STICKING YOUR NOSE OUT – The Bipolar Buckthorn

One hot, steamy summer many years ago I kept getting wafts of some delicious floral fragrance at the back door of my Southeast Minneapolis home. I noticed it happened only on sunny afternoons and only when the breeze was coming from the west. But the only plants of any kind nearby were a row of scraggly old buckthorn trees (a species targeted for eradication by environmentalists for its inability to play nice with other, more genteel plants).

Distilled in the warm, moist air, thousands of those tiny hints of scent were joining, concentrating to give the motley grove its surprisingly intense output.

I had to get to the bottom of this. At first, there didn't appear to be any flowers on the buckthorn. Sure enough though, on very close inspection, I found its lower branches thinly clustered with barely visible, mostly green blossoms. Even when I put my nose right against one of the bracts, I detected only the faintest smell, but it was the right smell. Together, distilled in the warm, moist air, thousands of those tiny whispers of scent were concentrating to give the motley grove its surprisingly intense output.

Common buckthorn, with its reticent flowers

I'd almost forgotten about buckthorn until last summer. Walking along the beautiful, high wooded banks of the Mississippi near our home, I noticed a familiar smell. Again, I had to look very closely, but there they were: thousands of those despised buckthorn bushes with their presumptuous blooms, crowding out the sumac and honeysuckle. Warm them for a while in the sun on a south-facing slope, add a little breeze as the heat rises up the bank from the river, and you have the recipe for that most delicious odor. It’s almost enough to make one forgive the plant for its poor manners.

Buckthorn is just one of a universe of botanical aromas out there waiting to be discovered. If you want to see for yourself, here’s a simple exercise. Every time you notice a plant—anything from a weed to a tree—with anything on its branches besides leaves, seeds or berries, see if it might be a flower. Check out every blossom you see and—you guessed it—smell it. Even if it seems too common to be interesting, even if it looks like it couldn’t possibly have a smell, many will surprise you.

AS THE WORM TURNS – Close Encounters of the Dirt Kind

Those of you who follow my work here or on my sporadic travel blog, El Viajero Contento, know I'm fascinated by how so many of life's wonders lie hidden to first glances, and how finding them takes an extra measure of curiosity, creativity and patience.

I often think of how much I learned about that kind of discovery from my maternal grandfather.

SPARKS OF INTEREST
It was Grandpa Janssen who let me sharpen his darts on the hand-powered grinding wheel in his garage. When he saw how intrigued I was with the shower of sparks, he indulged my fascination by asking me to sharpen stuff that didn't even need sharpening, like scraps of steel rod or big five-penny nails. He's the one who showed me how ants feed on the nectar that oozes from peony buds. He would pull apart a bleeding heart flower and use the various parts—resembling two pink rabbits, two white slippers, a dagger and, of course, the heart—to illustrate a little fairy tale.

But of all the wonders Grandpa helped me experience, the one that seems to best exemplify the process of discovery was hunting for night crawlers.

We were going fishing one day and needed live bait. Grandpa had a garden, so I figured it would be easy; just give me a spade and an old coffee can and let me dig around for some worms. Now maybe he feared what I'd do to his garden, or perhaps he just needed to keep me occupied for a while, but he had another plan. You can imagine how mystified I was when he said that, instead of a shovel, we'd use a hose.

I imagined the green blades and brown thatch as a Lilliputian rain forest, undergoing its annual inundation by a Lilliputian Amazon.

It was an exercise not just in discovery, but also its companions, patience and faith. Grandpa turned on a gradual flow of water and brought the business end of the hose to the middle of the small back yard where he set it down on the grass. He told me to sit down, watch and listen, and then went into the house.

SOIL SEARCHING
A ten-year-old boy doesn't have much of an attention span. It seemed like an hour before anything happened. To pass the time, I imagined the green blades and brown thatch as a Lilliputian rain forest, undergoing its annual inundation by a Lilliputian Amazon. I was thinking of how all the critters—the ants, sow bugs, centipedes and beetles—were either adapting to or fleeing the deluge.

Suddenly bubbles started popping up through the flood. Then there was a different kind of movement. At first I barely noticed it through the grass and the bright reflection of sky and clouds on the water, but night crawlers were emerging from the soil, with their distinctive "two steps forward one step back" slithering motion.

 

Parts of their mauve- to putty-colored bodies glistening with iridescent highlights of blue and red. 

Besides the now-obvious fact that these guys could drown, I learned a lot about night crawlers that day. They're fast; if you try for one before it's about two thirds of the way out of its hole, it'll duck back in before you get a grip. They're strong and brave; sometimes one will hold on so tight that it breaks in half before letting go. And they're colorful, some parts of their mauve- to putty-colored bodies glistening with iridescent highlights of blue and red.

I've never looked at night crawlers the same way since. Despite my admiration, though, I still use them for bait. How can someone who professes reverence for all of life do such a thing? I'm afraid that's a worm of a different color.

BLACK AND WHITE AND BLUE

(This reflection was originally posted on ZihuaRob's Zihuatanejo-Ixtapa Message Board 3/10/11. It's a reminder to those who've adopted this lovely Mexican Pacific coastal resort area as their home or second home not to take for granted the many sensory blessings they enjoy.)

