Cairns of H.O.P.E. #61

Beginning of the Long Days

 

Warm long twilights invite me to go kayaking out into the dusk.

This picture was taken as I was coming back to shore. Venus shines brightly.

 

June 13, 2010

I’m sitting, stunned by the enoughness, in Ahjumawi. A steady breeze keeps mosquitoes at bay. Within the shade of juniper and pine I look south across Big Lake and the Fall River Valley to the snowy peaks of Lassen and the Thousand Lakes Wilderness. An osprey calls in the distance behind me. I am the only human here (the only way here is paddling) but white pelicans, Forster’s terns, osprey and a bald eagle patrol the lake and the forest is full of flitting wings and fluting songs.

Part of the stunnedness is at how far away I’ve let me work myself away from this simple, “it’s right here” grace. A flicker is calling. A clucking covey of quail is passing by somewhere near. This Cairns is more than a month overdue. Swallows overhead. Mourning dove lamenting on the wind. Robins chirping. We’ve hired a new teacher. Adding a classroom. Staff coming together more centered around our growing vision of what a science and nature school can be. But that’s no excuse for loosing touch with this sense of enoughness.

Next week I’m going to be in Japan . I look west toward the late afternoon sun and the forest air gleams with backlit insects and spider gossamer. Birds everywhere. Gossamer is not drifting but streaming downwind from branches they snagged upon.

June 14

Yesterday evening I kayaked out onto the lake about a half hour before sunset until about an hour after. I assumed there might be some sort of “hatch” and there was (small, white-winged mayflies). What I did not realize was that I would serve as a shortcut substitute for land. They began landing on me which seemed rather cute but fifteen minutes later when there were 5-10 on each lens of my glasses and I couldn’t take a picture without blowing the mayflies off my camera first…

I didn’t anticipate this because I had learned the classic insect generalization that if it has wings, then it is an adult. I assumed the mayfly life cycle was like the dragonfly’s: crawl out of the water up onto some vegetation, split the exoskeleton, pull the new body free, pump up the new wings, let them dry, and fly away leaving the exuvia behind. So I assumed that flying mayflies were the adults off to mate and lay eggs. No landing required. But here they were flying to my kayak and landing all over me. So I started watching them more closely.

I watched hundreds of mayflies pulling themselves out of their old “skins” like oxen straining against a plow. Eventually they got to the stage in the picture above. Then they stopped. Waited a few seconds. Then they attempted to flex their abdomen upward but the cerci (the three “tails”) remained with the old exoskeleton. Then they flexed their abdomens again and the cerci pulled out – appearing to be stretched because the cerci were two to three times longer than the exoskeleton’s cerci (as you can see in the picture). The cerci curved upwards. Again the mayfly waited a few seconds. Then it did a dance. The body rocked back and forth as if both the wings and the long cerci were catching the breeze and the mayfly was trying to balance the breeze’s force equally over its body. As it did so, the legs were doing a little jig in which legs progressively let go until finally… the mayfly lifted off and disappeared, lifted more by the breeze than its wings it seemed.

Back home two days later I looked up mayflies and learned that the books confirmed what a thousand tiny legs had drummed into me: that mayflies are the only group of insects that have a winged stage before the adult stage. That stage is what fisherman call the dun and entomologists call the subimago.

 

I’m going to Japan !

The Fulbright-Japan pilot project I described in Cairns #59 led to a new program and I was selected as one of 48 U.S. teachers who will go to Japan this summer for two weeks. The focus is fostering best practices in ESD (Education for Sustainable Development). I am very excited and assume that much of my next Cairns for August will be rooted in that experience. I start this trip on Summer Solstice.

We had our first coming together of the 96 Japanese and American teachers in San Francisco in early May. We had a reception at the Japanese Consulate in San Francisco . I was asked by the organizers to say something gracious, short and appropriate on behalf of the American teachers. After the initial thank you for the reception, I came up with three paragraphs that went something like this.

Many years ago, I flew across the Atlantic Ocean . In the middle of the ocean, I saw one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. At 13 kilometers above the ocean with no land to disrupt its smooth horizon, I saw the curve of the Earth. Its beauty smote me because that curve showed, in the same instant, that our planet was both enormous yet finite. Large enough for us to explore without end yet finite so that the actions of one can affect us all.

