Cairns #50
End of the Long Days, 2007
The mission of H.O.P.E. is to turn the prow of our entropyship, the Earth,
back upstream so that Earth’s evolving consciousness may explore the
headwaters of the Universe for billions of years to come. The work of H.O.P.E.
is to make visible the larger relationships we live within - relationships that
inspire visions of wonder and works of hope.
Three stories with the same
point
Alysia
likes to raise as much of our food as possible so each spring she buys 30-50
Cornish Cross chicks to raise for meat. Cornish Crosses are the result of
breeding chickens with just one goal in mind: grow as much good-tasting meat as
possible with the least input of time and feed/money. Maximum conversion of
money into meat. Cornish Crosses are very stupid because they don’t have to
forage; it’s assumed they will be fed. I always feel sorry for them as
butchering time approaches because they become so front heavy with breast meat
that they grow unstable. If humans disappeared, the Cornish Cross variety would
quickly follow. But, oh, their meat tastes really good.
My
dad read an article telling how valuable old growth hardwoods were becoming. The
Japanese had developed a machine that could “peel” a trunk of black walnut
into an incredibly thin, incredibly long, continuous sheet of wood for use as
veneers in fine furniture. With this technology, a black walnut tree with a
good, straight trunk was worth $10-20,000. So my dad decided to grow a tree that
would be ideal for that machine. He went to a black walnut grove and selected a
nut from a big, strong tree and planted it in our yard. As it started to grow,
he would rub off any side buds so they never even started. In four years or so,
he had the strangest tree you had ever seen. It was fifteen feet tall with a
very straight, two inch diameter trunk with a small cluster of leaves on the
top. One day, the trunk crumpled about four feet from the ground and the top
just fell over and that was the end of that tree.
One
of the schools in our county is in “program improvement.” “Program
improvement” is the nasty end game of No Child Left Behind. If any subcategory
of students does not score high enough on the standardized test three years in a
row, the school goes into “program improvement” and the state delegates a
team with the authority to tell a school what they have to do to get out of
program improvement. The teachers of this school have been told to not put
kids’ art on the walls because the kids should not be doing art. Art isn’t
on the tests. The time that kids spend doing art should be spent on doing more
math and language drills.
In
Bank Cruising
When
I first started floating down rivers—in inner tubes and on air mattresses—I
learned to stay in the heart of the current because that was the fastest,
funnest ride, especially when it formed “the tongue” leading into a rapid
and its standing waves. So hanging out in the heart of the current became,
without thought, my SOP when floating down a river.
But
Alysia and I discovered a stretch of the
Instead
of playing with the heart of the current, I play now more with the eddy line,
that shear line between the back eddy and the downstream current. On the bank
side of the eddy line, the water eddies upstream. The current side of the eddy
line often has some of the slowest flowing water. Bank cruising is hanging out
there, just on the current side of the eddy line.
It
means going down river, slowly yet steadily, very close to the bank, very
quietly, so I can just focus on this world slowly going by. I don’t want to
disturb any living things that I possibly haven’t seen yet so I want to move
my paddle as little as possible. We are trying to blend in with the
river—float slowly by the otter foraging on the bank or the turtle basking on
the log or the twenty turkey vultures taking bird baths in the shallows or pass
by without disturbing the twenty five mergansers already asleep on the six rocks
clustered in the river. Therefore I want to move as little as possible and let
the river do the work. That’s where the fun comes in because there are just as
many dynamics going on as out in the heart of the current but they’re soft and
subtle, slow to come. I look ahead and plot the slowest course with the least
paddles. I’m practicing a subtle, fascinating navigation.
One
of the main principles is being clear in what my direction is, where I want to
go because it’s hard to navigate if I’m not sure where I want to head. In
bank cruising, where I want to go is right along the eddy line on the current
side. That is my direction. This is important because if I start heading towards
the eddy line, I can slip into thinking that I need to get us going in the
opposite direction, away from the eddy line. If I think that, then I will keep
turning the boat until we are turning away from the eddy line. But that’s not
my direction. I can stop turning much earlier than that, back when I feel that
the turning has enough momentum to bring us around to where the boat is facing
just slightly away from the eddy line, just enough to gradually bring us back
into the proper position with the eddy line. This sense of direction requires
fewer paddle strokes to maintain. I glide more quietly.
