Barefoot said it

I haven't been feeling particularly eloquent lately. I have been blaming it on the long Minnesota winter, but fellow Minnesotan Barefoot Gardener has blown that excuse right out of the water. Her latest blog post, Poetry in the Soul, is some of the best writing I have ever read. Anywhere.

Dirty Snow Moon

I didn't see the full moon last night. I think the entire state of Minnesota was shrouded in thick rain clouds that kept the cold air out and sent intermittent downbursts of rain pushed by gusts of wind. This morning the snow level is down considerably, revealing all that was covered up and forgotten when the first layer of snow fell.

It was strange to hear the wind and rain on the roof last night. Both Starflower and Mr. Attitude were awakened by it and came to me for reassurance. After months of winter quiet, the wind and rain had the restless sound of a giant creature awakening. Spring is on its way.

I am staying home today. I could use the rest, and I figured my coworkers could use a day without me coughing and hacking in the same room.

that moment between

between starry frosty morning
and advancing cloud front heralding gray day
One golden moment
magnified in every ice crystal
caught in tree tops

And in that moment between, as I began the day's journey from home life to work life, below those illuminated tamaracks I heard a flock of...robins. Yes, their calls were unmistakable as they descended on the winterberries. I have seen a lone robin nearby in December, but never a flock this late in the fall.

autumn impressions

The sun is rising perceptibly later each day as the last days of summer give way to autumn. The fog that shrouded the full moon all night softens the early morning landscape.

Birches started giving up yellow leaves some time in the last week or two; now the maples flash scarlet here and there, a preview, a teaser.

In the road ditches, ferns stand crumpled and brown from frost. Goldenrods and blazing star are a whispered hush of their former hues, while asters give one last show of white and blue and purple.

The skies are full of activity as migrant birds make their way south. Among the golden leaves of the birch outside my window, warblers blend in with their muted yellows as they glean insects. Raucous threads of Canada geese ripple through the air. Sandhill cranes trumpet in their ancient voice, unseen as they soar with the thermals or rest and feed in fields.

Days fly by as I go about my human activities. I just want to pause, to gather in every moment of a golden September day so I can feel the warmth on my face on some gray winter day.

Deb's decision

I decided today that I am not a fisheries biologist. I am a writer.

From my childhood, I have always shown a talent and interest in writing. I was published at age eight, without my permission, when my grandma sent a few of my Haiku poems, which I had scribbled on a tablet, to The Lutheran Digest.

Sunset brings evening
Small stars twinkle in the night
Country rests in peace

In fifth grade, we had a substitute one day. She assigned us to write a poem about fall. Here was my response:

Autumn Song

The wind is the conductor
The fiddles are the leaves
Bright tubas are the wheat heads
Tied in golden sheaves

An oak tree and its leaves above
are one great big bassoon
Pumpkins are the kettle drums
The color of the moon

And in the great big sky above
the great big fields of corn
the moon, it plays its own sweet notes
just like a big French horn

It was the best poem I've ever written. I went on to write A-earning essays in college, though I majored in biology, which required little in the way of writing. If I had it to do over, I would have been an English major. But is it too late to change course?

I think not. I intend to devote every moment of my spare time to becoming the writer and musician I know I am. I have even set a goal of making a career change within five years. My current career, with all of its amenities, does not satisfy my soul. I need to do more than just count fish and plants.

I had one encouraging message that helped me in this decision. Joy, my high school classmate, valedictorian, yearbook editor and sister in law to my best friend in high school, contacted me recently through LinkedIn, a networking site. She said she reads my blog occasionally and thinks I'm an excellent writer. Wow! Thanks Joy, I'm a junkie for stuff like that. :)

So, expect to see more thoughtful writing here in the future. I've lapsed at that, while we've been devoting our energies into house finishing and all.

expanding on wonder

Wonder is walking out the same door, looking out the same window, walking the same path every day and seeing something new each time; or if not seeing something new, seeing something as it had never been seen before, or as if it had never been seen before.

Wonder is the deep sigh, the gasp upon spotting an eagle, the inward smile upon being serenaded by a sparrow. It is what makes one take notice of the smallest starflower, a butterfly, or a gleaming-winged unnamed insect.

Wonder is the sense of how every note in a Mozart symphony is just right, just as it should be, and how did one mere mortal conjure up the One True Voice?

