Eden

Ever since our biblical ancestors left paradise so hastily and ignominiously thousands of years ago, we have searched for ways to get back. After all, who would not want to live in a canopy-covered garden misted by cool springs, filled with endless harvest, where worries are unknown and all needs readily fulfilled? This week, the Torah portion offers us a way toward a satisfying surrogate, if not a return, to Eden.

"The Lord is bringing you to a good land, a land with streams and springs and fountains issuing forth from plain and hill; a land of wheat and barley, vines and figs and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey; a land where you can eat without limitation; a land where you will lack nothing; a land whose rocks are iron and from whose hills you can mine copper; a land where you can eat, and be sated and bless the Lord your God for the good land God has given you." (Deuteronomy 8:7-10)

This soaring, sensuous celebration of nature and its finest gifts is spoken by Moses as he and the Jewish people stand just outside the borders of the land of Israel. The Jewish people are being urged one last time to prepare themselves to be worthy of entering the land and inheriting its precious, singular, nurturing gifts.

Moses' vision sings of the land's undulating hills, with springs pouring out the sides of mountains, greenery sporting plump, luscious fruit ripe for the picking, fields of sown grain ready for harvesting - a land whose table has been set by God to overflowing before this blessed people.

But this goodness and fertility does not just happen. It must be earned. If the land is appreciated, honored, and treated well, we are told, it will thrive, and so will its inhabitants. If it is treated otherwise, abused, it will shut itself up against us, and the inhabitants will perish.

The danger of abusing and losing the fertility and gifts of the land are spelled out in this cautionary text. Sadly, we are all too familiar with its reality in our lives today:

"Take care, lest you forget the Lord your God... when you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses to live in, and your herds and flocks have increased, and everything you own has prospered, beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the Lord your God... Remember is God who gives you the power to get wealth... for if you forget God, you will certainly perish..." [Deuteronomy 8:11-20]

In our greed and in our affluence, we mine and dig, consume, indulge and spew waste indiscriminately, as if the world's natural resources are both ours by right, and infinite. The truth is, they are neither ours, nor are they infinite.

Moses presents the land of Israel as a land of redemption - where we undo the "thorns and thistles" we caused in Eden by a symbolic act of indiscretion toward the goods of the earth. In Israel, the Torah tells us, if we merit it, that is, if we treat the land and each other well, we will live not by the "sweat of our brow" but by the grace of God.

In truth, these lessons of the Torah extend beyond the land of Israel to the length and breadth of the entire planet. We can live well only when we treat the land and each other well.

It is merely by historical good fortune that we are the first generation "privileged" to efficiently gorge upon the mother lode of earth's riches. We are the first generation with the world-wide capacity to raid the storehouse of earth's resources that were so carefully built up over millions of years.

But we must pull back from this indulgence. Just because we can do something does not mean that we ought to do it. That is a lesson in restraint that is often so very difficult to abide.

It took us 50 years to build our disposable society. It will likely take us 50 years to undo it. Hopefully, all this talk paves the way to getting us there.

Musings on North

The full moon is shining upon us tonight. Buxom and bright, it casts its cool shadows on this steamy world below.

"Too hot down there?" it seems to be saying. "Come, sail up my rivers of light and splash a while in my soothing pools. The crickets' wings will fan the winds to speed you along."

Though the cicadas' robust songs fill the airways in the days, the crickets' constant orchestra rules the noises of the night and churns the air with its excited whirs.

But of course, casting off on a boat of dreams and winging through the crystal night is not something that comes easily to the earth-bound, like me.

So instead, at this wee hour of the morning, my mind wanders to other bounded parts of nature and settled upon my constant neighbor "North."

North seems, at first glance, to be something of a lo yutzlah, an unfortunate who is constantly grasping the short end of the stick! What is it like, after all, to be the only part of the sky that never hosts the fiery sun? How does it feel when the moon plies its nocturnal path, casting its light from every other quadrant as it wanders its way from horizon to horizon, but not from you? What is it like to know that the shadows of the earth all bow before the other directions, but not before you?

But then, I thought, perhaps I am thinking about this all wrong. Perhaps there is privilege in being North after all.