So
the first lesson of navigation is that having a clear sense of my direction can
protect me from the temptation to turn too hard and thereby create a
destabilizing oscillation requiring much paddling. I feel like this lesson could
be important when navigating through a turbulent period of history such as ours
when economic instability coincides with a proto-fascist government which a
growing percentage of the people realize has no moral authority and is, in fact,
morally culpable. In such situations, one can easily focus on “turning away”
and become invested in lots of paddling “the other direction.” But the
direction we wish to go is that which is aligned with our highest moral good.
Another
fascinating aspect of river navigation is realizing that the river is not all
flowing in the same direction and speed. Different parts of the river are moving
differently. There are swirls and eddies and divergences. Often, a part of the
river a foot away will move the boat in the way you want. Lots of paddling
isn’t the only way to make an adjustment. Sometimes I just need to move the
boat into a different pattern and the river will then do much of the adjustment
for me. So I learn to look ahead and see the river offering many paths that
change as I change. There are far more possibilities before me when I move
beyond “just me paddling” and include the network of currents within the
river.
The Day I Almost Missed
By
the end of Chrysalis’s last school year, I was the walking wounded, staggering
towards the finish line, uncertain if I would make it. Too many hits, too much
burden on my shoulders. too much uncertainty and stress. A few weeks after
graduation, I learned that we would not receive a facility grant I had been
hoping to use to relocate Chrysalis to the Parkville Ranch site. This created
the definite possibility that Chrysalis might end at the end of this next school
year for lack of a facility.
This
summer I found myself drawn to writing a book I’m calling Cairns
in the Wilderness of Light.
The book was the telling of the experiences that have most shaped my life path
in a good way (several of which I have written about in past issues). As I
worked on it, I grew aware that I was really writing it for myself. Like a dog
cracking bones for the marrow, I was drawing spiritual nourishment from these
well-chewed stories. But also, in trying to organize them with a connective
commentary, my spirit was trying to use these experiences to figure out how I
should orient myself to the year ahead. I had a strong premonition that this
upcoming school year could bring about my death and I didn’t want it to end
like that. I could only have a two-week vacation to get it right; I decided I
needed to spend it alone, walking, walking, walking in big country, preferably
above timberline. I decided to go to the Canadian Rockies, a place that
stupified me with its scale when I passed through a few years ago. So I drove up
there in early August. Spent days walking and evenings working on the book. I
came to realize that what I was hoping for was something like the movement in
the belly that the gray-crowned rosy finch had created in me (
The
two weeks started with perfect weather which gradually gave way to clouds and
showers. I took many walks, grew stronger until the time drew near to head home.
I hoped to do one last ridge walk the following day before heading home but the
weather forecast was for rain. I pulled into a campground a few miles from the
ridge. At the campground entrance was a trailhead for a ridge I had forgotten
about. Maybe I would hike that one tomorrow. But it might be raining by then so
why don’t I hike it right now? There were only a few hours of light left. I
wouldn’t be able to go roaming for hours but I could rise into the exultancy
of above-timberline at least one more time, just in case it was pouring
tomorrow. So I slung on my daypack and went hiking up towards the ridge. It was
the first hike of the vacation where I felt strong. I had finally gotten myself
into an approximation of shape. (I had this belief that I wouldn’t feel my
belly move if it was flabby and overweight.) Up near the top, I came upon a band
of bighorn rams preparing to bed down for the evening. A rain shower swept over
us. I returned to the car in the dusk. A good hike. Perhaps I would get in two
ridge walks before I left.
It
rained a couple of times that night. The next dawn was cloudy. Rain and wind
presented themselves as I drove towards the pass with the trailhead. Living out
of a car filling with two weeks of sweat and dirt saps one’s initiative. I
decided to skip the hike and head home. After all, last night I had gotten one
last ridge walk. I headed down off the pass. A few miles on, the rain turned
into broken sky.
Though
I had walked as I had hoped and was getting back into shape and had spent many
peaceful hours in lovely places, I hadn’t had my belly moved. Part of me knew
that was a dangerous goal—walking around watching for any sensation. “Was
that it? Was that enough?...” I had no stomach for that, which might be part
of the reason I decided to skip the ridge. It could be too spiritually dismal to
try making something like that happen at a particular time. After all, I had had
experiences like that only a couple of times in my life so trying to have it
happen on a particular day was setting myself up for disappointment, which would
be an even worse way to head into the next school year. And yet, driving home
didn’t feel right. I love the wind and rain. Why was I letting them deter me?