Wonder defies words. To reduce a sudden sensation of wonder to a vocalized exclamation is to trivialize it. I feel pretty silly when I hear myself utter "Cool!" when I behold a soaring eagle. An eagle isn't cool. An eagle just is.

Note: I got into a groove at work today, and I wrote this out with pen on a scrap of paper, in about fifteen minutes. I haven't edited or added to it, yet. Let me know where I should go with this.

this moment

The woods are wet with this afternoon's rain, and now the air is pregnant with the songs of spring peepers and toads. I watch the sunlight fade over the northwestern sky as an ovenbird makes its final calls in the twilight. A hummimgbird buzzes by, almost not noticing my presence on its way to the feeder. The creek, full with the recent rains, rushes over the big beaver dam, half a mile away back in the swamp, as a mist moves in and out. The air smells of damp pine needles, of dirt, of wood smoke, of life. In the distance, a woodcock peents, then flutters in a wide circle to the sky.

Springtime is just too much

Too much happening. Too much bursting forth into new life. Too much to be done, and not enough time in these precious days.

I actually broke down yesterday, broke down because there was so much I wanted to get done but my human self was lagging and wanting to just savor the moment. Guess which side won.

But this morning I awoke, feeling strangely disoriented. Hung over, maybe, if I had drunk more than normal, which I hadn't. I felt as if I had no compass, and the world was spinning wildly, a whirligig of birdsong, sunshine, and strong coffee. Another day of too many possibilities looming before me.

After breakfast, scrambled eggs and ham (all local- woohoo!!!) I wandered out to my garden, trying to put off the inevitable task of washing the dishes. I thought about planting the few potatoes left over from yesterday, the ones I had cut up because I didn't have enough Yukon Golds to plant them whole. Then I saw them. Actually, saw him first, flying overhead, gracefully diving and dipping in a flight I had never seen before, like a visitor from afar, giving a slight chuckle as he swooped on wings that defied gravity.

"What in the hell was THAT!" I found myself exclaiming out loud. The flight pattern, the white and black of the bird, seemed totally foreign to me. It had to be a new bird, a life-lister, something I had never seen before. I found myself wanting to believe that, that it was not just another ordinary bird, as if there is such a thing.

It turned out to be an extraordinary bird, and one I had seen before, a male Northern Harrier, quite common around here. But the way it flew was something I had never seen before, and soon I was to know why. This was no ordinary flight, but a dance. A mating dance. I saw him retun, soaring, with a female harrier, and they soared and swooped around each other like poetry. The dishes waited while I watched as they soared and called together, then landed just across the swamp. I waited and watched.

As I waited, I observed a pair of song sparrows, first calling to each other, then mating in one brief moment.

I saw the harriers several more times throughout the day, each time heralded by the high, thin "Keeeiiir! Keeeiiir!" call of the female. The pair seemed to be enjoying just soaring, flying together.

Springtime is just too much. Everything bursts forth, in flowering, mating, growing, and soon it will be overgrown in the vines of summer. But for now it is just enough, when I open my heart to the dance.

By the way, I am listening to the first toads trilling tonight, and I heard tree frogs today. I think I heard one ovenbird, and I put out the hummingbird feeder but no takers. I will know the moment they arrive, and isn't that knowledge awesome!

turning point

I felt it in the air last night as I walked out to do chores. It was in the lingering warmth of south facing walls, in the softness of the snow and the slickness of the ice; it was in the gentle breeze sending whispers through the lofty pines and in the rich smell of earth where the snow had melted away.

The spring thaw is coming. Winter is losing its grip.

Yesterday was warmer than it has been, with a high of nearly 30, but it's not just the weather patterns of daily highs and lows. The sun is rising higher in the sky, the light is more warming and intense, light streaks the eastern sky before I wake up and the last indigo of twilight lingers long past dinner.

All of these subtle changes are etched in my sensory memory, but it is the smell that I react to the most. Damp earth and white pine needles, minerals and decomposing leaves, the way the pine wood siding smells when the noonday sun hits it. It is the smell of life, turning, cycling, returning. It fills me with new life and new hope. It makes me want to run, to fill my lungs with this new life until they are burning inside, then collapse on a south facing hillside with my face to the sun, my eyes closed, bathing in the warmth that is so welcome because of its long absence.

