Despite the Changing Seasons--I Have Loved You

Text: Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. (1968)

"For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech." --from the Forward

     I started reading this in the bathtub and almost extinguished my candle from the breath of laughter.

Dock at Lake Holloway: Almanacs FTW

     It's been raining, over Lake Bonny, Lake Holloway, its dock, the brick red pavement serpenting around campus, grass, and lamp posts. I find myself speechless on these grey days, cold and shivering on the bike, cold and shivering on the inside.

     Grandma used to have an almanac, back in my Hakka home; or rather, she was the almanac. This woman who has been moon-watching for over sixty years, can tell with a glance at the night sky what the weather forecast will be for the coming week and generally the entire season. She told me about the monsoon rains, predicted the exact same coldness that would suddenly sweep our town at the advent of rain. And so it was. That year and every year.

     An almanac would be handy now (like the one Aldo Leopold patiently wrote for his beloved Sand County). Especially since I'm on the bike, planed out all the field trips accordingly, and am completely at the mercy of the sun or rain. It's been disappointing day after day, at the Holloway Dock, with my umbrella cast aside and water reeds for company, in the rain. The ripples, widening, made over the lake seemed to exacerbate the cold.

     But so is true of the soul inside me, its darkening circumstances only blow the problem out of proportion more and threaten to consume me completely, to invade into the spaces outside of me. I don't like the thought and image of the darkness in me as widening waves that overflow its boundaries, spilling into the sunlight like those God-awful globs of black oil on the Gulf. I'd hate birds to die some more.

     As of now, it's nicely trapped and kept in tamely, just as the waters at Holloway have not rebelled unnecessarily, even with aid of the rain. The banks are secure, still, and so is the dock. Where then, is the dock of my insides? Even in this cold. When, will sunlight stream its shafts as it has been spreading over the glimmer of a once again blue lake?

     Once again, an almanac would come in handy, I think, an almanac of the soul.

The Peace

Text: Southwest Florida Water Management District, The Peace River: A Trip through Native Florida

     I never thought a canoe trip down the Peace River could be so alluring, its tranquility and yet... how full of life. 

     Reading the passage made me think of so many things, of still waters draped by overhanging canopy of leaves, branches, and pieces of the sky. Is it like what Christopher Marlow felt when traveling down into the heart of darkness? Perhaps... but perhaps not. Even more so than nearing the destination, I'd relish the traveling and wading itself, every space of fresh air and water. Knowing Fort Meade behind me and the Charlotte Harbor yonder, I can rest assured that I am sandwiched between two "civilized" places and allowed a moment's reprieve from their realities into the reality that is nature surrounding the canoe immediately, at this moment. For the time being.

     Perhaps I am romanticizing this a bit. I do get carried away when my imagination roams from the launching point of good writing. Here's a passage I really like from the text:

"...if you’re seeking a little solitude and a spiritual connection with the river and the wilderness through which it runs, you might try an overnighter, like the trip from Zolfo Springs to Gardner."

The thought of "solitude and spiritual connection with the river and the wilderness" sounds extremely appealing, and yet... also incredibly far away. Strangely, lately, as I've looked out of Mira Lago alone, or sat on the grass surrounding Lake Bonny alone, there's a vague presence/absence at my back, in the dark of the shadow that I cannot see. I don't think it's loneliness, which gnaws at the bone marrow; or is it loneliness only in another form--of misty, elusive embrace.... In my dream, of canoe-ing down the Peace River, I somehow cannot imagine being truly "alone."

     Maybe, one can find solitude in the company of another, is that possible? Is it possible that the solitude may feel double-fold? As if one solitary soul communing with another solitary soul, and what passes among the two in the natural elements--can it be the mysterious "spirit" similar to the one which comprises the Holy Trinity? Is that what they call Peace? In the curves of a dove, that hovers.

Short and Imperfect

A few off-kilter haiku:

1月.30 （日）

     Waters, blue like mirror.
At dusk, remaining red on reeds
     --Pelican flies.

湖之幽蓝
    近暮色, 水草.
    白鸟飞

Mapping the Contours II

Text: Excerpts from Bill McKibben's American Earth, an anthology of nature writing in said country.

From: The End of Nature

     McKibben himself shares a story of a lake special to him and his wife. It's hidden in the Adirondacks, a favorite haunt of my Upstate New York hiking friends while I lived there. I remember father and son telling me of their March "man trip" amidst still snow-capped rugged mountains with that uniquely tough pride foreign to us more refined girls who preferred the meadows in spring. Bill, the father, had lamented that he saw someone's trash littered at the lower altitudes.

     Now as I'm reading Bill, the writer, who tells of this small Adirondack lake, once peaceful but now invaded by someone's motorboat, finds himself not knowing even how to feel. Sure, the lake's for everyone to use, but it just bothers him--he can't even swim right. He explains it like this: "It's not so much the danger--few swimmers, I imagine, ever die by Evinrude. It's not even so much the blue smoke that hangs low over the water. It's that the motorboat gets in your mind."