To the Trees I've Loved

TO THE TREE in my best friend’s front yard, I met you when I was just five years old, back when “climbing tree” was not just a type of tree, but the best kind: thank you for supporting me in my youth, for always having a branch I could hold on to, for never letting me fall. I have no idea how tall you actually are, but back then, you were the tallest I could ever be. You let me reach new heights without fear, though maybe I should’ve been afraid. That’s what my mother said, anyway. Thanks to you, I’m still not afraid of heights. (I am afraid of falling, however.)

To the trees in woods behind my dad’s farm house, who I grew up with through elementary school, middle school, and high school and who I still visit to this day, thank you for always being there for me, for being my playground and my refuge. Thank you for teaching me how to blaze my own trail; from it, I learned to follow my own path. Thank you for encouraging my adventurous spirit, as I still explore the world the way I once explored you. Thank you for the memories with my father, as the ones spent with the both of you together are the best ones. And thank you for providing my family the resources it needed to keep warm through the Michigan winters. You took care of us even after you’d fallen to the ground, providers through and through.

To the Maple tree in my mother’s front yard, I miss the dramatic way your leaves would change color every autumn. We don’t have that where I’m at now. And I miss the way my mother would decorate you for Christmas every winter; it wasn’t really her, she’d have a neighbor boy come over and string the lights around because your branches were always too tall. But your Christmas spirit made her happy and spread across others like dominoes. I know you’ve got a new family now, and I hope it’s taking care of you and that crabapple tree I bought for my grandma after she passed away. I still think of you all the time and wonder how you’re doing.

To the trees in the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park, I know I only met you briefly in passing and you probably don’t remember me, but you were beautiful, straight out of a movie or another world. I know I’d fallen for a lot of trees in my days — I fall for a new one just about every day — but that doesn’t make our encounter any less memorable. I’d never seen anything like you before, and I think I’ll remember you forever. I was on a road trip, an adult just passing through, but you made me feel like Christopher Robins and Leslie Burke and the other heroes of my youth. You proved to me once and for all that the seeing the world can be as much about seeing its trees, habitats and natural wonders as it can be about seeing its cities and its people.

To the other trees in my life, I love you, too. Sorry I can’t list you all. But you’re all beautiful and you’ve all been there for me when I’ve needed you. You’ve all lifted my spirits when I was feeling down, given me a space to breathe deeply and cleanly when I was feeling overwhelmed, and provided me with inspiration or clarity. You’ve all kept me cooler in the summer than I should have been and happier than I would have been without you. Every day, you show me how to live and how to be: Strong, sturdy, resilient, steady, giving, cooperative. So, today and every day, I thank you. Happy National Arbor Day!

— Originally published via Local Plant Source.

The Day Everyone in the World Should Celebrate, Because We All Live Here

April 22 marked the 47th time mankind celebrated Earth Day, our greatest and truest holiday. But the truth is, Earth Day must be every day. Every day is a day that everyone in the world — regardless of religion, ethnicity, nationality, age, gender or any other division — can celebrate and aid the one thing that brings us all together, that we all have in common: We all live here.

Here, on this planet, on this Earth, with its vast and mysterious oceans, beautiful mountain ranges, lush forests, bountiful farmlands, important minerals, diverse wildlife and complicated ecosystems. We live here.

No matter who we are, where we are from, what our troubles are, what our dreams are: This is our home. It is the backdrop to every memory we’ve ever had, the mother to every person we’ve ever loved, the foundation for every step we’ve ever taken. We all have a stake in this holiday, a pony in this race. It’s all we got right now. We need it, and we need to maintain it. We need to improve it. We need to cherish it.

Sometimes I think we forget that. We think our food comes from stores and our gasoline comes from stations and our water from a faucet. No, no and no. We take it for granted, we believe it will fix itself. We think it’s not our job, it’s not our expertise. We pay attention only to the piece that’s right in front of us and don’t notice parts that are suffering. We think things will be better tomorrow, but the only day that will ever exist is today.

Earth needs to be celebrated, but even more so, it needs to be aided. There are now 7.4 billion people on this planet; at the current population growth rate, there will be 8 billion of us by 2024 — 75 million babies born a year. Together, we are responsible for the destruction of 48 football fields worth of forest every single minute — more than 46,000 square miles each year, or 15 billion trees. That’s devastating, especially when it takes 96 treesto absorb one person’s yearly CO2 output; the loss of 15 billion trees is the equivalent to more than 156 million additional people. The increasing CO2 in our atmosphere is already making our planet warmer and our weather more and more erratic, extreme and destructive. To make up for the population growth and deforestation and save the Earth for our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, we should be planting 22 billion trees each year. Thats billion, with a B. 

