A Nature Walk With My Son

Saturday was a beautiful day, and I desperately needed to spend some time outside.  With the weather as cold as it had been, and snow that just won’t melt, I have felt completely trapped in my house and feeling thus has made me terribly cranky.  I’ve wanted to go hiking, but the conditions just have not been very conducive for a walk in the woods, especially with a four year old.  But on Saturday, I had to go out, I had to do something fun and I very much wanted to go for a walk.  My spouse suggested a trip down to New Hope and Lambertville where we could walk along the canal.  It seemed like a good idea, so that is where we went.

As soon as we got to the canal, my son informed us that he was going to be the leader.  He insisted that we follow him, stepping exactly where he stepped.  My spouse was a little better at following directions than I was.  I tried. I really did.  The problem was I brought my camera and I kept getting distracted by things to take pictures of.  I stopped when I heard ducks splashing in the water or geese honking or when I noticed a cool leaf hanging off a plant located slightly off the path.  My constant stopping and shooting frustrated my son.  Every so often he would turn around to check on us, make sure we were doing what he wanted and if we were, he gave us a thumbs up.  If we had fallen behind or stepped out of line we – or rather I, since I seemed to be the only delinquent – got a thumbs down.  At one point my son pointed a finger at me and issued a reprimand, “Stop taking pictures.”  But how could I stop?  Taking pictures is almost like a reflex.  I see something cool and I have to try and capture it, even when no one else seems to see what I see.  Often, it appears to others that my camera is pointed at nothing.  My son, more than once, even asked, “What are you taking a picture of?”  Then he’d add, “It’s just a tree.” Or, “It’s just a duck.”  But that’s just it.  It isn’t just a tree or a duck or stone or leaf if you angle the lens properly or put yourself on a different plane.  Everything is ordinary if you chose to see it that way; everything is special if you are willing to bend and twist your mind, your eye or your lens. 

When my son’s level of frustration with me finally reached a degree of exasperation he scolded, “Mama, you are not listening. If I have to tell you one more time to follow me, I’m putting you in jail. You are a very bad caboose.”  In school, the last child on line is the caboose, and the job of the caboose is stay close to the rest of the train.  He doesn’t like to be the caboose, but he does do his job well when it is assigned to him.  Spotting some interesting leaves growing up the side of a tree, I disobeyed orders, raised my camera, and as my finger pressed down on the shutter a small hand reached up and pulled on my arm, “Okay, you are going to jail now.”  My son took my hand and gently escorted me to an invisible jail.  He was so cute, and since I was guilty how could I object. 

Despite my spell in jail, it turned out to be a wonderful day.  I got to spend the afternoon walking outside with my favorite little man and I captured a couple of decent pictures along the way.  

 

What Would It Look Like To Live At Peace With The Earth?

The theme in my church this Lenten season is reconciliation.  During each of the six weeks a different topic will be discussed and for each of those topics an artist will hang a banner in the church which depicts that topic.  The worship committee suggested that I design the banner for the first week which will explore the issue of reconciliation with our environment.  My question to consider while designing the banner was, “What would it look like to live at peace with the Earth?”  This question was then paired with a scripture verse (Genesis 1:26-31).  In essence, the banner was to be a reflection of scripture. 

Upon getting the assignment, I dusted off, then opened my Bible to the creation story. I read, “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it.  Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’”  (Genesis 1:28) I immediately saw a problem, a conflict between the question I was supposed to consider and my interpretation of the verse.  How could people live at peace with the earth when God had charged them to subdue it?  It didn’t seem possible.  My mind started to wander back to books I had read regarding Native Americans and their early encounters with the British in North America.  The Native Americans, in many ways, lived a peacefully with the earth.  They believed all living creatures contained a spirit and, even when animals were killed for food, prayers of thanks were always spoken to the animal.  Native Americans were not wasteful; they used all parts of the animal.  They were also aware that if they were not careful they could deplete necessary resources.  They treated the land respectfully, and in return the land ensured that they would survive season after season.  Then the British arrived with a completely different view of the earth and, citing the above passage from Genesis, the settlers informed the Native Americans that they were going about life incorrectly.  In order to live as God commanded, the Native Americans would need to raise livestock, cultivate the earth and give up their own spiritual beliefs, bowing down instead to the one true Christian God.  History books do a good job of illustrating how well that turned out – the Natives were slaughtered, paving the way for the Europeans to devastate the earth.  Hmmmm…no, I wasn’t going to get anywhere focusing on that segment of the scripture.

