A Sunday Walk in the Park With John Muir

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, 

places to play in and pray in, 

where nature may heal and 

give strength to body and soul.”

“How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!” 

“Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own.  

Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.”

 “Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.”

“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.”

 "The clearest way into the Universe 

is through a forest wilderness."

There's No Place Like Home

In C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia Aslan tells the Pevensie children that they cannot come back to Narnia.  They go back to their own world and live their lives, never forgetting the magical land of Narnia where animals talk and they have wonderful adventures.  Then, in the final book, the children are suddenly snatched from their world to Narnia--this time to stay.  I feel a little bit like that.  This week I moved to Montana.  "Moving to Montana" sounds like it ought to be on a bumper sticker.  Starting tomorrow I will be an instructor for the Yellowstone Association.  Yellowstone National Park, like Narnia for the Pevensie's, is now my permanent home.  Most people tell me that I'm "living the dream".  If you should wonder what the dream is like, let me tell you a little bit about Gardiner, Montana.

It's located on the edge of the northwest corner of Yellowstone only a few miles north of Wyoming and the 45th parallel.  In other words, I am closer to the North Pole than the equator.  Sociologist that I am, I can't resist demographic statistics: population of 742 (counting me), pretty even gender ratios and married vs. singles, ranks in the 98th percentile for air quality, the unemployment rate of 6.6%, the crime rate is half that of the U.S. average, the mean temperature in July is 86 degrees and in January it's 13, and the elevation is 5,285 feet.  I went to church today where there 21 people (8 under 18) and 3 deer in the parking lot.

I have 400 square feet, not counting the front porch, to myself.  For the first time I have no roommates which means I don't have to label my food anymore.  I've already learned that I talk to myself more than I realized.  I take my garbage a few miles outside of town to the dump where I was thrilled to discover that they have recycling!  The lone grocery store is called The Food Farm and I can walk there in three minutes.  The only chain restaurant in town is a Subway. The closest stoplight is 51 miles away. And what of my neighbors?  I often see residents walking down the street.  About half of the time these residents are human; the other half are deer working their way down from high elevations that are now filled with snow towards lower ground for the winter.  There was a five point elk in the post office parking lot yesterday.  There is a pile of deer scat on my front porch, which was where I was standing for the following:

I feel the immensity of the change as much as if I really had stepped through a magical wardrobe and heard the door close behind me.  Even good change can be disconcerting.  I tell myself, "I can do brave things."  I remember being part of a discussion about the meaning of the word home.  Is it a childhood house?  A college apartment or a car packed for a long road trip?  For me, home is the place that I think of while falling asleep at night and where I want to be in those moments before I first open my eyes in the morning.  I think of a place that is quiet with few people.  I imagine beautiful pine trees.  There are stars twinkling above and I can see the Milky Way.  I must be home because now when I go to sleep I cannot wish myself in any other place.

A Reluctance to Die

On the alpine slopes of Wheeler Peak, on the eastern edge of Nevada, there stands a grove of bristlecone pine trees. Bristlecones are the oldest living organisms on the planet.  They are twisted and grow slowly in the harshest of conditions.  There are short growing seasons, harsh winds, and brutally cold temperatures.  They grow slowly and have very hard wood.  In fact,  their wood is so hard it is resistant to disease and bugs.  When such a tree eventually dies it continues standing for thousands of years.  It does not decompose, it is so hard that it erodes.  Slow growth and their unusual ability to adapt are the keys to their long lives.  An interpretive sign read, "...[The tree's] ability to stand for centuries after death is directly related to the adversity of its life."

The sun was setting early behind Wheeler Peak as I stood in the grove of pines.  I looked at the "grotesquely beautiful"tree in front of me.  It was 3,200 years old.  It's always a danger to anthropomorphize something, but I couldn't resist.  What would such a tree say if it spoke?  What is it afraid of and what does it hope for the future?  What advice would it give me?

It awoke from dormancy as a seed at about 1190 BC.  That was four years prior to the Trojan War.  There are Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  This mighty pine is older than all but the Great Pyramid of Giza.

When the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon were built, the pine had seen about  600 years pass by.  It was already 900 years old when the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the tallest of man's creations for many centuries, guided sailors into the Egyptian harbor.  It was alive and well when the great statue of the Greek god Helios which formed the Colossus of Rhodes was sculpted. 