Thanks to habitat loss, pollution, illegal poaching and other factors, the planet is also losing its wildlife at stunning rates. Historically, Earth has lost just 2 out of 10,000 vertebrate species every 100 years. But in the last 116 years, Earth has lost 69 mammal species and 400 other vertebrate species. That’s out of 64,000 vertebrate species— meaning we should have lost somewhere between 9 and 13 vertebrate species in that time period. Not 469.

Without our intervention, the Earth almost seems like it’s trying to save itself — to our detriment. Between 1994 and 2013, natural disasters affected an average of 218 million people across the world each year. More than 1 million people — 68,000 per year — died as a result of 6,873 natural disasters. More and more of those disasters are climate-related. Earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and drought have affected more than 25 percent of the global population in the last 20 years. If we haven’t felt the affects of these disasters ourselves, we know many others who have.  

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Illustration by Maria Sprow

The good news is that the Earth is still stunning. America has 59 national parks for us all to enjoy, and they encompass more than 47 million acres of protected land. It’s a soulful journey to look through the rock formations of Arches National Park and see the millions of years of evolution and erosion, of wind and water, that have shaped the area, or to visit the unique and colorful geothermal features of Yellowstone National Park, or to see the thousands and thousands of stars visible in Big Bend National Park. There are more than 700 significant botanical gardens and arboretums across the United States. Our gardens and arboretums aren’t just places for inspiration and retreat; they are the love letters we write to Earth.

The other good news is that we are understanding the Earth and its resources in new and exciting ways. We are combining infrastructure and nature to offset damage from natural disasters, creating cleaner and more efficient energy production methods, and reconnecting our health with our environment. Our industry is central to this new understanding and its uses in creating happier living and working spaces. We’re proud to work in an industry that works to improve and green our cities, public spaces, commercial districts, businesses, neighborhoods and homes.

So that brings us back to how to celebrate Earth Day every day — including today. What can you do? Bike or walk to work. Clean up a park. Plan a locally-sourced vegetarian dinner. Donate to an environmental cause. Upcycle your neighbor’s unwanted furniture. Xeriscape a section of your yard. Plant some vegetables. Purchase that solar-powered charging device. Attend an Earth Day festival or lecture. Collect unwanted materials for a community craft project. Write a letter to your local representative. Share a photo and story of your favorite place. Visit a botanical garden. The possibiities and opportunties for celebrating the Earth are nearly endless. 

— Originally published via Local Plant Source

Life and Death and the Absurdity of Nothingness in 10 Minutes of Time

My cousin died a few weeks ago. He was 27. His name was Jacob. I hadn't seen him in many, many years, and we weren't really close because I'm not close to many people, but we grew up together as much as I grew up with anyone in my family and I always thought I'd see him again. I think we probably had a lot in common and sometimes when you have too much in common with someone, your commonalities keep you apart. We both left home in search of bigger worlds. I think we were both drifters, to an extent. We're both creative. Both introverts. But he was just moreso than me; me magnified times ten. He moved to New York to pursue his dreams of becoming a musician and when that didn't work out, he moved to the remote Toledo District of Belize and lived as a sea fisherman and drum teacher. He'd been teaching at the Maroon Creole Drum School, which seems like a pretty good thing to be doing, and riding his bike somewhere when a driver hit him with their car. He died instantly, just like that.

His mom worried about him being so far away, in a place so remote, but I admired him for that, for having the balls it takes to live life according to your own rules and your own dreams and to shun the uncertainty and doubt that must have crept in there when it came time to leave the things he'd known, the people he'd known, the life he'd known. It might not be heroic, but it's courageous. 

I've had a lot of views on life and death in my lifetime. They change sometimes, rippling like water. I grew up Catholic, believing in Heaven and Hell and Jesus saving us from our sins, and I believed that for a long time, even when I stopped going to church in college and even as my political and social beliefs and my interpretation of scripture carried me further and further from organized religion. But one day I just woke up and realized those beliefs didn't make any sense to me anymore. They were too limiting. Too inconsistent. Too corrupted. An all-powerful judge who creates Heaven and Earth and all its creatures but refuses to show himself afterward and prefers instead to judge who is good and who is evil in a world where nothing is fair, where good and evil — with the exception of extreme cases — are just perspectives and perception? 

Now I don't believe in Heaven and Hell, but I don't believe in Death, either. There is absolutely no evidence of a nothingness, no evidence of Death.

I believe in cycles. I believe in rebirth and resurrection. I believe we live to become more connected in death. We live to die. Again and again and again. Everywhere around us the things that live and die live again. Death brings new life. We are all energy. I believe in something I'll say is a Higher Power, a single connectedness, something that we all feel when we die and something that we all leave to live because we must. And I don't mean we as in the people we, as in humanity we, but we as in every living thing, here and elsewhere.