If North is relieved of the burden of host, it still is called to the task of guest. In a witty essay from 1918, Max Beerbohm argues that the world is divided into two classes of folk: hosts and guests. And while each may pose as the other at various unfortunate times, their true calling, and true talent, lies as either one or the other.

North, in this light, is the inveterate guest.

So what, then, if the shadows bow in the face of east, south and west. In doing so, the bulk of them reach deeply for north, leaning, stretching ever closer til the apex of midday, then exhausted, settle back, sated or not, and prepare for their northward adventure the next day.

Never the center stage, never changing, north has honed its place as loyal attendant and faithful audience. It is the constant watch as the heavens parade their celestial orbs from the tip of east to the tip of west, horizon to horizon, via the southerly route of the sky.

North is our steady guide. It is the place we look to for stability and shade, a place of refuge and regrouping; the direction that holds us fast when we cast about recklessly in all other directions.

North is the place of earth's finest vantage point, the best of all viewing grounds from which to gaze upon the drama of the sky.

If North is not like east, south and west, so they are not like it. Each has its unique role. Each has its distinct calling. And it is when each plays well at what it does best that we are all most truly blessed.

(Photo: Sierra Club)

Sit Spots

(view from my potential Sit Spot)

Avram and I spent the morning yesterday with Charlie and Ginger at the new headquarters of the Natural History Society of Maryland. It is always a treat to listen to Charlie.

This time he told us about a place, a technique, and an experience called a Sit Spot.

A Sit Spot is perhaps best described as a daily discipline of awareness of place; a mindful meditation in which we return again and again to the same spot on the land close to us so we can see, hear and discover the hidden vibrancy of place that lies right in our own backyard.

For a month, a season or a year, we sit there, fifteen minutes a day, and simply be - silent, still and alert.

This act of constancy and faithfulness allows us to know our chosen place in all its varying moods and moments.

And there is a bonus in this commitment, a plus that is often part of the unspoken gift of place: as we see the place in all its varying moods and moments, so the place sees us, and reflects us back to ourselves, in all our varying moods and moments. So we loop: self reading place reading self.

I have heard of art exercises where the students draw the same vase or bowl one hundred times. I can imagine the flow of freshness, repetition, boredom, tedium, discovery, delight circling round and back on itself.

Sit Spots employ the same technique, with changing light, changing temperature, changing seasons and a changing self. In a Sit Spot, we become part of the landscape, as constant and as changing as a leaf, a flower or a passing deer. Because of the growing familiarity of ourselves to the place and the place to ourselves, things we have overlooked, or things that were too timid to reveal themselves to us, suddenly appear.

This exercise is a portable discipline, valuable at home and at work, in love and in politics. It is tzimtzum, a reduction of ego, of moving over and out of the way, of making space for the other, of failing to call attention to ourselves, so that we may see more, learn more, feel more and become more.

It sounds so simple, and yet is so very hard to do. Perhaps I will try.

The fawns

(photo from the National Park Service, nps.gov)


I have learned several things about deer over the past few years.

For one, their only natural predator around here these days is the automobile. Which, while lethal, indiscriminate and bloody, does not really do an efficient job keeping their population in check.

That, in turn, means that deer are becoming too numerous for their habitat, leading them to ransack gardens and forests and vegetation that traditionally were beyond the bounds of their delicate palate.

(I wondered how Johnny Appleseed managed to carpet the country with fruit trees when the deer chewed mine to the nub. The deer back then evidently preferred other, more native, fare. They have since become gourmands, experimenting with all sorts of exotic foods of the garden and forest.)

One devastating result is that there are so many deer with such great appetites that their population is decimating the tender shoots of our native trees and destroying the undergrowth of our forests. Whole next-generations of forest are being systematically destroyed. Our forests, in other words, are dying.

This is bad news when Baltimore City has set a goal of doubling its tree canopy (that is, the area of ground covered by foliage) and Baltimore County must preserve and grow its forest as well.

Most gardeners and tree people in the area know that despite its doe-eyed look, "Bambi" is no longer an innocent, vulnerable denizen of the woods. The woods themselves are the ones that are vulnerable.