Last night I walked out to the compost pile just after sunset, and I listened to the silence of the lavender sky, felt the chill on the blue snow. My mind tells me snow is white, but at that moment I trusted my eyes and saw pale aster blue reflecting a deeper blue in the air. I stood looking at all the life around me, the expectation, the anticipation. Spring is coming, as it will.

the garden path, Part 2: My first garden

After college, I managed to be accepted to graduate school, complete with a research assistantship, at South Dakota State University in Brookings. My major was Wildlife & Fisheries Science. I ended up doing research on a couple of minnow species that make up a significant part of the food chain on Lake Oahe, a Missouri River reservoir. Enough about that, what I did there certainly won't change the world. But what I learned while I was there changed my world.

For the first time, I was on my own. No roommate, no dormitory social structure to report to. I was free to think for myself. I found myself hanging out at bookstores and buying titles like Mother Earth Spirituality by Ed McGaa (Eagle Man). Who ended up coming to my 26th birthday party, playing drums and singing cowboy songs. But again, I am getting ahead of the story.

I had a funky apartment, all to myself, on the ground floor of this big old house. It was basically a kitchen, a living/bedroom, and a huge closet under the stairs that led to the second floor. Orange shag carpet, at no extra cost. I loved it. Anyway, the people who shared the ground floor with me, two couples who were also studying Wildlife & Fisheries, had garden plots in the community gardens just north of town. I had just started dating The Hermit, and he suggested that I(we) get a plot too. On Memorial Day 1990, we planted. Never mind that he lived 200 miles away, and I would be doing all the work, it was just meant to be.

The soil was rich, black, and crumbly. I don't remember exactly, but I know we planted corn. And tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, whatever. I remember eating the corn most of all. At that time, I bicycled everywhere. There was just no point in driving my car, a very fuel efficient Nissan Sentra, any place that I could not ride my bike. So I found myself riding out to the garden plot in the evening, shovel and hoe in hand, to tend to the garden. My schedule that summer was that I spent one week on campus, one week 200 miles away on Lake Oahe. I spent my weekends at The Hermit's, another long drive. So I didn't have much time to tend the garden.

It was what it was. A beginning. Sometimes I find myself yearning for that fertile Dakota soil, for the sense of community I found among people tending garden plots in the same area. For my little apartment, and the 20ish sense that everything is possible.

the garden path, Part 1: the early years

With my thoughts turning to gardening and seed catalogs this time of year, I realize that growing food has gotten to be more than just a hobby for me; it's a way of life. Now that I am on land where I can sink my roots, I have settled into the cycles of the seasons so well that it comes without thinking. It's not a question of whether I will plant a garden this year, it's a question of which varieties I will plant and how they will be arranged.

How did I come to be this way? I was not a born gardener, I did not grow up on a farm. I wasn't even remotely interested in gardening until I was an adult. In the next few posts, I am going to explore and share the path that leads to my garden.

You could say, at least on my mom's side of the family, I was of the first generation removed from the land. My mom grew up on a farm until her teens, and although my grandpa was never a full time farmer, they had a garden and a cow. But I grew up in the suburbs, with a back yard just big enough to play a very limited game of wiffle ball. We had a few flowers growing in beds next to the house, and raspberry bushes, which provided a good quick snack during those ball games. When gardening became somewhat popular in the 1970's, my dad tilled up a 6 by 15 patch in a corner of the back yard. He and my mom would plant tomatoes, cucumbers, and green peppers from plants bought at K mart. One year we planted sunflowers and ended up with some giant plants over ten feet tall.

My grandparents had a small garden too, at their lake place where I spent many weekends. They grew tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, radishes, and green beans, the usual Minnesota garden fare. I remember my grandma canning tomatoes and applesauce, and she made the best dill pickles. Later on, after I was married and had a house and garden of my own, I would learn the basics of canning from her. But that's getting ahead of the story.

So I grew up with a little exposure to growing things, although I was never particularly interested in helping out or having my own garden. I was in 4-H, but my projects stayed far away from any livestock or horticulture. I was into rock collecting, photography, and sewing.

Later on in college, I would major in biology. I wanted a work study job in the biology department, but the only job available was in the greenhouse, watering and repotting plants. I was not specializing in botany, but it was kind of fun being in there among the tropical plants in the cold days of winter. Looking back, the college should have been starting vegetables and growing salad greens for the cafeteria, which I hear it has started to do now, but such ideas were uncommon in the mid 80's. I certainly did not have any such innovative notions; I did not even know what I was going to do with my biology degree after graduation until the second semester of my senior year. I guess you could say I kind of drifted aimlessly through college.

