Greetings and Good Tidings to the Autumnal Equinox

[NB: All the pics in this post have disappeared. Figuring out which ones they were and getting them back in may take awhile. Their absence significantly detracts from the post.]

Yesterday was one of those unbelievably perfect fall days--skies so blue they make you feel like an M80 went off in your chest, sun shining, warm, but not too hot.  With a day like that, I couldn't go to my windowless gym and spend time 'walking' on a machine.  I went home, grabbed my camera and my bike and headed into the park.  It amazes me sometimes how much time can pass between my visits.  I live a block away, yet sometimes weeks can pass without me finding myself in the forest or down in the holler.

Summer has been winding down in valley for some time now, even if it seems less obvious in the concrete jungle above where the pavement still cooks in the sun and it feels every bit like summer is still doing keg stands at 3 AM, oblivious that last call was hours ago.  (For tomorrow, the first official day of fall, the weather forecast is calling for a high of 88F.)  I headed out through the playground and began my descent along the hillside.  I came around a bend to find this beauty shining in the canopy--hello Fall!

I got down to the valley floor, and rode straight into the unrelenting sun for a bit before looping around to have it at my back as I poked up the single-track next to the stream. I love this light and the glass-like surface of the slow moving water.  After uploading these photos to my computer, I flipped through my folder of pictures from the park and noted at how the deep, lush green of June and July had faded to these muted yellows and light greens.  It happens every year, yet never fails to captivate me and fill me with wonder.  These small, gradual changes occur before our eyes every day, yet only when flipping through a collection of these moments captured in time does the profound contrast really strike me.

I like fall. I like to watch the world gradually wind down, pulling its energy inward, slowly closing up shop in preparation for the approaching long days of winter. I like to see the cycle of life in action at each of its stages, savoring the flavors, colors, and textures of each one.  I don't want to live in a perpetual summer (or spring or winter or fall) because it is only in the movement between the seasons that each fully comes into its own, and we are able to fully appreciate its gifts.

This way.

Tonight at 11:09, we mark one of the two days of the year when the day of light and the darkness of night will be perfectly balanced.  Perhaps we can use this moment to reflect on achieving balance in our own lives, or as a point at which to rest and look back across our busy, active summer lives and forward to cooling temperatures, shorter days, sweaters, and returning to life on the inside of our homes. Taking time to appreciate the days of hot skin, bright light, kinetic energy, and time spent with puffy white clouds as our ceiling and towering tree trunks for walls, and anticipating the spicy, earthy flavors of fall--the smell of cinnamon, apples, pumpkin pie, and warm, dry leaves; the soft texture of wool and well-worn denim; and the way the world becomes smaller, gathered around points of light and warmth as we work our way into the heavy hibernation of winter.

Ragged butterfly rests at the end of a long, hot summer.

Of course, modern life works against us, but tens of thousands of years of evolution don't give up without a fight.  The tides of our bodies still move with the ebb and flow of the earth around us--its light, its warmth, its abundance, its dearth.

So no matter what the electric lights, alarm clocks, central heating systems, and work schedules tell you, remember that. Remember that you are a native child of the universe, and its intimate movements move within you.

There is beauty in every stage of life.

Despair not as summer's bounty fades and dies--for it is nourishing its resurrection.  In one half turn of the earth, we'll be back at this point of balance, gathering our energy once again to spring forth again--flinging open the doors and windows, welcoming the return of the life-giving sun, ready to uncurl dormant seeds from the earth once more.

Summer walk.

I want to know this place better than I know the veins in the backs of my hands. I want to know its names, its light and its dark places.

I come here scattered, broken, heavy, and with each step the wounds fall away.

The valley is what it is--never striving to be more.  I come a stranger, but find myself; no more myself--finally at home, wanting no more than what is.

Come to me
as I go
into the fields and forest:
open,
listening,
free of expectation,
pregnant with possibility.

In the dissolution of the self
everything attained--
the only loss,
impediments to vision.

08/09/2010

My Place in Pittsburgh

Our local NPR station, WDUQ has been running the following announcement on the air for some weeks now:

My Place in Pittsburgh
What's your favorite spot in the Pittsburgh region-- is there a bridge or a playground with special significance? Perhaps it's as grand as a beathtaking view or as simple as a specific park bench. Tell us where it is and why at region@wduq.org. You might become part of "My Place in Pittsburgh", a new on-air and website project debuting later this year.