Like much of nature these days, people have so affected our forests' "natural" course that the once-self-regenerating forests must be helped, or engineered, to keep them healthy. That is what the field of modern forestry is all about.

I know all this, learned all this and now live all this in my work with the Baltimore Tree Trust. And yet...

My bedroom overlooks a charming, pastoral woodland scene. It is practically the stuff that fairy tales are made of: a moderately-populated field of mostly poplars backing onto a more densely wooded area of poplar, beech, hickory and more.

This patch of woods is part of a greenway of sorts which, I imagine, meanders for at least a mile or so of continuous forest cover, weaving behind and through backyards and treed developments, unbroken by hard surface or roads. It is a haven for the deer.

So quite often, I can look out the very large windows of my bedroom and see a herd of deer nibbling, walking, playing or bedding in my backyard. Today, they were irresistible. Among the small cluster of adults were three fawns, I would guess about 2 months old. The older deer like to stay just inside the more wooded area of our yard. The younger deer come just inside the more open area. So there they were, three babies bravely learning to make their way in this treacherous world, lying placidly, contentedly each at the foot of their own neighboring tree.

But my land is not flat; it falls slightly away from the house as it reaches for the valley beyond. Each fawn, then, lay in a spot where the yard dips away, so that from the house, all you could see poking up above the blades of grass were three small pairs of ears. Ever alert, the ears darted this way and that, sharp sentries on duty even as their host bodies relaxed in the cool shade of the glen.

To me, the earth looked as if it had sprouted bugs of a new kind, listening devices, to spy on us earthlings even as I was spying on the fawns. I wondered what intelligence the earth was after; what was it hoping to learn. Surely, sadly, humans were threat enough to the earth that it should want to conduct its own counter-intelligence against us, to protect itself from our harshest behavior. How do we look, I wondered, from the earth's perspective?

The tableau lasted but a few minutes. The espionage completed, the gentle spies got up and moved further down, more deeply into the woods.

My Chain Saw

I finally did it. I had been waiting for the chance to haul out my chain saw and take it for a spin, and yesterday, I got it.

The thunderstorm that roared through town huffed and puffed and blew out our power, and in the process, brought down a tree that it dumped across our driveway.

With my husband's encouragement, and my goggles in place, I fired up the yellow monster (thanks to Sid) and went at it. The first tree I tackled was a boxelder (a form of maple) and a delight to cut. Not as smooth as I imagine some wood is, but smooth enough to seduce a novice into believing this was something she could do. And enjoy.

So for the next hour, I sliced up the tree and cleared the way to join our motorized world. But there was also an enormous limb that came down from the tree on the other side of the driveway. And it was a beech. And as I have learned in the context of woodcutting: beech is b**ch. Dense and hard (and excellent for firewood!), it fought the chainsaw, arresting its progress midway through its heartwood. I had to stop and approach it from the other side, whittling it away from the ends.

This outing taught me several things. For one, I learned the limits of my saw and the awesome power of wood. When pitted against the might of my trees, my 14-inch blade was really more of a toy than a tool. But it is handy - and dangerous - enough to continue to hold my deepest respect.

And I learned the limits of my knowledge - like needing to figure out how one cuts up a limb whose lower end has come to rest on the ground while its upper end is still connected to the tree. (The problem: the more you cut, the tighter the space gets, til it eventually squeezes and seizes the blade. Or else something gives rather suddenly.)

A visitor told me earlier in the day about her experience learning how to fell a young tree. (It took about five minutes for her to bring it down.) Working so intimately with trees, she said, gives you an appreciation of their grandeur, practical beauty, sturdy resistance as well as fragility. They become characters, partners, in our world of creation.

I have never felled a healthy tree and can only imagine the mixed feelings it brings of triumph and loss. My chain saw helps me manage downed and dead wood. The feelings working that wood are much less complex.

After an hour today, I could see the result of my work, point to my progress, and get my car to the street. Sweet satisfaction. I will let the chain saw sleep for a while.