What I did not know was that one year after I graduated from college, I would be planting my first vegetable garden, sowing the seeds for the future. But that will be the next installment.

old house

I wonder what stories this house has to tell.

I pass by this abandoned house just about every day. It sits there, its empty windows gazing into the sunrise, brush growing all around. I can't tell how many years it has been empty, but it looks like it was a nice, cozy house in its day.

The land around here was logged off around 1880-1900, then the cleared land was sold off mainly to immigrant farmers. The 1915 plat map, from a local history book, shows that this land was owned by a Nielsen; Scandinavian, most likely Danish, as the township of Partridge was settled by Danes. The town of Askov holds its Danish tradition proudly, even in this age of homogeneity. A note for you Prairie Home Companion fans: Garrison Keillor's brother resides in the area.

Askov used to pride itself in being the "rutabaga capital" of the state, or maybe even the nation. If you like rutabagas, they were grown here. There was a major rutabaga processing plant, right by the tracks in Askov. They still hold a Rutabaga Festival every year, although probably very few rutabagas are still grown in scattered family gardens. I don't think rutabagas are on the menu at the school or local restaurants.

The post-war policies of the USDA, coupled with the relatively low yield of the land when farmed by "modern" practices, spelled the demise of many family farms in the area. There is still a dairy farm here and there, or a beef operation, or scattered cornfield, but most of the agricultural land is in hay or pasture. Much of the land is tax forfeited, managed for timber harvest by the county, who is not really qualified to know how to do such things. Private land is generally owned by people from the cities, who come up to their cabins for deer season in November.

For some reason, this little house still stands, a remembrance of a time of hope and growth in this area.

UPDATE, 2/07: The house is gone. It was torn down last summer when developers bought the land and subdivided it into ten or twenty acre hunting cabin plots. I miss it.

ain't the evening light pretty...

It is evening. The light is getting shorter day by day, and I must treasure it while I can. I come home an hour earlier than normal, and see that my dog, Togo, is absolutely dying for me to take him for a walk. I oblige, thinking if I sneak off quietly enough, I can enjoy this walk just between Togo and myself. I grab Togo's ultra heavyweight leash, snap it on, and off we go down the long driveway. Togo is lunging and sniffing at everything; I keep him away from the chickens, much as I know he'd love a good poultry dinner.

We are headed north on the road, past the creek and to the field on the other side. I hear the creek as we walk by; it is still rushing by full of the recent heavy rains. I hear a noise behind us; I turn to see Calvin on his bike, racing towards us; I was not quiet enough, but I don't mind his company. Then I see The Hermit coming up the road in our Sport Honda; he is making a beer and sunset watching run to Sturgeon Lake.

We turn onto a drive that leads us into the field north of the creek. As soon as we are into the hayfield, I release Togo's leash and he is off running, happy to be free of the chain. Calvin follows him, off his bike, running and jumping and laughing as Togo runs circles around him. They make a pair, those two, jumping and laughing and running like the wind.

I turn my gaze across the creek. The low afternoon sunlight is turning the tamarack woods a brilliant gold. Gold of tamarack meets dark green and uplifting outline of white pine, straight and conical outline of spruce, all bathed in a mystical golden light. The sky is crystal blue, the blue only found in late fall when the nights get crisp and cold. Crystal blue meets gold meets forest green. I lose my breath for one moment.

(At this point I really, really wish I had that digital camera in my hands right now. One more week!)

Dog and boy come running back to me. Dog, happy to have had his moment of freedom, does not move as I snap the leash back on. Slowly we come back, through the field, across the creek, down the road. Starflower is now pedaling towards us on her bike. She found out our secret. We make our way up the driveway, past the pond, past the chickens, into our home place.

Later, The Hermit drives in with a 30 pack of the gold, bubbly stuff. He tells me of the awesome angle of the light, how beautiful Sturgeon Lake looked all surrounded by the gold and russet and empty cabins and beached boats. I imagine the indigo colored water under an early evening sky. We saw the same wonderful thing, just in slightly different ways. Somehow tonight seems less mundane.

Over morning coffee

Morning coffee is one of my most comforting rituals around here, especially on Saturday morning when I'm not trying to get myself and two kids out the door in time for school and work. Today, when it is still below 30 degrees outside, it is a time for reading, for reflection and sometimes deep conversation.