I decided to head back to the ridge and hike it for as long as my clothes would
allow in whatever weather came my way. But if I was to do that, I needed to
replenish my water supply. Just about then, I saw a sign for a picnic ground
coming up ahead and the sign indicated drinking water. I drove there and found a
pump with the handle removed. The map showed a campground about five miles
further so I drove there and found the pump. A sign recommended boiling the
water and a person ahead of me walked away with a bottle of brownish water. So I
drove on. There was a gas station about ten miles further on; I could probably
get water there. I got about a mile down the road when I suddenly realized,
“My god, Paul, what has happened to you? You’ve been driving along this
amazing rampart of thousand foot high limestone cliffs with waterfalls pouring
off of them and no trails leading up into their headwaters. This is probably
some of the cleanest, most alive water you will ever encounter and you are going
to drive ten more miles down and ten miles back to get some domesticated water
out of a tap. Paul! Really!” So I turned around, stopped by a splendid
waterfall, filled my bottles and drove back to the pass. It was actually partly
sunny by that time. I assembled my pack for possibly stormy weather and headed
up the ridge.
Wind
greeted me as I crested the ridge and blasted me as I walked exultantly along
the top. The trail ended at the highest point along the ridge. However, there
was another, more rugged ridge a half mile beyond with an expanse of meadow in
between that was probably somewhat out of the wind. I dropped down into that
meadow and roamed among the flowers until I came upon a large hole dug in the
ground. The only sense I could make of it was to imagine a grizzly bear had
hibernated there. I went down into the hole and sat out of the wind, looking out
at a wild, steeple-like mountain with flowers in the foreground. I sat there,
enjoying this secret place, thinking within its shelter about the lessons of my
life, the work ahead. That led me to prayer.
In
my life, prayer has been very mysterious. I was brought up to do things on my
own so I don’t turn easily to prayer. “I’m supposed to do it on my own.”
On the other hand, the few times I’ve really prayed, the results have been so
powerful that it scares me. A world that responsive to prayer does not fit into
the Cartesian world I’ve been trained in. A prayer-shaped world defies logic.
“If both football teams pray for victory,...” So prayer does not come to me
easily; it’s way down on my list of tools in the toolbox and it’s one I
don’t really understand so I’m uneasy around it. But in the quiet of the
hole/den, it rose as the appropriate thing to do. I came out of the hole, into
the meadow in the midst of the mountains and prayed. I prayed for two things. I
brought into consciousness all of the good things I could conceive happening if
Chrysalis took root at Parkville Ranch—kids learning within nature, teachers
free to concentrate on teaching rather than hassling facilities, the blessing
upon the donors of the land, the satisfaction of a dream achieved, families
growing within a place sheltered from the spirit-stunting emphasis on test
scores, money currently going to rents being freed for use in the classrooms, a
place where we research developing an education that grounds children deeply
within life—and holding all that in mind, if this was God’s will, “make
Parkville happen.” I found myself hesitating, wanting to equivocate,
qualify—but it finally came out in those three direct words, “make
A
few minutes later, I felt a flutter in my belly, followed shortly by a second
flutter. When I concentrated on that place, a wonderfully full, spontaneous
inhalation filled my lungs and energized my sense of possibilities. And I
recognized the place. Sometimes, when I’m really out on my edge, speaking
close to my deepest center, I burn spirit energy at a higher rate and I start
running out of breath. I feel a tightness developing down in my belly. That is
the place where I felt the flutter.
I
recognized the place but experienced it this time from a different perspective.
Rather than as the place of an effect, I discovered that it is also the place of
an initiating cause. If I concentrate on it right and the breath fills me, it
energizes my spirit, expanding my sense of what I can bring into existence in
this moment of active creation. This inhalation of possibility nourishes my
faith, which is what I had prayed for.
I
ascended the second ridge. A storm with rain and distant thunder swept over the
ridge for an hour, much to my delight. I finally came down and started the drive
home.
Chrysalis
began two weeks ago and so far it feels that we are going to have one of the
best years yet, schoolwide. Over the eleven years of the school, we have
experienced a variety of possibilities we want within Chrysalis. It feels as if
they are coming together in a coherent, creatively sustainable whole. Though
I’m administratively overwhelmed with beginning of the year stuff, I feel calm
and just keep working away at the pile. The church that we thought we would lose
at the end of the school year, dooming the school, let us know that, quite to
the contrary, they welcome us and we can stay for many years so that was a huge
load off my mind. A prominent resource conservation district has approached us
concerning
To see a one minute
distillation of my trip, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s_DhmUqkXg