This tree had lived through the creation and the destruction of such mighty wonders as the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, and had lived through the earthquakes, fires, and mobs that destroyed them as human civilizations came and went.  Indeed, this tree and the Great Pyramid of Giza are all that are left on that list.  And there are bristlecones older than even the pyramids.  These trees live far from human civilizations so they do not see the wonders man built or their passing away.  But what would this venerable pine think about the swift passage of human history?  What would it say about political parties that come and go, the wars won and lost, or all the changes that mark human life?  I imagine that this tree was more like Treebeard, the ancient ent from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.  Treebeard was concerned about the health of his forest and the constant earthy elements of water, air, and sunlight.  The bristlecones have seen centuries upon centuries and have survived against all of nature's challenges.  The biggest threat that these trees face at this point is climate change.  They already live in the harshest, coldest climates.  As the planet warms, they (or their seeds) have no where to go to find a suitable habitat.

In the shadow of the mountain, under the branches of such trees, I was awed by the tenacity of the trees. The harsh conditions these trees grow in give them the strength to persist.

Sources: http://www.lhaasdav.com/timelines/timeline_30000_1000_bc.html, http://www.nps.gov/grba/planyourvisit/identifying-bristlecone-pines.htm

Endemic: it only happens in one place.

At the beginning of 2nd grade Mrs. Clinger gave us homework: look on ditch banks for milkweed.  It has long, silvery leaves that are three or four inches long.  The leaves are soft to the touch.  We recognized the plant by its seed pods bursting with seeds hanging from silky parachutes.  I broke a leaf, and found a white, milky juice inside from which the plant gets its name.  Once we identified the plant, we were to look for a black, white, and yellow striped caterpillar.  Put the caterpillar in a jar with a milkweed cutting and bring it to school.  In a matter of days each caterpillar hung upside down like a J and a pale green chrysalis formed around him.

At school I checked the chrysalises daily, eagerly awaiting the end of the metamorphosis. Finally, beautiful monarch butterflies crawled out.  We did our best to resist the temptation to touch those beautiful orange and black wings while we waited for them to dry.  I learned the hard way that the butterflies whose wings were touched would never fly.

Butterflies migrate from Mexico all the way to Canada and back--up to nearly 3,000 miles.  This journey occurs over four generations of monarchs in the course of one year since most live only 2-6 weeks.  No one knows how each newly hatched caterpillar-turned-butterfly knows to continue the multi-generation migration.  The monarch I hatched in 2nd grade was the final generation of the year.  It was headed south towards Mexico for the winter. 

Milkweed doesn't look like much.  In fact, it's toxic if you eat much.  But that is what protects the butterflies from predators.  The milkweed chemicals it eats as a caterpillar remain inside and make many of its predators sick.  Milkweed seeds, with their silky parachutes, were used in early colonial days to fill pillows and comforters--their structure is similar to down.  During World War II, when other supplies were short, milkweed pods were collected and used to stuff life jackets for soldiers.

 I thought of these things as I stood by the milkweed in the garden.  I don't see much milkweed anymore.  Building houses, diverting water, and replanting with exotic plants has made milkweed harder to find.  The first seedpod had burst and I reached down to gather the seeds with their weightless white sails.  Milkweed is the only plant that a monarch butterfly will lay its eggs on.  It is the only plant that the caterpillar will feed on before forming a chrysalis.  I held the feathery seeds cupped in both hands and watched the breeze pick one from the top.  It soared above my head and away to the west.  I looked at the city filling the valley below and wondered if the seed will find a place to grow.  The migratory pattern of monarchs is threatened because of habitat loss.  Love a butterfly--grow milkweed.  I lifted my hands up to the sky and let all the seeds fly on the invisible breeze to find a place to wait for spring.

Sources: http://www.monarch-butterfly.com/, http://www.worldwildlife.org/species/finder/monarchbutterflies/monarchbutterflies.html

"All children, except one, grow up."

On Monday, the first day of camp, Rebecca's mom pulled me aside.  "Rebecca has mild autism," she told me.  "She has been to Red Butte camps before and loves them, but I wanted to let you know she may need to hear things more than once."  I noticed this week that Rebecca--a tall, slim 4th grader with shoulder length brown hair--was often in her own place.  She had a good time with whatever we did, but didn't talk with the other kids much and was happy on her own.

This afternoon all fifteen of us found a shady place the courtyard.  I brought pipe cleaners, pony beads, string, and jingle bells and watched in amazement as the kids turned them into incredible creations.  Anklets, bracelets, rings appeared instantly.  Headbands, pipe cleaner scissors, and baseball cap decorations evolved later.  For forty-five minutes the kids didn't want to move, even to go and eat.  They were mesmerized by the beads and their own creativity.  They sat on the ground in tight circles searching the bowls for the right colour choices.  I sat on a bench watching them work and preventing fights over the few precious glow-in-the-dark beads.  I watched the blue sky behind the red foothills.