The other problem I had was a lack of cooperation from the weather.  I wanted to go out and take new pictures, but all the earth gave me to work with was snow and ice. Even though the weather warmed up, offering a few days above freezing, it wasn’t nearly enough warmth to melt all the snow, most of which is now black and completely unappealing.  

In the absence of being able to go out and shoot something new, I dug into my archives, stacking up old CDs burned with pictures from various places around the world, and flashdrives cluttered with travel photos. Combing through them, I traveled back in time, reliving a multitude of experiences and taking note of which places brought me a degree of peace – mountains I had climbed, people I had met, and beaches I had walked.  A landscape of what it might look like to live peacefully with the Earth started to form in my mind.  I returned to the scripture verses and this time I focused on a different sentence entirely, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31)  Yes, what God had made was more than good, it was beautiful.  The whole world was gorgeous, breathtaking.  And we are destroying it.  So that’s it, living peacefully with the earth means recognizing the beauty that surrounds us and striving to maintain that beauty so it will be around for future generations to enjoy. 

I revisited my pictures wanting to represent as many continents as possible.  Having never been to Antarctica, I had pictures from only six continents to work with and since my pictures from Australia predate my digital camera and are sitting in a closet at my parents’ house that knocked me down to five.  I chose the most stunning sunrise I have ever seen, a brilliant blend of oranges, reds and yellows in Patagonia, birds in Brazil, in forests which are rapidly being destroyed, the Swiss Alps, stretching towards the heavens and blanketed in a thick layer of pristine white snow, a volcanic lake on Mt. Kenya, a beach dotted with palm trees in Honduras, a boy riding a water buffalo in Vietnam, my son chatting with calf and a glacier, one of the few that are growing instead of melting, in Argentina.  These are just a minute sampling of the treasures that God has bestowed upon us. If we want a peaceful coexistence with the earth, we must do what we can to ensure that this beauty endures.  We have already damaged and destroyed so much, can we protect what is left before it is too late?

Missing

Yesterday, my spouse took my son out for a few hours which left me with an open afternoon.  It’s rare that I have a few hours down time, time to do something that desperately needs to get done – like the bathrooms.  Yes, the bathrooms need to be cleaned, and dinner needed to be cooked and there was laundry to be done.  But I didn’t feel like doing any of that, I had time to myself and what I most desperately needed was to do something fun, something that might make me forget about the growing list of chores etched in the back of my mind.  Something that would distract me from all the “you shoulds” and all the “you musts.” But what to do?  I couldn’t go far. They weren’t going to be gone long and I didn’t want to spend most of my free time stuck behind the wheel of a car getting somewhere just in time to turn around.  It was a nice day, not too cold and the sun was out.  I wanted to be outside, but where?  Then I remembered the word challenge.  Missing!  An assignment for fun.  I had to take pictures of things that were missing.  That’s what I would do.  I grabbed my camera and jumped in my car. It was only a ten minute drive to the local bike path.  I knew it would still be covered in snow, so I wore my boots not really caring how good or bad the walking conditions would be.  I had walked the path numerous times in the past but never covered in snow and never with my camera.  I didn’t remember seeing anything picture worthy, but I figured if I looked hard enough I was bound to find something.  Besides, even if I found nothing, how could I go wrong with walk?

Missing – hmmmmmm…I thought about it as I drove.  How does one take a picture of something that is missing, if it’s missing it isn’t there?  It sort of seemed to defy logic, until I pulled into the parking lot and stretching out in front of me was a baseball field.  Of course, I chuckled to myself. Covered in a thick blanket of snow, no one would be crazy enough to be out there playing ball.  Missing were the ball players.  And missing from the playground were the kids.  No one sat on the benches dotting the bike path, and not surprisingly, there were no bikers on the path.  Yes, I had walked that path hundreds of times and never once had I ever seen anything that made me say, “Gosh, I wish I had remembered my camera.”  But a slight tweak of my purpose offered me a completely different perspective.  What seemed uninteresting and commonplace in the past offered me a new opportunity.  I got to work – or fun.  Yes, it was fun, not work, taking pictures of things in a way that might not seem too dull or boring to someone who might at some point be kind enough to at least glance at them.  But it wasn’t just missing pictures I took.  Trees and a frozen stream – that in warmer weather is never anything greater than a tiny trickle - also caught the attention of my camera.  The walk itself was also relaxing.  Frozen solid in some places and melting, mushy and up to mid-calf in others it wasn’t an easy walk, but fun and easy aren’t always synonymous. 