On Saturdays it is understood that I do not get out of bed until I smell the coffee; it's the Hermit's job. As soon as he gets out of bed, Starflower and Calvin come to take his place (Mr. Attitude is already next to me) along with one or more felines. Puff does "the neck warmer", but only on Starflower; she attracts cats for some reason.

The Hermit goes out to fill the blue speckled enamel camp coffee pot from the pump, then sets it on the stove in the cook shed to heat. Meanwhile he grinds the coffee (Alakef organic fair trade, Sumatran or French Roast) and puts it in the top of the coffee maker. When the water is nearly boiling, he brings it in and pours it in the coffee maker. Simplicity in coffee. We have a Cuisinart coffee maker that somehow got broken during the most recent move; we could get it fixed, but the ritual of making coffee this way somehow appeals to us now.

I roll out of bed, grabbing what I left off reading the night before; today it's Gary Snyder's Turtle Island collection of poems. (note to dharma bum--I read one out loud, whether anyone listened or not) The Hermit is browsing through the latest issue of Countryside magazine. Saturday morning cartoons are on TV; I don't particularly like them, but I know they are not necessarily going to do irreparable harm to my childrens' minds either. Everything in moderation.

Gradually a conversation begins, a thought here, an observation there; reading is set aside. Calvin observes how he can't understand why so many people buy their house when it's much more fun to make their own. Fun, maybe. Rewarding, definitely. Work, you bet.

We talk about this homesteading lifestyle. We are a lot different from many of the people who write in Countryside. For them, it's a lot about religion and frugality. For us, it's the search for what's right, for the Good Life. For living lightly on the land and being a part of it. Frugality can become a religion in itself; if the object is to spend as little money as possible, and brag in a magazine about how you did it, isn't that just a form of being controlled by money, just as much as making as much money as possible is? Everything in moderation. This ain't Folgers Decaf we're drinking here.

In another time, The Hermit would have been out in a duck blind on this frosty morning. I can tell he misses it sometimes. He talks about how it wasn't the act of hunting itself, the killing, but the mere purpose of living completely in the moment. And I agree. He says it's different, now that we live in the country, it is hard to comprehend having the time to engage in something like hunting, or cross country skiing, or anything else we used to do for recreation when we lived in the suburbs. Yes, but in a way living out here has somehow taught me to live in the moment, to look up from my work and see the light glistening in the branches of the white pine.

In an hour or two we will be working. But there is a time for work, and a time for morning coffee, and that time is never to be rushed.

David James Duncan on evangelism and fundamentalism

Check out this article, from Orion online July/August 2005:
What fundamentalists need for their salvation: in defense of truth, stewardship, and neighborly love
Quote:

The God of politically-organized fundamentalism, as advertised daily by a vast array of media, is a Supramundane Caucasian Male as furious with humanity's failure to live by a few lines from Leviticus as He is oblivious to the "Christian" right's failure to live the compassion of the gospels and earth-stewardship of both testaments. As surely as I feel love and need for food and water, I feel love and need for God. But these feelings have nothing to do with Supramundane Males planning torments for those who don't abide by neocon "moral values." I hold the evangelical truth of our situation to be that contemporary politicized fundamentalists, including first and foremost those aimed at Empire and Armageddon, need us non-fundamentalists, mystics, ecosystem activists, unprogrammable artists, agnostic humanitarians, incorrigible writers, truth-telling musicians, incorruptible scientists, organic gardeners, slow food farmers, gay restaurateurs, wilderness visionaries, pagan preachers of sustainability, compassion-driven entrepreneurs, heartbroken Muslims, grief-stricken children, loving believers, loving disbelievers, peace-marching millions, and the One who loves us all in such a huge way that it is not going too far to say: they need us for their salvation.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Impressions from On The Road, part 1

I mentioned in a previous post that I would share some of my thoughts after I recently completed reading Jack Kerouac's classic novel, On The Road. This was not a book that I just put down after finishing it; it has lingered in my thoughts, the stories and images coming back, refining my own impressions to increasing clarity. Perhaps that is the true test of a classic work of art, be it a novel, symphony, or painting; it's not the initial experience of reading/seeing/hearing it, but the thought it inspires. This novel has certainly stayed with me more than anything I've read recently.