Rebecca finished after only a few minutes.  She made a pipe cleaner bracelet strung with sparkling beads and one jingle bell.  She stepped out of the shade and into the sun and smiled as the beads caught the light.  She skipped and giggled as the bell tinkled.  She jumped, leaped, and twirled in her green summer skirt.  She swirled her arms above her head and down--always watching her bracelet in the light.  She laughed out loud as the small bell jingled with her jumps.  She danced free and without form.  Her eyes and face were open, happy, and enraptured by the miracle of beads and bells moving in the sunlight.  Her happiness was simple and pure.  Rebecca was everything that childhood embodies.  I wanted so much to join her!  But this dance was hers, not mine.  She filled the courtyard with her dancing until the others finally finished their projects.

"You must have been warned against 

letting the golden hours slip by; 

but some of them are golden only 

because we let them slip by." 

— J.M. Barrie

"Why, if I picked a day to fly, this would be it!"

The barn swallows fledged today.  They built the entire nest--a small mud cup above the boys' bathroom door in the Children's Garden at Red Butte--in less than twenty-four hours.  One day it was just a small blob of mud and the next day it was complete.  Usually I think of natural processes as being very lengthy.  How long for a stream to carve the slim, twisting slot canyon or a glacier to carve the u-shaped valley?  But nature moves quickly as well.  Summer still reigns, but already all over the Garden seeds are growing.  Some are fruit, like pears.  Others, like the service berries, have already gone to the birds.  The oak trees have miniature acorns and the milkweed has fluffy pods under each leaf.  And only a month or so ago a pair of barn swallows built a nest.  I saw the female sit on it each day as I used the bathroom and hundreds of the children I teach discovered it and eagerly led me by the hand to see their discovery.

I've been watching another nest as well.  The Cooper's Hawks rebuilt last year's nest and this time they were successful in raising two chicks.  For the past few weeks, while the parents were hunting, its' two occupants frequently peeked over the edges.  I stood underneath the nest and high above me one would stand with his white baby feathers.  He stood silhouetted in the sunlight.  I was always the first to end the staring contest.  Mom or Dad sometimes sat nearby on a branch.  Recently, when I come by no chick peers down at me.  But today while walking across the Wildflower Meadow four hawks flew across to land in the trees at the edge.  Four hawks with the characteristic banded tails of the Cooper's Hawk.

Meanwhile, the barn swallows hatched and grew.  Nakedness was replaced by feathers and the nest became more and more crowded.  This morning they seemed to be standing on top of one another.  The parents flew constantly to and from with food.

About midmorning I noticed an unusual number of swallows zipping and diving high above the Children's Garden.  I checked the nest and only one bird remained--not ready to go.  But every other swallow in the Garden celebrated the day of flight as the new birds flew acrobatics all afternoon.  I wished to be one of them!  I rushed a boy to the bathroom for an emergency trip this afternoon (he didn't make it all the way) and while he used the bathroom I watched the last bird .  It stood at the edge of the nest stretching its wings, but not ready to test them.  Other swallows flew in to chirp at the last chick, but still it didn't go.  I wanted to be there when it flew.  After all, what could be more magical than a bird's first flight?  At last I left the nest to go to other places in the Garden.  But when checking it this evening the mud nest was empty and quiet, as was the air above the Garden.  What a wonderful day for flight!  Clear sky, strong sunlight, and a wind blowing up the mountain.

Meet the American Dipper

One of my favourite creatures of Yellowstone is this dark greyish-black bird that is seen in shallow rapids and fast moving water. The American Dipper (also known as the Water Ouzel) is about the size of a robin and rather unremarkable in its outside appearance. The Dipper can be found in mountain waters from Panama to Alaska. It doesn't really migrate so in Yellowstone it is seen in the dead of winter, standing on rocks in icy waters, "dipping" at the knees. These birds sing year-round to claim a certain patch of river as their territory. The Dipper lives entirely off of aquatic insects and occasionally a tadpole or small fish. To get these it must go into and under the water. Dippers have special nostrils that close underwater and an extra eyelid that allows it to be able to see. They have strong enough feet that they can walk on the bottom of the river while completely submerged by gripping rocks with their feet. Even more amazing, they dive into the stream and "fly" underwater by flapping their wings. In fact, Dippers can even fly/swim upside-down. It can be a dangerous life at times. Because of their underwater habits, sometimes this little bird becomes prey to a salmon or some other large fish it may encounter. The presence of Dippers shows good water quality. They can't survive near a polluted stream.

I am always amazed to see this plucky little bird standing in the middle of rivers surrounded by snow doing its characteristic "dipping" at the knees.  Long after everyone else is bored, I keep watching it dive in and out of the icy waters.  I think about persistence.  Sometimes smallest, most unremarkable looking creatures do the most incredible things when we can’t see.  We could a lot from the Dipper.


Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dipper