"Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered Earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk. I am interested in the way that a man looks at a given landscape and takes possession of it in his blood and brain. For this happens, I am certain, in the ordinary motion of life." N. Scott Momaday, "An Ethic of the Earth" in Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril
New Year's Day, 2011. The old year had ended with me being shut up alone in my house with a racking cough. My husband spent the weekend with friends ice fishing at Brown's Lake. It was -10 degrees in the daytime, so I didn't feel too awfully sad at being stuck by the fire with a cup of tea and a good book. My oldest son was cross-country skiing into a cabin in Idaho with his buddies. I was much more jealous of him. And my youngest son was planning a few nights at Lochsa Lodge, deep in the Lolo National Forest with his girlfriend. He called asking to borrow my snowshoes. I have admit I was feeling a bit put out--to drag myself out into the bitter cold--scrape three days of ice and snow off the truck, and drive the thirty minutes to his house to deliver the snowshoes-- my Christmas present I hadn't even gotten to really use.
The roads were icy so I took the main route through town, past the ever packed Walmart parking lot, the box-stores, jockeying my way through the weekend traffic and the ubiquitous tailgaters who set my teeth on edge. By the time I started back home it was getting on toward sunset and a big black diesel pickup rode my bumper for more than ten miles. The snow was bermed on the side of the road so I couldn't pull over to let him pass and no matter how much I slowed he wouldn't go around. I tried flashing my brake lights a few times, but he wouldn't back off. I tried speeding up, but then so did he. My eyes flicked back and forth between the edge of the highway, praying no deer would leap out in front of me and my rear view mirror, where each time I glared at him he was talking on his cell phone.
I kept up an endless tirade about cell phones, technology, people in gas-guzzling vehicles, Californians (I was sure he must have been a transplant, used to driving the snow-less California freeways), the ever increasing traffic, urban sprawl, shrinking wildlands and global warming ( I was also sure he was one of the deniers)
In spite of the icy roads, I decided at the last minute to take the back road home and sure enough, as I pulled into the turn lane, at long last he passed. My tirade continued though, as I negotiated the two 90 degree turns on the slippery road and then...
I came around the corner and for the first time looked up--past the road in front of me. I saw the mountains. The sun had slipped behind Blue Mountain to the west and all the snow covered hills that surround our valley--to the north, to the east and to the south were suffused in the brilliant pink light of alpenglow. I have never seen anything like it. Alpenglow ( from the German: Alpengluhen) happens when the sun is just below the horizon. The light reflects off airborne snow, water, or ice particles low in the atmosphere. And this was the perfect combination of dusk, temperature and ice crystals in the air. I pulled over, grabbed my camera and began snapping pictures like crazy. All I could think is that I'd almost missed this. Almost missed it because I had been holed up in my house for days. Almost missed it because I had been all wrapped up in my anger at the other driver and the general degradation of the world. Almost missed it because I was feeling sorry for myself that I didn't get to go someplace special for New Years like everyone else.
Yet here was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen right in my own backyard, right there on the hills I see every day. As the twilight deepened, the pink glow crawled up to the top of the peaks and finally the hills turned gray blue with shadow. But it was still light enough on the rest of the drive to see the bald eagles in the snags, the heron fishing on the rocky sand bar in the river and the wild turkeys scrabbling up the hillside.
I didn't really need to go someplace "special." All I needed was to pay attention to where I was. That's when I decided to "give myself up to a particular landscape in (my) experience, to look at it from as many angles as (I) can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it."
And so begins this blog--a combination of a commonplace book where I can keep the snippets of my current reading that influence the way I respond to the world and inspire me, and a naturalist's journal where I can record my observations and discoveries in my own"particular landscape," my backwoods and beyond.