Sounds of a summer's night

(Meadow, woods and pond at Eastern Neck State Park on Maryland's Eastern Shore a few hours before sunset)

The crickets are active tonight. And while they are charming, their first appearance (or rather audi-ance? Do we have a word for something that comes into hearing, comparable to something that comes into view?)… And while they are charming, their first presence is always a bit melancholy, for it signals that we have turned the corner on summer.

Peepers come out in spring. Lightning bugs in early summer. Crickets right around summer's peak. They are hardy fellows, strumming their rustic melodies deep into fall. Tonight, they are vigorously thrumming their familiar, melodic undercurrent that forms the baseline of all mid-summer’s night lullabies.

It is around this time of summer, too, that another sound emerges. I do not know its source or origin, but it is best described as the sound of the forest breathing. It has only two notes, one for breathing in, another for breathing out. It is slow, steady, full, as if all the trees of my woods were breathing in sync.

In its constant, deep rhythm it is somewhat comforting, as if the earth itself were urging us, guiding us, to relax. As it breathes, so should we, slowing our breath to match nature's, joining our spirits to the spirit of the wilds.

And then there is that rattle noise, like someone is shaking a baby’s toy, off and on, calling desperately, insistently, throughout the better part of the early night. But it is blessedly short-lived, outlasted by the soothing blanket of cricket song.

Occasionally, an owl will chime in, announcing his presence and staking his claim to territory, mate or food.

No wonder so many white noise machines have settings for the sounds of late summer nights. (And no wonder so many also have settings for the soft rumble of trains. The latter are a rhythmic, mechanical echo of the former. Gentle, constant, hypnotic.)

There is a vibrant enchantment stirring beyond our windows on summer's nights that we can witness only as eavesdroppers. Still, as we go to bed, it gently drapes us in its constant cacophony of desire, delight and renewal.

Thank God for summer.

Time's relativity

The relativity of time hangs heavy in these hazy days of summer.

As kids, our experience tells us that the three months of summertime are about equal to all the rest of the year. We grow as much in summer as we do in all the rest of the year (sometimes more). As adults, lingering after dinner in the gentle presence of each other, we can feel how summer evenings last twice as long as twilight in winter.

It is true that for the entirety of human existence, the sun and the moon have marked time in some sort of absolute, consistent, mechanical way. One year is roughly the same length as another; one month is roughly the same as the next. Our ancients no doubt had a good idea of this constancy, reliability and predictability of time. They built sacred buildings and sacred calendars upon it.

And yet they also experienced a variability, flexibility and relativity in the texture of time that we do not have.

Our experience of time was radically changed by the Industrial Revolution - particularly by manufacturing and train travel.

When bosses built factories, they wanted their workers to show up on time, at the same time, and produce like clock-work. The first machine-operators and assembly-line workers were different from the artisans of the culture of their youth. No longer were they masters who oversaw the creation of a entire product but isolated cogs engaged in only one step of the process.

Precision, repetition and synchronization were essential to success. Personal pacing, pausing, refinement, improvisation, modification, individuality - none of that could be accommodated on the line.

Timing was critical. Clocks that registered seconds as well as minutes (compared to the hours we counted by the sun) were the timepieces that now measured the moments and determined the movements of our lives.

But it was the railroad and its need to synchronize time across vast distances that finally tamed, tackled and tailored time. It was the needs of the railroad that created time zones, repeating the hour as we traveled west every 15 degrees. And it was the railroad that coordinated the minute hands world-wide, so that no matter what zone we found ourselves in, or what the sun-time was within that zone, we were all in sync with the minutes and each other.

For the sake of modernity, time was flattened, captured in a box. Where sundials reflected celestial time, watches created earthly time. Time morphed in the last few centuries from an element of nature to an artifact of culture. There are clearly blessings in this transformation, but also losses.

But thankfully summer returns us, if ever so fleetingly, to this pre-industrial, uncaged experience of time. Time is once again determined by the sun, measured by what we do, and how we choose to name it.

Then, when the last rays of light finally slip beyond the horizon, we can declare, as we reflect upon the day that we in part made: and it was morning, and it was evening, another day.

Gifts from the Seashore

The tallit is one of the most recognizable of Jewish ritual objects. Though classically white with a broad stripe of black, it can be fashioned in any color, arrayed in any design.

