Between the Eternities

After a day in the high desert, surrounded by mountain ranges wherever we go, as darkness falls once again I turn to books about desert and mountains. Far from seeking escape in my winter reading, what I desire above all is immersion.

The reds are always salmon-colored, terra-cotta, or Indian red; the greens are olive-hued, plum-colored, sage-green; the yellows are as pallid as the leaves of yellow roses. Fresh breaks in the wall of rock may show bright colors that have not yet been weather-worn…. A mountain wall may be dark red within, but it is weather-stained and lichen-covered without. Long-reaching shafts of granite that loom upward from a peak may be yellow at heart but they are silver-gray on the surface. The colors have undergone years of ‘toning down’ until they blend and run together like the faded tints of an Eastern rug.  

- John C. Van Dyke, THE DESERT: FURTHER STUDIES IN NATURAL APPEARANCES (1901)

John C. Van Dyke (1856-1932) was an American art historian and critic, and his books all have to do with art. THE DESERT is no exception. Geologic formation, factors of climate then and now, flora and fauna, and human plans for alteration of the land all find their way into THE DESERT, but it is first and foremost with an eye tuned to art that he examines effects of light and atmosphere, clouds, mirages, and every other aspect of what is to be seen in the desert and its mountains. A few of his details — over a hundred years after this book was written — are by now outdated, but in essence it remains truthful to the land, to his experience, and it wonderfully captures the ways in which such a severe landscape can penetrate and capture a human heart. I read my own experience in his, mine not of artist or art critic but only a seasonally retired bookseller and philosophe fauve, when I read sentences such as the following:

How silently, even swiftly, the days glide by out in the desert, in the waste, in the wilderness! How ‘the morning and the evening make up the day’ and the purple shadow slips in between with a midnight all stars! And how day by day the interest grows in the long overlooked commonplace things of nature! In a few weeks we are studying bushes, bowlders, stones, sand-drifts — things we never thought of looking at in any other country.

In my case those last eleven words do not apply, I think immediately, because wherever I am “bushes, bowlders, stones, sand-drifts,” along with insects, lizards, birds, mammals, tracks on the ground, clouds in the sky, running water or indications of water has run, still water, trees, habitations of human beings and other life — all this I look at and drink in hungrily. I suspect the difference for Van Dyke was one of familiarity vs. unfamiliarity, because in the West he did not find what he “knew so well when [he was] a child by a New England mill-stream.” And yet, something tells me that back in his New England boyhood he must already have been doing much more looking than overlooking, that he must have been noticing and forming impressions and making mental notes about everything he saw around him. Because being open to nature is generally a lifelong habit, and in the contrast of long-ago and recent experiences, after all, both are sharpened. 

For example --

The state bird of Illinois is the cardinal, a bird also common in Michigan, both in summer and winter. Against dense green summer foliage, the brilliant scarlet of the male cardinal commands attention, while seen on a background of winter snow, the white a blank page behind its startling color, it is no less impressive. Amid the dusty hues of a desert wash, to someone from the East or Midwest, the cardinal is more than impressive and attention-grabbing: it is downright improbable, verging on miraculous. 

Arizona’s "silver cardinal," the pyruhlloxia, unfamiliar and new to someone new to the West, is no more wonderful than the familiar cardinal, unfamiliar again in its “new” setting. Both give a lift to the heart and put a smile on the face.

Trail through new snow after April storm in Michigan

In Leelanau County, Michigan, Up North winter brings opportunities for noticing comings and goings of life that otherwise proceeds invisibly all around, as tracks in the snow tell stories. (Follow link to see more Michigan tracks. There was another, more extensive post of tracks in the woods, but I can't find it.) In spring, when the snow is gone, my dog still gets the news with her nose; I, on the other hand, dependent on vision, have the olfactory equivalent of near-blindness in grass and woods and must await dirt roads or wet shoreline sand to see what she detects on and near the ground. Here in the desert there is more bare earth, thus more signs accessible to sight. On dirt roads, in dusty washes, across the desert itself, there are more tracks and trails for me to see than back in Michigan after snowmelt, but whether here or there, looking for signs and paying attention to them is just as natural to me.

Cow tracks on road

Cow path through mesquite

Michigan

And everyone who lives near or visits Lake Michigan, the native of a lifetime or tourist of a single day, carries home stones. Desert and mountain rocks are fascinating and very different from smooth, rounded, water-polished beach stones, but to say I would “never thought of looking at” rocks or stones back home in the Midwest would be utterly false.

Michigan

Arizona

Enough, however, of this caviling. I did not set out with the intention of arguing with Mr. Van Dyke. On the contrary, I love his writing and especially love his love of nature. Was it the art criticism of his time that hailed “art for art’s sake,” rather than for conveying and imparting spiritual or political values? He does not insist on “meaning” in art, I’m guessing (not having read any of his other books), any more than he looks for it in nature, where he finds beauty “in itself."