We've been back home a week now, and I'm still wrestling with the re-adjustment back to the "real world."

Our time in Zihuatanejo is pretty idealized. No schedules, few stresses, permission to indulge a bit, chances to grow in new ways. But every time we come home, those freedoms get neatly slotted back into our usual routines and expectations; the casual friendships of vacation give way to the true, hard-won kind; and before we know it, life's more or less back to normal.

Nine out of ten Minnesotans not only paint their houses white, gray or tan, but wear the darkest, least colorful clothing ever made.

Still, there's a sort of ache that lingers. At first, I thought it was just a matter of missing that ideal vacation lifestyle. But the more I reflected on it, the more I realized it's a hunger pang. Hunger for the sights, sounds, smells and touch of a place that, for those precious few weeks every year, nourishes my senses in ways few other places can. More than anything, I'm craving the color.

Don't get me wrong; I love home. There's no place I'd rather live. But, as we broke through the overcast on our approach to MSP last Thursday, I could swear the passengers let out a subtle, collective gasp as the flat, grayscale landscape faded into view. Nothing but whites, grays and…even the "evergreens" looked black.

In the week since, a few more inches of snow have fallen atop the 80 we've already had; the sun has all but refused to shine; and I'm more aware than ever that nine out of ten Minnesotans not only paint their houses white, gray or tan, but wear the darkest, least colorful clothing ever made. Alas, even our skin dares no color.

As a self-identified Mexican in a former life, I'm starving!

But we Minnesotans are, if nothing else, long-suffering. As we do every year, we'll make it through to spring, when we once again partake of our own fleeting feast of color. Until then, here I sit, a glutton for color, stuck somewhere between memory and hope.

So, you lucky vacationers, you expats and especially you native Zihuatanejenses, be aware of the sensory banquet spread out before you every day. Savor the colors of nature and culture. And be grateful you're not as black and white and blue as I.

FACE IN THE ROCK – Hard Truths

The Old Man of the Dalles

In the Dalles, the scenic gorge of Minnesota's St. Croix River at Taylor's Falls, the inscrutable Old Man of the Dalles contemplates that stretch of the river as he has for 10,000 years. I wonder who first recognized him peering out of the gray basalt. Was it the Ojibwe or Dakota, for whom the distinction between man and Nature was a fine one? Was it European settlers, who may have craved any sign of humanity in such unfamiliar, unforgiving surroundings? Or might it have been just an enterprising tour boat operator, at the turn of the 20th century, looking for one more highlight to capture tourists' imaginations?

We have searched for our own reflections in Nature since we were little more than just another wild animal (one much lower on the food chain). Perhaps it was among the first indications of our impatience with that position that we could imagine seeing ourselves in rocks, trees and clouds. As human cultures advanced, so did the reach of our imagination—we were then seeing ourselves and our fates traced in the stars, those most unconvincing of connect-the-dots renderings.

Does imagining ourselves or our God reflected in Nature 
somehow bestow immortality on us as the notion of heaven does?

Native Americans and other animist peoples may have gotten it closer to right, believing not just their likenesses, but their spirits, are entwined with Nature (in both living and inanimate things). I find much to be desired in this theology. What could be more reassuring—not to mention convenient—than finding your God reflected in everything you see, all the time? I don't know about you, but to me that beats waiting till Sunday and praying to a book, a statue or a string of beads. I find both comfort and hope in my belief that we, our fellow organisms and everything else—rocks, clouds, fire and water—are all connected, all part of the same magnificent plan.

While this view of what's holy feels right for me, it still raises many questions. Have we always understood how tenuous our hold is on life? Does imagining ourselves or our God reflected in Nature somehow bestow immortality on us as the notion of heaven does? Does how we picture God influence the way we treat our fellow seekers and our natural environment?

Only by God's being unimaginable can I begin 
to understand His power.

All I know is that seeing faces or forms in the clouds is not a profound experience for me. While I respect the importance of these images to my ancient ancestors, I think my spiritual reach is actually limited by such amusements. I guess I find holiness in things that don't look like me. It's precisely because they don't look like me that they so fill me with wonder. And only by God's being unimaginable can I begin to understand His power.

HOW TO BE IN THE MOMENT – 101 Little Tips

TIP #62  

Next time you hand wash some dishes, pay attention to how the water, the soap suds and the dishes feel.

Snapshots from Zihua. - A Few that Didn't Make the Cut

Snapshots from Zihuatanejo - The Colors of Death

The ghost of a young tuna haunts a few feet of Playa La Ropa sand; the camera lens ventures closer than human hands or feet dare.

What was the last thing this creature set lucid eyes on? The glint of a fisherman's knife? Or worse, the dull blade of suffocation?

There's beauty here, even in death. Air tarnishes life's quicksilver gleam to dull gray; but this head, returned to the sea, has steeped to translucent shades of pink and almost lavender.

And that one wide, worried eye still pleads—as if I could spare it those final, terrible sights. Could it be that cold stare that's kept these remains from hungry mouths and beaks, in a realm where nothing is supposed to go to waste?