I've been thinking about it since it first aired, and, though I determined my answer to the question some weeks ago, it was not until today that I responded.

Dear friends at DUQ:

My place in Pittsburgh is the restoration of the Nine Mile Run Watershed.

I am a native Pittsburgher, born at Magee Womens Hospital. The first place I went outside the walls of that hospital (so I have been told) was the playground at the corner of Forbes and S. Braddock. As a kid, I ran around in the valley, and collected fireflies in the field off of Kensington Street. Frick Park is as much home to me as the house in which I live. It is my place of solace and rejuvenation.

The restoration of the watershed ecosystem in lower Frick fills me with such profound love and joy, there are barely words for it. I am nearly embarrassed by my attempts to describe what this place means to me because it is too close to the bone--I fear my earnestness will be seen as trite sentimentality.

Like many from this region, I recognize that we've got a number of serious problems ranging from the economic to the environmental. With a dramatic loss of population in a mere generation, crumbling infrastructure, segregated neighborhoods, struggling schools, and a deflated economy--to envision yet another Pittsburgh renaissance seems to be a foolish flight of fancy. Yet still we rise--retooling what we have and encouraging new growth.

To walk in Lower Frick now and see the willows along the stream towering above your head, as you hear woodpeckers in the distance, watch hawks soaring above, and see butterflies dancing among the swaying Joe Pye Weed, you'd scarcely believe that the meadow you are admiring was once a sewage-covered playing field. As dragonflies buzz past, and frogs leap into the water, you may forget that, not long ago, this water was too polluted for anything to live in it. A small group of concerned citizens helped bring about a $7.7 million restoration project that turned a blighted, polluted space into a beautiful public space that supports both the wildlife that live there, and the spirits of the humans who visit. A small group of committed citizens continues to look after this crown jewel of the City park system, reaching out to the residents of neighboring communities to connect them to this beautiful space and teach them to become good citizens of the watershed. We needed big machines to move the boulders into place and create new banks for the streams, but now we need thousands of hands to pick up trash, recycle, install rain barrels; thousands of voices to talk to neighbors and friends and teach them how their small actions impact this big picture.

The restoration area is a metaphor for what is happening, and what can happen, for our City. Sure, we have problems. But if we roll up our sleeves, pool our efforts, and maybe call in some heavy equipment, the problems need not be insurmountable. We have problems, but Pittsburgh also has much inherent beauty and deep reserves of natural (including human) resources. If we so choose, through hard work and compassionate stewardship, we, like the watershed, can rise again. In the words of Wendell Berry--"this is no paradisal dream, its hardship is its possibility."

Kindly,

kxm
Park Place

For beautiful before and after pictures, go here under "Restoration Complete."

Do not take lightly small good deeds, believing that they can hardly help. For drops of water, one by one, in time can fill a giant pot. ~ Patrul Rinpoche

The restoration of Frick Park served many purposes, and was a very practical thing to do in many respects. On another level, however, it was a pure act of love.

Why does this little watershed matter? Why does it matter whether I kill the fly buzzing around my house and annoying me? Why does it matter if the Wildlife Center saves one small turtle, mangled by a careless person mowing the lawn?

There is a bigger answer to these questions, but the simple one is that we are all interconnected. As we wish to be safe and free from harm, let us give that to the world--it will indubitably come back to us. Maybe not in the form you expect or on your schedule, but it will come. Every kindness creates more kindness--in virtue of its being done, the world is more blessed. It is easy to be overcome by cynicism. It is easy to see all of the horrors of this world and be horrified, perhaps even to the point of turning your heart to stone.

Alternatively, we can allow each horrifying act we witness to tear our hearts open, making room to hold yet more of the world with compassion.

In the face of those who harm animals, in the face of the trauma of wars destroying countless lives, in the face of genocide, starvation, corruption, and abject poverty--we can close down, curl inward, etiolate, and die.

Or we can roll up our sleeves, and get to work moving the boulders and shoving the willow branches into the newly formed banks of the stream so that generations from now, children will never know that this place was not always paradise.