Kerouac's use of language is as vivid and rhythmic as anything; I am there, in the smoky jazz clubs of San Francisco, in the steamy bayou night of New Orleans, riding across the high plains of Nebraska in a flatbed truck. I am brought back to the cross country trips I have taken, to the excitement and mystery of the road. I am also taken to the depths of despair, at getting to the end of the continent, my destination, and still feeling empty somehow, beat, alone with myself.

The passage that had the most impact on me was this:

I took up a conversation with a gorgeous country girl...she was dull. She spoke of evenings in the country making popcorn on the porch. ONce this would have gladdened my heart but because her heart was not glad when she said it I knew there was nothing in it but the idea of what one should do. "And what else do you do for fun?" I tried to bring up boy friends and sex. Her great dark eyes surveyed me with emptiness and a kind of chagrin that reached back generations and generations in her blood from not having done what was crying to be done--whatever it was, and everybody knows what it was. "What do you want out of life?" I wanted to take her and wring it out of her. She didn't have the slightest idea what she wanted..."What are we aching to do? What do we want?" She didn't know. She yawned. She was sleepy. It was too much. Nobody could tell. Nobody would ever tell. It was all over. She was eighteen, and most lovely, and lost.

I realized: That is my heritage! My whole family tree is full of people who know nothing, practice nothing but the idea of what one should do! I'm afraid there aren't even any interesting black sheep or skeletons in the closet! I grew up with this incredible naivety, not even knowing where to begin to ask questions, not knowing how to experience anything other than what one should do. I wrote poems, they were good ones, but they were only supposed to be good and happy and the way they ought to be; that bored me eventually but I did not know why, yet I did not know how to understand or appreciate poetry that strayed from these constraints. So I quit writing poetry.

Fortunately I must have had some kind of vision, to see beyond that protective shell. I am still shaking myself free from it. On The Road is helping me to crystallize the longings, the feelings of what I really want in life, and how depressing and constraining the modern, industrial-commercial model of the world is. We are beat.

song lyric idea...first draft

This just came to me as I was taking a noon walk. Much of the inspiration came from this post by lene at Leaning Birch.

Let me stand in the dark
so I can see you
let me fall to my knees
so I can run
plant my feet on solid ground
ancient roots of the white pine
so I can soar like an eagle
in the sky

That would probably be the chorus. Verses are yet to come...another walk someday perhaps.

Recreation, land ethic, and choice

Disclaimer (cover my arse): The following statements are my personal views alone, and do not necessarily represent the position of any employer, past or present.

In any activity in one's life, from providing the basic necessities to seeking fulfillment and pleasure, one has a moral responsibility to question whether one's methods and choices are adversely affecting others in the land community, and to make choices that prevent undue harm. By the land community I mean all who dwell in and on the land and waters, human and nonhuman alike, living and non living. Aldo Leopold in his essay "The Land Ethic" describes this type of community:

The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land...A land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these 'resources', but it does affirm their right to continued existence, and, at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural state.

In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow members, and also respect for the community as such.

Jesus had a command: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Wiccans have a similar code: As it harm none, do as ye will.

We cannot avoid doing some harm while meeting our basic needs for survival, although we can and must make choices that are the least harmful. Our recreation, however, is a complete matter of choice, and we can choose, in fact if we believe in a land ethic we have the moral obligation to choose, forms of recreation that have the least impact on the land community. It is arrogant and self centered to do otherwise.

All terrain vehicles have known impacts to the land. One rider, driving once through previously undisturbed vegetated land, will at the minimum:

• Injure and uproot vegetation
• Compact soil, disrupting aeration and habitat of microflora and fauna
• Create noise enough to disturb wildlife
• Leave a trail of gas fumes
• By discretionary consumption of gasoline , give tacit support to the military machine and domestic habitat destruction necessary to support our nation's level of fossil fuel consumption

With more riders, and there certainly more of them everywhere you look these days, these effects multiply. From the Sierra Club website:

Off-road use of vehicles can present serious and special problems of impact on the environment and incompatibility with other users of the land. Experience has shown that off-road use of vehicles may result in one or more of the following effects:

All vehicles:

1. Physical soil damage, often readily visible, resulting in:
   a. Erosion, causing soil loss and damage to stream banks, streams, and fish habitat;
   b. Soil compaction and serious adverse impact on flora and its regeneration; and
   c. Degradation of trails, including rutting and breakdown of trail edges.
2. Disruption of wildlife breeding and nesting habitats, especially of vulnerable species, resulting in loss of young;
3. Disturbance of wildlife, leading to weakened physical condition, death, and possible extinction of some species;
4. Damage to archaeological, scientific, historical and other significant sites, and damage to natural features, sometimes with irreversible effects, especially on rare features of interest for scientific study;
5. Facilitation of illegal hunting fishing and the talking of game and non-game wildlife;
6. Danger to the safety of other land users because of vehicle speed, steep terrain, sharp curves, slippery or unstable trail surfaces, and/or limited visibility; and
7. Competition with other land users: vehicle operators, with their increased mobility, generally use a greater quantity of scarce land per recreational user.