A friend of mine told me once that he preferred to believe in the "nothing" version of death because it places more significance, more importance, on this life if there is only one shot at it, if this is all we get. But I think life is significant no matter what it winds up being, whether it's the only chance we'll ever have to experience this somethingness in the universe that is within the grasps of our senses or whether it's just four levels up from being subatomic in a world of infinite levels where the subatomic and atomic know each other in the way that we wish we could know our own atoms and our own stars. Is that weird? 

Death and time are tied. How do you have death without time? We don't understand or comprehend either one. We think we do. We perceive that we do. But there is so much more in this world than what we perceive. At least we have some theory to time. At least we are beginning to understand it doesn't exist the way we think it does.

Time is a library of infinite pages, of every book ever written or that ever could be written, every sentence ever spoken or that could be spoken, every feeling ever felt or that could be felt. We read time in a line, character by character, word by word, paragraph by paragraph, chapter by chapter, but time is not a book and it does not have to be read in a line. It can be read by jumping from this word on page 31 of this book to that word on page 190192 of that book, and that, too would be a story of time. Time is not fate. Time is every possible past and every possible future and every possibility strung together in story, in life.

Maybe. 

That brings us back to death, and the grief we feel and the fears we have because of it. The things we do to avoid it. The heartache that becomes us when we lose someone we love. The way we might run to it as a way out when we can't go on living, when we haven't been living. The need to create this idea of nothingness.

The idea that nothingness can exist in a universe where everything can be broken down into smaller and smaller and smaller particles and larger and larger and larger and larger systems doesn't make any sense. It's close-minded and absurd.

So I'll miss you, Jake. I'm sorry we weren't closer, that I didn't get to know you better, that I always believed in tomorrow and in the next time. I'm sad you didn't get to live more of your dreams in this life. I think of the opportunities we missed to connect with each other, though I can't regret who we both are and the choices we made. We were family and I believe we both understand what that means, what it meant. I'm still grieving the end of your life, how a light can shine so brightly and be gone so suddenly. But I will not grieve your death. I'll be there, too, eventually. 

The Bird Watchers and Watching Snails

I was riding my bike along the boardwalk of Austin's hike and bike the other day and came across this scene, the turtles all lined up on top of each other, looking at the heron, the heron looking like it was leading a team meeting or giving a performance of some kind. It's sometimes amazing to watch species interact, especially species from such different perspectives as birds and turtles. But here they are, just hanging out together. What story would you tell about what they are doing? Are they all just relaxing together? Are they telling stories through a common language we can't understand, body language or telepathy? Do turtles know what a bird's song means, the way English speakers learn Spanish? Or are the turtles protecting something, some food or some young or some territory? I took an animal studies course in college but wish I could have studied it more. I guess that's kind of what nature photography is, though. I've sat and taken photographs of a snail eating a leaf for an hour, not realizing until I played the images back just how animated and adorable it was. Now I'd suggest watching a snail eat to anyone.

Sculpture Falls: Thoughts on Life and Existence

"May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.” 

― Rainer Maria Rilke

Sculpture Falls sits along the Austin greenbelt between the Hill of Life Trail and Mopac. It's often pretty crowded, especially when there's water along the creek in the warmer months, but there are times you can catch it at a peaceful moment to rest or soak your feet and think about life and what it means to be alive.

What does it mean to be alive? To be here, witnessing. What does it mean to be dead? To be gone. To be not here. These are things we don't understand but believe we do. Heaven and hell, Paradise and Purgatory, nothingness and oblivion. There are only myths and legends here. 

But the river is as here as I am and the rock is more here than I can ever be. We're taught that the rock and the river aren't alive, but does that mean they are dead? No. So there's something else. And that means something.

The difference between living and existing. Perhaps we got the shorter end of the stick. Perhaps existing as the rock does and the as river does is a better form of living. The rock lives life on a larger scale, aging and changing forms and evolving over millions of years. It might not be spritely, lively or brisk, but it is strong, determined and community-oriented. A rock never leaves its home unless forced to, and it usually goes where it goes with all its friends and neighbors and settles in again. The river is a collective ecosystem sustaining life, the same as we are, the same as all living things are, only at a higher level. 

Perhaps the rock and the river aren't any less alive than we are, they are just alive differently than we are. They are nature. And we should respect nature — respect it as something sacred, as something greater than we are. To respect it is to not only stop actively hurting it but to actually take care of it, to worship it: To try to understand it, to listen to what it's telling us. We need to learn from its example, not disregard it as just a rock or just a river. 

Alive:

1. Having life, in opposition to dead; living; being in a state in which the organs perform their functions; as, an animal or a plant which is alive.

