carried furs to the young city of Philadelphia a century earlier, and where abolitionists built Underground Railroad tunnels before the Civil War. My grandfather. My woods. Old history.
This summer I took my grandkids to play pooh-sticks under the old stone bridge closest to the mill, the game I played some sixty years ago - and I suddenly realized that these boys were the 5th generation to walk these paths and cross that bridge, just as their dad had done on his summer visits to my parents’ house just up the hill, just as I had done, playing in the woods, and my dad on his walks, and my grandfather in his own back yard.
I am continually surprised, some nine months after moving back, the emotional impact this old history has on me. To live again at the edge of these woods, to stumble upon these well-worn bridges - I cannot explain the sense of belonging that maybe I have not felt any place since leaving home and ‘moving on’ some fifty years ago. Through luck and good fortune, it turns out, I have come full circle in my life - older, if not wiser - and I feel blessed to wander through these woods today and cross the bridge toward home.
Planting Hope
This week I transplanted a red oak sapling from the edge to the middle of our yard. Calling it a sapling is actually optimistic. It is a very small stem with a few leaves attached that took hold among the vines and brambles probably last year about this time. It probably would not have made it where it sprouted. Its chances to survive and flourish are far better in the wide open space behind the house. If we’re lucky, the tree will serve as anchor and shade to all we can see beyond our window. Not in our own lifetime, of course, but that’s exactly the point. As we work to minimize, over time, the lawn in our yard in favor of native plants and trees, how can we resist the chance to include one that experts recommend above all others (oaks support 897 caterpillar species alone and live over 300 years)? Not many people have room for the breadth of a majestic full grown oak, but we do. It is a luxury that we are willing, perhaps have an obligation to share.
I despair sometimes about the state of the world and the future of our fragile planet. I have trouble reading the newspaper or watching the news any longer, so fractured is the country, so insurmountable, it seems, the problems in both the human and the natural world, and so helpless I feel to make a difference. I am prone to despair when I think about what we are leaving our children and grandchildren. I cannot imagine that next week’s election will make me feel better, no matter who wins, given the rhetoric that seems likely to follow, the anger that seems to grow ever more vociferous. But next week I will squelch my angst and vote, and I will water my oak sapling, investing in a future I will not live to see but am hoping will be better than today.
Here and Now
It’s easy, when you’ve only just started a garden, to be impatient, knowing that this year’s barebones blooms are only a fraction of what will inevitably become, in the years ahead, too much, too crowded, and maybe even overwhelming. I’m guilty of whispering already, “I can’t wait until next year,” thinking about how the plants will increase in size, the spaces will fill in. But as fall approaches and the weather begins to cool, I remind myself to stop and notice the beauty of the here and now, to celebrate the gifts this garden has bestowed on me already.
This morning, for example, September’s softer morning sunlight filtered through the Mulhy grass that I planted as an experiment, revealing the new, ethereal pink fronds that were promised on the label. I’ve been waiting for them to appear, but might not even have noticed but for the light that set them all aglow. Next year, perhaps, this lovely grass will have to move to another, wider garden edge to make room for the expanding rose beside it, but I’m grateful for the grace and beauty that the two, together, afforded me today.
How hard it is to keep our minds and hearts in the present, instead of leaping forward. How precious are the moments when we succeed.