There are only two rules that determine its status: it must be a four-cornered garment and it must have knotted fringes on each corner.

Oh, there is a third: it must have a blue thread braided into its fringes.

The Bible tells us the following:

"Speak to the Children of Israel and bid them to make fringes on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put upon the fringe of each corner a blue thread (tekhelet). And it shall be for you as a fringe, that you may look upon it and remember all the commandments of G-d, and do them..." (Numbers 15:38-39)

When I was growing up, we would read this commandment about the blue fringes, and wonder, for the fact was, all the fringes we wore were white. That discrepancy (which was explained to us only when we asked) was because the source of the blue dye and the process to make it were lost. It seems that one extended family was charged with guarding the secret formula which they handed down faithfully from generation to generation. But somewhere in the exile, dislocations and exigencies of history, the secret was lost. No one seemed to make a big deal of this, but at least to me, it seemed huge.

To a young and gullible child, the loss of this essential dye was one of those shocking yet intoxicating hints that the rock-solid adult world we were being initiated into was not quite as whole, safe and predictable as we were led to believe. Rather, it was full of challenge, and surprises, and change. That was both a frightening and alluring prospect.

For how many children, I wonder now, over how many generations was this disconnect between sacred expectation and human capacity a coming-of-age moment like it was for me? But that is not the point I wanted to make.

This much we know from the Talmud - that the sacred blue dye was derived from a tiny Mediterranean Sea snail called hilazon. But for centuries, no one knew exactly what that was. Modernity has offered a suggestion: murex trunculus.

This small inter-tidal snail matched the rabbis' descriptions of being the color and texture of the sea. It was readily harvested at various times of the day and year. (Interestingly enough, as seen in the photo above, its stripes even look a bit like those on a contemporary tallit, though I wouldn't make too much of that.)

To make the dye, hundreds of these thumb-sized snails are gathered and cracked open; and from them a pea-sized, yellowish gland is harvested. From this, a clear, viscous liquid is extracted, hardly a promising start to a process of blue-ing. But, when this substance is exposed to the air of the land and the light from the sun, its color begins to turn. First it becomes a deep purple, then ultimately, with more sunlight it changes to a lustrous, majestic blue.

It took vast amounts to dye the priests' clothes their unique blue; and it took vast amounts to supply all male Jews with the blue woolen threads for the center of their fringes.

That we bothered to create this dye for everyone (today we can add women to the male subjects of the commandment) makes a point: that every Jew (and today we can add: every person), no matter their station or profession or wealth, is, in their own way, majestic and worth bothering over.

The gifts we each possess are like the snail's: though always present, they may not be readily accessible. Just as the snail itself is sometimes easily harvested (when the tide is out and the sea bottom exposed) and other times covered over and hidden (when the tide is in), so are our capacities sometimes evident and sometimes hidden. Just as the liquid first looks non-descript but later explodes in color, so our gifts might be mistakenly overlooked and under-estimated but later found to add luster and notable strands of blessing to this lush, variegated but needy world of ours.

The secrets of the blue dye are returning to us. It is now possible to purchase blue fringes on-line or at your local Jewish bookstore. As the secret of the blue dye returns, so may it bring with it an expansive discovery of personal gifts, properly mined and rightly applied to the world, as well. Lord knows we need them.

At the Seashore

I awoke this morning at 5:24, tugged as I often am when by the sea to rise and greet the dawning sun. My family has been coming to this beach house for 27 years, never missing a summer. It is rare that a visit goes by without catching at least one sunrise.

Sometimes at dawn the horizon is overcast, dulling and delaying the moment when the source of our light can be seen peeking over the water's edge. But this morning, the few wispy clouds upon the horizon were an enhancement, not an impediment, serving like a theatrical backdrop to the grand stage upon which the sun made its appearance precisely at 5:40.

That this show, and another comparable one at night, happens every day, continues to astonish me. That it has happened every day of my life is awesome enough. That this singular act of making days has occurred without fail for billions of years is stunning. Every 24 hours (give or take a bit) our planet turns and every 24 hours (give or take a bit) this ball of light and energy silently, gently, gracefully appears, conferring with its appearance the stuff and substance of life.

