Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Walking the Mean Streets
I returned to my roots, New York City, last week for a few days, to work with clients and students. I teach writing and coach clients who are writing books or screenplays. Because I lived there for 23 years, it is easy for me to get right back into the New York speeded-up rhythm. Adrenaline pumping, up and down the cement subway steps, screeching trains, sirens, horns, bodies, bodies everywhere, casual conversations at bus stops, on subway platforms. But, maybe because I had just spent a week in Maine, my tolerance for this speeded-up life diminished quickly. Walking the streets, I felt as if I were a figure in a video game, self-propelled, dodging bodies in a fight for survival.
When I’m in a hurry in the city, and I’m always in a hurry, I find myself slipping in and out of tight spaces, between trashcans, fruit stands, a businessman with briefcase swinging and toddlers moving slowly behind moms. I estimate how much space is needed to fit between all these targets and check my watch – am I late? Wishing that straggler in the blue dress would move more quickly, that those moms would stop dawdling, and that taxi cab would go forward so I could walk in the street for ten feet to pass the people in front of me. It’s an art form this people dodging. When I reach my destination – a big space with few people – I exhale for a moment and then out into the mean streets again, fighting for space. Inhale and hold the breath. Get to a space. Exhale. Eat. I wonder whether this dodge ball challenge might be good for my brain – I must always be attentive, solving problems as I dart and weave. And then suddenly it becomes too much. My brain explodes. I feel depressed, anxious, overwhelmed, and angry. I call my boyfriend and tell him I’m checking into a nunnery. Stop the world I want to get off.
I don’t feel like this in Maine, I tell myself. Because, I realize, when I begin to feel anxious in Maine, I walk outside and look at the stars, go for a walk, listen to the brook gurgle its way through the woods.
So the next morning, early, I kidnap my friend Linda’s grandchildren – nine and twelve – and walk to Central Park. As soon as I see the trees, I feel as if I am among friends. This feels better. This feels like home. We laugh as three white terriers race by us on the path to the dog park; watch as sparrows alight on the boats at the boat basin. Two goldens and a lab jump into Bethesda Fountain and wade around lapping and panting. People walk by – walk at a leisurely pace—and smile and nod. We order a coffee, but don’t have enough money for the sticky bun the children want. and the stand by the boat basin and the gentleman behind the bar gives us a sticky bun for free with a big smile because the girls remind him of his daughter. Here is a benign universe, here, among the trees, lakes, birds and dogs, people are free to be kind... The park is full of volunteers who plant flowers and pull weeds. They are friendly and full of information.
A friend of mine counts trees for the city of New York. There are almost 600,000 trees in the city of New York. Kelvin says counting trees made him feel better, keeps him connected to nature. If there were a million trees in New York City, would it be a kinder, gentler place?
I leave the park restored, ready for a second round of dodge ball, but looking forward to getting on the train and getting out of town. As I sit here and write this, I feel so blessed to be surrounded by trees and lakes, birds and deer and people who value the land. As we approach the Solstice, let’s give thanks for the bounty that surrounds us, and commit to preserving it.
Notes: Thank you for your responses to my first blog. Now that I am back in Maine for the summer, I will check out the labyrinth on Route 52, learn more about the cows vs. people ratio, and figure out a way to use my experience in the mean streets to make this land a better place to live. Any thoughts?
posted by kathrinseitz at 8:25 PM 0 comments
Walking the Labyrinth
I moved to Waldo County one and one half years ago. I moved here for love. I am from away -- New York City and Los Angeles. In Newport, Rhode Island, where I lived for four years caring for my aging father, my 26 Irish Catholic cousins called me an LA chick. They laughed and rolled on the floor when I said I was moving to rural Maine, although they approved of my Morrillian boyfriend. I myself had doubts about this new adventure.
This is what I have discovered: I love Waldo County. I love living in a community where there are more cows, horses, and deer than there are people, a community where folks have a deep relationship to the land, whether it's through farming, hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, horseback riding, kayaking or biking. I feel connected to the people because we share something in common -- the trees, the weather, the stars, the moon. When I lived in New York I never even noticed the moon.
Last week, I was invited by some friends to the "opening" or "blessing" of a labyrinth designed by a friend on a grassy slope on his land. What he did was let the grass grow long and then mow the serpentine curves that make up a labyrinth. I was thrilled to be part of this blessing since I am fond of labyrinths, having walked them in France and California. It was a beautiful spring day -- blue skies, moderate temperatures -- when the assembled group began to walk the labyrinth.
I set out slowly, as I had been trained to do -- treating the walk like a meditation -- taking one deliberate step after another. My 21-year-old son walked the labyrinth in front of me, as he had done when he was seven years old in Santa Barbara, California. What a satisfying way to experience the land, walking slowly, observing the birds, the nearby pond, the creatures, the other human beings.
When I got to the middle of the labyrinth and turned around, I had a moment of panic. Where was the way out? What happened if the path did not lead me back? How would I find my way home? I started laughing, remembering the lesson of the labyrinth -- put one foot in front of the other, trust the path, believe in the journey and you will be delivered home. And so I was. And so I have been brought home to Waldo County.
For more information about labyrinths:
- http://www.lessons4living.com/
- http://www.labyrinthsociety.org/
- www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth (medieval studies department)
- http://www.labyrinthcompany.com/ (company that makes and sells labyrinths)
posted by kathrinseitz at 8:19 PM 0 comments
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Walking the Land with Beginner’s Eyes
My friend Andrea Read who founded The Newforest Institute in Brooks, along with her husband Russell Read, believes that “a continual and deeper relationship with nature allows us to become more and more human.” Walking the land, feeding the birds, harvesting the vegetables makes me care more, makes me more human. Conversely, says Andrea, “if we don’t have a deep connection to nature, we are likely to have a diminished sense of our humanness.” New Forest’s mission is to restore and revitalize the human connection to the land, to develop what they call “land literacy.”
I spent Thursday morning at Brooks, walking the land with students from the Institute and Julia and Charles Yelton, who practice and teach permaculture design (check out: PermacultureDesign.org) They had just returned from an extended working experience in Cyprus where they designed a permaculture garden at a drug rehab facility. At New Forest, they were teaching a three-week course in the basics of permaculture. Thursday morning, the students, my son – an intern at the Institute—and I walked the thirty acres of land that had been clear-cut seven years ago. The challenge to the students was to design a campus with residences, a meeting hall and a garden to fit the history, ecology, altitude and needs of the land. We measured soil acidity, altitude, noticed where small ponds had been built, where deer had tred. We walked through the land, listening to what the land might want to tell us.
We walked with beginner’s eyes, and tradesmen’s tools. We stopped at a grove of spruce trees, all in a circle and bounded by a large trunk, which resembled a statue of the Indian God Ganesha. Julia had us pause, and said, “Listen. What is the Earth saying?” We looked around and one of us said, “This is a sacred spot.” I said, “There’s Ganesha.” Julia pointed out that the spruce tress were healthy and that spruce were dying out elsewhere due to a disease. It would be important to preserve this sacred spot, and to cut back anything that might impair the growth of the trees.
I had begun the journey that day preoccupied by daily, monkey-mind stuff. It dropped away as I walked and listened and opened my beginner’s eyes. I left calm, enriched, perhaps a bit more human.
Here’s a quote I rediscovered last night in the frontispiece of a book called The Desert of the Heart by Karen Chamberlain (Ghost Road Press) I recommend it highly.
“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 an dusk.”
N. Scott Momaday, Man Made of Words
Is this the reason so many people from away are moving to mid-coast Maine? (Bangor Daily News Article)
posted by kathrinseitz at 8:09 PM 0 comments