The bathrooms still need to be cleaned, we at a late dinner and the laundry basket – is there such a thing as an empty laundry basket? – is still full, but I can’t say the afternoon wasn’t productive.   I got a few decent shots, I got some fresh air, a bit of exercise, but perhaps most importantly, I got to mentally unwind and recharge my battery for the weeks ahead.  So thanks for the word, the mini-unofficial assignment, for it taught me that even the mundane can be interesting if only you angle your perspective (or lens) accordingly.  

Stairwell Reflection

 A couple of weeks ago I was walking through the halls of my son’s school with one of his teachers.  Walking up the stairs we encountered one student sitting alone in the stairwell.  Seeing us, the student pressed up against the wall as if trying to disappear into it and before the teacher could issue a reprimand, the student said rather defensively, “I just wanted to be alone for awhile.” 

The teacher, dressing up in her authority and making damn sure the student knew who was in charge, countered, “You know you’re not supposed to be hanging out here.  When I come back this way, I expect you to be gone.” 

As we passed through the door I asked the teacher, “Do you know why the student was there?”  She looked at me as if it were none of my business, and from her perspective I could kind of see why she might have thought that. 

“It doesn’t matter why, it is against the rules,” she informed me. 

But what my son’s teacher didn’t know was that student was me twenty plus years ago, and without knowing the student I felt a sudden urge to come to the student’s defense.  “The student wanted to be alone, do you know why?” I asked.  “Is the student a trouble maker?  Is the student an outcast? Could the student have simply been seeking a temporary sanctuary?” 

“It doesn’t matter,” the teacher pressed, without bothering to look beyond her narrow perch.  “We can’t make exceptions for some students.” 

Why not?  I thought.  Different students have different needs.  If that student only wanted a few moments of peace and wasn’t hurting anyone what was the big deal.  “Sometimes circumstances require rule breaking,” I offered.  The teacher stopped and looked at me as if I had gone mad – a parent suggesting that rules were not sacred.  But I wasn’t mad. I was simply knocked off balance and tossed into my own childhood, a childhood plagued with being the outcast.  It is true that I may have simply read too much of myself in the situation but how many times had teachers walked passed me, looked through me and simply pretended I wasn’t there.  I’m not sure what is worse – a slight reprimand or being ignored.  Twenty years ago, when I first discovered the stairwell, it was as if I had stumbled into a magic portal.  In high school, during lunch or before school I would sit on the window ledge and read a book or do homework, thrilled that no one noticed me, because when I was noticed I was always taunted and teased.  But despite the hurt, despite the loneliness, I somehow survived. 

In the last two weeks, I find myself thinking back to that moment in the stairwell with my son’s teacher.  Maybe the student we saw wasn’t trying to hide from the pain of not fitting in or being different.  But it got me wondering, how many other students are there daily hiding out in school stairwells wishing they could escape the torment inflicted upon them by their fellow classmates?  If I were a teacher passing them in an empty stairwell, what words of comfort or encouragement might I offer? 

“Little Girl Looking Back”

Little girl I saw you sitting all alone,
In the stairwell frozen cold.
Your face was long
Your eyes were wet.
Oh talk to me and tell me why
You hide from those who socialize?
Please don’t look away
Or say I do not understand.
Please give me a moment
Because I think I know.
After all, I once was you
And no one ever noticed
All the angst and bitterness.
Words like knives pierced my heart,
They sliced my soul
And left me mournful-
Full of doubt.
The world was dark
And I shuttered within.
Mocked again
I should have known,
They weren’t friends
Who shattered my voice.
Yes, little girl
I know you well-
The pain etched on your face.
Jealousy defeated them,
And now they’re fighting back.
So disregard their hurtful words
And turn the other cheek.
Tomorrow you will still be standing strong,
And they’ll be shaking in your wake.
Trust me because I know,
I too have hurt like you.