Line and tint do not always require significance to be beautiful. There is no tale or text or testimony to be tortured out of the blue sky. It is a splendid body of color; no more.

Michigan blue

Arizona blue

Mountain blue

And there I am absolutely on the same page with this writer of over a century ago. It is not “sermons in stone” that I look for or find in mountains; nor do I find the absence of sermons something that mountains lack. In themselves, both as they are now and as they became over millenia, along with the changes they continue to undergo, mountains with no addition of sermonizing are endlessly fascinating and awe-inspiring. They are enough. No, more than enough. Monumental and overwhelming — and at the same time engaging, welcoming, beloved.

At the same time…. 

At the same time, neither Van Dyke’s prose nor his sensibility are those of our age but belong instead to the nineteenth century, a period that had closed — on the calendar, at least — only very shortly before this book appeared. While he refrains from passing judgment on nature, stylistically he is given not only to rhetorical questions and flowery exclamations, but also to the personification of nature and to teleological thinking, writing of nature’s designs and purposes, mysterious as the latter must always remain. 

Those first twenty years of our life we were allowed to sap blood and strength from our surroundings; the last twenty years of our life our surroundings are allowed to sap blood and strength from us. It is Nature’s plan and it is carried out without any feeling. With the same indifferent spirit that she planted in us an eye to see or an ear to hear, she afterward plants a microbe to breed and a cancer to eat. She in herself is both growth and decay. The virile and healthy things of the earth are hers; and so, too, are disease, dissolution, and death. The flower and the grass spring up, they fade, they wither; and Nature neither rejoices in the life nor sorrows in the death. She is neither good nor evil; she is only a great law of change that passeth understanding. The gorgeous pageantry of the earth with all its beauty, the life thereon with its hopes and fears and struggles, and we a part of the universal whole, are brought up from the dust to dance on the green in the sunlight for an hour; and then the procession that comes after us turns the sod and we creep back to Mother Earth. All, all to dust again; and no man to this day knoweth the why thereof.

Over and over he reminds us that the individual is of no concern to nature. Only in his closing pages does he finally conclude, somewhat shockingly, that nature is equally indifferent to species, and, probably, even to life on earth itself. Shocking? Surprising, certainly, and yet the conclusion is of a piece with all that came before. Nature is not benevolent, he has said all along. Nature is indifferent. So why would nature care about the survival of a planet?

Individual, type, and species, all shall pass away; and the globe itself become as desert sand blown hither and yon through space.

Van Dyke acknowledges that such a “destiny,” as he calls it, seems “harsh” to us, but he sees purpose even in the eventual destruction of our planet, as he sees it in the “waste” of the arid desert — 

…not because they develop character …, but simply because they are beautiful in themselves and good to look upon whether they be life or death.

Would I use those words? Destiny? Purpose? Destinies and purposes seem at odds with indifference, and I can’t help wondering how a mountain would remain beautiful with no one to behold it. — Of course, without senses and minds to apprehend and appreciate desert and mountains, the question of beauty would never arise. So here we are. 

Yes! Here we are, me here and you wherever you are! And aren’t we the lucky ones, though, to be alive at all, “to dance on the green in the sunlight for an hour” on our transit “from the sweetgrass to the packinghouse”? 

Grand Marais; Seed Time; Mark Twain; Reading and Gender

Grand Marais, Michigan

Yes, it’s another day of potpourri rather than an extended theme, and I’ll open with the news that Grand Marais, Michigan, our favorite little town in the Upper Peninsula, is the winner of a Reader’s Digest contest in which anyone could vote, and anyone could vote any number of times. Given that latitude and the monetary incentive, little Grand Marais turned up the heat and beat the drums and managed to accumulate 1,281,724 votes--not bad for a town with a population of 350, eh? The good news is that the town will receive $40,000 for the civic project of their choice. The not-quite-as-good news is that estimated costs for needed work on the harbor run into the millions. Anyone have grant money available for a good Up North cause? Harbors of refuge are few and far between on Lake Superior. A book on Grand Marais published by Arcadia in their “Images of America” service is available at Dog Ears Books, for those who want to explore from the comfort of an easy chair until snowmobile season gives way to black fly season. GM, you know I’m teasing! You know I love you dearly!


Seeds of Dreams

Indeed, it is that time of year, the time when a northern gardener’s thoughts turn to spring and the planting of this year’s garden. It will be many weeks until the soil is clear of snow and ready to be turned, and I never plant anything “tender,” such as tomato plants, outside until Memorial Day, no matter how warm the weather in May, but gardens are made as much of faith and hope as of sweat and toil, and before the time for hard labor arrives it’s glorious to revel in seed catalogs like these gorgeous beauties!