Motorized vehicles:

1. Introduction of air and water pollution to areas presently removed from any such sources;
2. Excessive noise, which, in close proximity, may result in physiological effects on animals and humans, or may induce anxiety, altering animal behavior patterns, and which, in most circumstances, seriously degrades the solitude of wild areas for other users;
3. Litter: by virtue of mechanization, operators of vehicles carry more gear, with potential to leave more litter;
4. Vandalism: motorized ease of access is often coupled with increase of acts of vandalism on public and private property; and
5. Fire: illegally or improperly operated vehicles can often create a fire hazard on public or private lands.

I have nothing against the responsible use of all terrain vehicles as part of farm or land management work, or by those who have a genuine disability who need to access certain areas and have considered the ramifications thoughtfully. But these are by far the exception to the use patterns you see today. Most use is purely recreational.

Does this sound like a form of recreation that is compatible with a land ethic?

Follow the money. It's just industrialized, corporate sponsored, mechanized, mass marketed land rape, catering to the irresponsible, self centered "me first" generation.

How do I do this, anyway?

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a writer. Even when I was five or six, I kept little journals, started writing stories, and wrote some poems. My grandma, bless her heart, even sent in a series of my nature Haiku poems to The Lutheran Digest, and they actually published them!

It was so easy then. I wrote about my world, the things that I thought were important and how I felt about them, and I had an adoring audience in my mom and grandmas. I thought I was well on the way to becoming a famous author, the next Laura Ingalls Wilder or Maud Hart Lovelace. After all, they wrote about their worlds and what was important to them. The trouble was, I began to realize that Laura Ingalls Wilder's world was a lot more interesting and eventful than mine. What could a fifth grader living in the suburbs and going to grandma and grandpa's lake cabin on weekends in the 1970's possibly have to say that would be interesting? As I approached the teen years and felt the incredible pressure to look and act like everyone else, I gradually gave up writing my stories and poems. I did keep diaries, full of inane drivel about the boys I liked, the girl in seventh grade homeroom who made that school year hell for me, and how I felt about the songs in that week's Top 40. The stuff teenage girls were supposed to write. Blech.

I hate to admit, I didn't read much during that time either. What a waste. There, at the prime of my life when the world was full of possibilities, I resigned myself to thinking my greatest potential was to find the perfect boyfriend. My career aspirations at the time included being a radio deejay. I even was a *gulp* cheerleader my sophomore year in high school. No, I did not fit in and it was hell.

Luckily I realized that a National Merit scholar and class salutatorian was not supposed to be on the track to go to deejay school, and I chose to attend a small Lutheran liberal arts college in southern Minnesota (that narrows it down to 2, and I wasn't an Ole!) and major in biology. The biology major was a fortunate choice; it got me back into appreciation of wildlife and the outdoors, another early childhood pastime that got squelched at the onset of puberty. But for the most part I did not take advantage of all the opportunities for intellectual and spiritual growth that the college had to offer. I rarely spoke up in class, and continued to write inane drivel in my diaries. I did not even consider majoring in English or doing something related to writing, although I was told by more than one professor that I was a talented writer.

I still keep telling myself I'll be a writer some day. I read more than I ever have in my life, and I have an outlet to whomever reads this. But I noticed the other day, in the brief description of my blog, I mentioned something about "environmental philosophy". So where, you may ask, is my writing on environmental philosophy? What are my core views, my beliefs?

Maybe I don't really know. Maybe I really don't have anything to say on the subject. Maybe I am just a shallow "enviro-lite". And that scares the heck out of me. In the words of Babs, the knitting, ignorantly optimistic chicken in the movie Chicken Run, "My life flashed before my eyes...and it was really boring!" Maybe I don't live a life that shows what I care about. Am I passionate enough to be a writer? How do I do this, anyway?