So why is it that I almost totally ignore it except when on vacation? How can I so blithely enjoy its gifts moment to moment in the work-a-day world without so much as a nod in acknowledgement and gratitude? I suppose I could argue that it is because I cannot see the horizon from my home, that the magic happens beyond view, out of sight. But that is a lazy, indulgent excuse. My food is also out of sight - in the refrigerator and behind cabinet doors - but I don't forget about it! The truth more likely is because I am otherwise distracted, or sleeping, or working or tending to matters I deem more important. That hardly justifies things.

The ancients - for whom artificial lighting was a demanding, expensive, necessary extravagance whose use had to be kept to a minimum - could not help but notice the transition from day to night and back again.

The rituals conferred upon us by the rabbis of old call us to notice the moments of dawn and the sun's turning in. Our daily prayer is book-ended by the rhapsody of sunrise and sunset. We cannot say the morning prayers until there is light enough to distinguish between blue and green, enabling us to tell apart the greens of the ocean from the blues of the sky, and to recognize the color of the turquoise/blue/purple thread in the middle of the tzitzit . (The source of this color is a snail that comes from the sparkling depths of the sea and captures the sterling clarity of the sky.) Days come to an end when the stars appear.

How much better might my days - my life - be, how much less upset by both petty annoyances and grand disappointments, in short, how much richer, if I bothered to remember this, everyday?

Dispatches from the Eastern Shore

I am sitting in this slightly lavendar 150 year old, 11’ x 15’ wood frame house perched on the banks of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. Built as a cottage for the waterway’s wharf-master, it served various needs of this small community over its colorful lifetime: barbershop, tailor shop, ice house, and now guest lodge.

It is also the closest I have come to sleeping in a haunted house, not because of unexplained phenomena or things that go bump in the night, but because my imagination keeps conjuring up all the pioneering inhabitants who trod these paneled floors before me.

The cottage is in the historic town of Chesapeake City, which itself is located at the northern tip of the Chesapeake Bay. The city (the term is more honorific than precise given the town's diminutive size) was born of economic infatuations and human ingenuity, and played a key supporting (if unsung) role in the development of our nation. It was created when the locks for the canal were installed, exactly half way between the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays, serving the workers who managed the engines that drove the waterworks that made this artificial channel run.

As early as the mid-1600s, Dutch envoy and mapmaker Augustine Herman suggested creating a watercourse between Philadelphia and Baltimore to avoid the time, expense and dangers of rounding the Delmarva Peninsula. Instead of 300 miles out to sea and back again, a traverse of a mere 14 inland miles could connect the rivers that connected the Bays, and the markets and resources beyond.

It took 150 more years before the canal was dug, but ultimately, the will, the financing and the engineering came together. The C&D Canal opened in 1829, four years after the inauguration of the 363-mile long Eerie Canal and amid the heyday of the canal boom in America. Until then, the interior of this vast continent was still mostly closed to its most recent inhabitants, but the man-made waterways newly coursing through the land were the wedges that were cracking it open.

At night, when all else is still, we can hear the water lapping on the shore each time a boat passes. From small boats with single outboard motors to enormous shipping vessels that blot out the sky, the water traffic makes this canal the busiest in the United States.

Who knew?

Humans have been geo-engineering this earth for thousands of years, from crafting furrows and aqueducts that water our fields to building mighty dams that power the engines of our lives.

Pushing the earth around, using the resources of this fair planet in ways that enable us to extend the natural boundaries of creation, is part of the human enterprise. We are partners with God, made in God's image, which means that to be human is not just to be creatures who use and protect life, but who enhance it, as well.

But just as God created the world as regenerative and ever-renewing, so must we. It is a mandate we forgot in the passion of the industrial revolution and our addictive gorging on fossil fuel. But thankfully it is a memory that is re-emerging and once again guiding our way.

The C&D canal is a thriving waterway, with fish and plants and commerce commingling. That is the way life should be - ever-developing and ever-renewing. That is the way we must once again build and grow our civilization.