2. In a state of action; in force or operation; unextinguished; unexpired; existent; as, to keep the fire alive; to keep the affections alive.

3. Exhibiting the activity and motion of many living beings; swarming; thronged. 

4. Sprightly; lively; brisk.

5. Having susceptibility; easily impressed; having lively feelings, as opposed to apathy; sensitive. Tremblingly alive to natures laws. (Falconer)

6. Of all living (by way of emphasis). Northumberland was the proudest man alive. (Clarendon)"

Favorite First Lines

The hardest thing is always the beginning. That's what they say, right? Taking that first step, pushing past those initial fears and constraits and just moving. And I'm in so many beginnings right now. There's the beginning of rebuilding my home. The beginning of replacing my things. The beginning of my second career. The beginning of putting myself "out there." The beginning of whatever comes after limbo. 

There's this elephant in my head. It grows bigger and bigger, gets louder and louder, until it IS the room and it's all I can hear and I hear so much of it that I can only describe it as a silence so loud it both burns and freezes. I have to write about it but I don't know how. How to begin, how to proceed, how to be. Is negativity okay when it's true or should I force myself into a false positivity in the hopes it becomes true later, that the writing of it is the beginning of it? 

I have to write about it, sooner or later, because I'm stuck in the writing of it the same way I'm stuck in the reality of it and to be stuck is to be dead. And I have to write about it, because it's getting in the way. I started this blog awhile ago stating that I was embarking on a creative journey, and I have, but I haven't actually written much about it, shared much of it, because this elephant is here, and it has fangs. This void and dysfuction. This four-letter word with teeth. H-O-M-E.

I think a lot about the beginnings of things. Beginnings are impossible to pinpoint. Beginnings are an abstract concept created by human beings out of necessity because we're trying to understand a timelineless world through the lens of time. When did this thing begin? When did this elephant get there? I just go further and further back into time until everything is beginning and then wonder, is that the beginning? There's this concept called the Event Horizon, which is the beginning and the end based on what we know. But of course there must be something beyond that. Is it the beginning? 

Beginnings are not points in time. Beginnings are a construct of fiction, of the narrative. Where and when a story begins doesn't matter. It's how it begins that really matters. Beginnings are feelings and catalysts, inspirations and motivations. It's the first line that grabs you or disappoints you, that makes you feel, that causes you to open up or close down. It's that first line that drives you forward, into the text, into the characters and the story, that says, 'buckle up, you're going for a ride.'

So here are some of my favorite opening lines, in random order. Where do they take you? What are your favorite opening lines? What opening lines have grabbed you, and what stories did they lead you to?

1. "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it,if you want to know the truth."  — The Catcher in the Rye. 

2. "It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not." — City of Glass.

3. "124 was spiteful." — Beloved.

4. "Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu." — Waiting.

5. "The sky above the port was the color of television,tuned to a dead channel." — Nueromancer.

6. "All this happened, more or less." — Slaughterhouse-Five.

7. "We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall." — Tracks.

8. "When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon." — The Last Good Kiss.

9. “Dear Anyone Who Finds This, Do not blame the drugs.” — Cruddy.

10. "The war in Zagreb began over a pack of cigarettes." — Girl At War.

11. "I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won’t bother to talk about, except it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling thateverything was dead." — On the Road.

2. "If you're reading this on a screen, fuck off. I'll only talk if I'm gripped with both hands." — Book of Numbers.

13. "I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.” — Kindred.

4. "If this typewriter can’t do it, then f*** it, it can’t be done.” — Still Life with Woodpeckers.

15. "All stories are love stories.” — Eureka Street.

16. "I keep the Beast running, I keep the 100 low lead on tap, I foresee attacks. I am young enough, I am old enough. I used to love to fish for trout more than almost anything." — The Dog Stars.

17. "Gestures are all I have; sometimes they must be grand in nature." — The Art of Racing in the Rain.

8. "My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on Dec. 6, 1973." — The Lovely Bones.

19. "No matter how hard you try, you will never be able to grasp just how tiny, how spacially unassuming, is a proton." — A Short History of Nearly Everything.

20. “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.” — The Great Gatsby.

21. "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun." — Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

2. "Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensationif you’re dead." — A Certain Slant of Light.

23. "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." — The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. 

4. "There are dragons in the twins' vegetable garden." — A Wind in the Door.

25. "Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living." — 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Creative Exercise: Graffiti Wall

I recently visited the Hope Art Gallery, an outdoor graffiti park located at Baylor and 11th street in downtown Austin. I love this place so much and I don't get out there nearly enough. It's vibrant and lively, a beautiful place of ever-changing expression and freedom. The great thing about graffiti is that it's made for the moment and then it becomes something else in the next. It got me thinking: What would I paint on my wall? And what would you paint on yours?