When I take a break from the catalogs, I turn to books, and one I’m discovering for the first time this year (a “classic” in its field, I’m told by those who are way ahead of me) is Suzanne Ashworth’s Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners. General chapters begin the book: “Botanical Classifications”; “Pollination and Flower Structure”; “Maintaining Varietal Purity”; “Seed Cleaning Methods”; and “Seed Storage Techniques.” I should say, perhaps, though the subtitle already said as much, that this book is not a technical treatise for botanists but is a truly practical guide. Where in your home will you find a spot that provides “constant warmth at a specific temperature”? Ashworth suggests the top of a refrigerator, warning against trying to germinate seeds from the Solanaceae family (tomatoes, eggplants, peppers) near a gas stove or water heater, as natural gas can inhibit germination. Who would have known or guessed that? Germination rates over years of storage for different vegetable seeds is another example of a handy tip. For example, half of the onion seeds you save, if properly dried and stored, will be viable two years later.

The bulk of the pages of Seed to Seed deal not with generalities but with specifics—families and species of vegetables, the families arranged alphabetically, beginning with Amaryllidaceae, the onions, leeks and chives, and proceeding through Valerianaceae, Indian corn salad, with all your common favorites in between and a few you might never have tried before. For instance, I’m keen on attempting to grow okra this year (“Okra seeds will maintain 50% germination for five years when stored under ideal conditions”), and while I knew the plant came from West Africa, I am surprised and oddly delighted to see that it is a member of the Malvacea family, a relative of the humble and lovely old-fashioned farm hollyhock.

Supplementing my garden, whatever I end up planting and growing, will be the summer farm market in Northport, and a book to help me with new ideas for the tables will be Fast, Fresh & Green: More than 90 Delicious Recipes for Veggie Lovers, by Susie Middleton. Oh, boy, sweet potato fries!!!

Mark Twain’s Meanderings

First, my confession: I’m not a huge fan of Mark Twain. When I finally got around to reading Huckleberry Finn, I was astounded and dismayed by the last few chapters of the book and the way the whole story fell apart. It reminded me of movies where the people making them started with a good idea and then didn’t know how to wrap it up. I mentioned here in the blog a while back that David and I were reading Life on the Mississippi at bedtime. For quite a while we were thoroughly engrossed and entertained; disappointment came when the narrative (to use the word loosely) jumped a large chunk of years, skipping from the author’s days as a pilot to a later pleasure trip he made down the river with a friend. Those later chapters weren’t nearly as good as the ones that had gone before.

Now a review by Andrew Delbanco in the New York Review of Books of the new Twain autobiography (the first of three volumes came out this winter) confirms my feeling about Twain’s writing, while offering the reviewer’s positive assessment of what he calls “incoherence” in Twain’s books. Delbanco quotes from a 1895 essay by Twain, “How to Tell a Story,” in which the author admits (boasts?) that “to string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and purposeless way” is his way of going about the task. Well, that explains that, doesn’t it? (Does it?)

I was particularly struck by Twain’s complaints about writing, as opposed to talking, which was his real talent. Another passage quoting the famous story-teller was this:

“With pen in the hand,” he said, “the narrative stream is a canal: it moves slowly, smoothly, decorously, sleepily, it has no blemish except that it is all blemish. It is a little too literary, too prim, too nice.”

What would Mark Twain have to say about writing on a laptop computer, with AutoFormat and spelling and grammar checking programs second-guessing the writer at every turn, all this in addition to the neatness of typeface on a screen, which seems to shout at the writer to produce finished, blemish-free prose or poetry? On the other hand, the speed of typing on a keyboard (as evidenced by sloppy and/or fiery, spontaneous e-mails from friends who hit “Send” in the heat of emotion without saving to a “Draft” folder for later, calmer revision) would seem to bring writing closer to speech, and thus closer to the “wandering and purposeless” style, the unpolished spontaneity favored by Twain.

So here’s one question for today: Is the computer keyboard or the yellow pad and pen more likely to prime the writing pump and make a story flow?

Did Reading Change Her Life? Yours? Mine?

Going through boxes under my desk at home (same place I found the treasure box of postcards), I ran across a book loaned to me by a friend with a “Please return” Post-It note inside. The book was How Reading Changed My Life, by Anna Quindlen. It’s a very small book, and I enjoyed reading it but commented to David that I didn’t see how reading had changed the author’s life at all: She began as a reader and has remained a reader, to the extent that she prefers reading to all other activities, including travel and outdoor recreation. (Hmmm, always? I’m a book-lover but can’t go that far.) What I want to get into today, however briefly, is Quindlen’s speculation that women read differently from men, men for information and women for “connection,” and this, she thinks, explains why so many women are in book clubs, while so few men are. Do women more often than men share books with friends? Is reading more often part of a basis for friendship between women than it is constitutive of friendship between men? My own experience is that we readers, male or female, often form relationships with other readers, and these relationships often involve the sharing of books, but I don’t see the gender difference Quindlen finds. How do you see it? Sarah awaits your comments!