I have been surprised by how many times during these meetings I have felt a similar beauty. How beautiful it is, this bringing together of people from different cultures - and across the Pacific, the widest ocean on our Earth. So wide that our cultures are very different - and yet in coming together we enjoy so many similarities. The simultaneous tension of opposites has a similar beauty to the earth’s curve.

We’ve been brought together to work on challenges that threaten the sustainability of civilization. There is suffering and loss. But this looming darkness also calls forth abilities we did not know we had. Again the tension of opposites brings forth a beauty. We live in heroic times. This gives me the hope that our grandchildren’s grandchildren will walk in peace together upon this beautiful, blue vast planet.

 

Oakland talk

Close to Home: Seeing the Connections in Nature in the East Bay has invited me to present at one of their monthly lecture series. So I’ll be presenting Nature’s Upward Spirals at 7:30 PM on Monday, August 9th at the Montclair Presbyterian Church in Oakland , CA . You are all invited. For more information see www.close-to-home.org or call Cindy Spring at 510-655-6658

 

Exclusive Story

I came across an article about a $33,000 a year private school that was going through some internal political struggle. One quoted parent said something like “It’s a good school. Only 10% of the applicants get in.” I had never really considered the connection between exclusive and exclude. The measure of how good you are is how many people can’t get in. You are exclusive.

I watched a TV commercial as I exercised to the Stanley Cup playoffs. The commercial presents a possible pick-up scene – on an airplane, a young businessman takes the seat next to a young businesswoman. She’s possibly interested in him; he is interested in her but in their exploratory conversation with one another, their cell phones figure prominently. His doesn’t have all of the latest features so she politely loses interest in him and he is left knowing he’s a loser because he doesn’t have the right phone. Throughout the commercial, he and his cell phone are having an internal dialogue. The commercial is presented humorously but it’s not because at the heart of it, the cell phone’s “she’s thinking you are a loser” banter is planting the internal voice of gnawing doubt in every young man viewing the commercial. And it relates to the article; if you don’t pay to have the latest phone features, you will be one of the excluded.

One of the great gifts Chrysalis has given me is nourishing an openness to the gifts of others. In our culture’s emphasis on GPA, SAT scores, what college, I was one of the high scorers. Standing high on your own merits was emphasized and, being raised by wonderful parents, it took me a decade or so past college to realize that all the comparative evaluations throughout school had developed an arrogance in me that closed me to the gifts of others. Our Chrysalis Council meetings have taught me to appreciate the wisdom that arises when several people with the same good intention but with different perspectives work together. I believe that groups that emphasize or identify with exclusivity cut themselves off from a grounding power that nourishes the greater whole. (An aside: The editorialist, Thomas Friedman, used to quote Larry Summers (past president of Harvard University and current director of the National Economic Council) who said at a Harvard commencement that in the whole history of the world, no one has ever paid to put a rental car through a carwash. I emailed Friedman to say that I’ve twice put a rental car through a carwash and that perhaps Summers’ quote speaks more, not about the universe but, about how being at Harvard can lead you to think your perspective is universal.) But back to the commercial.

For thousands of years, people have sat around fires and the elders have told stories to the young. Joseph Campbell mentions such a story told by a Native American tribe to their youth. “As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think.” That kind of story builds a strong culture. I think of stories I’ve shared with my students and the conversations that grow from them. Stories can align us with deeper forces and develop a shared resonance within the telling. But that commercial made me lament that we have abdicated our role of telling night-time stories, giving it over to those who are trying to sell us something. The phone commercial tells a weakening story. It exploits the commons. By this I mean that some people are increasing their income by diminishing the inner strength of the community. (“The commons” is a phrase we are experimentally introducing into the Chrysalis student body. The fact that I see a TV commercial as exploiting the commons occurred, I think, only because I had introduced that phrase to our students within the last month and so it was fresh and current in my mind. I will be curious in what ways that phrase will allow deeper thoughts and conversations with the students next year.)

 

The Play

I’m a month behind on this Cairns partly because life overflowed the last few months. The weather has been amazing. It’s El Nino but rather than hard, pounding rains, we’ve received wonderful rains week after week after week. The northern California rainy season usually ends in early April. Everything dries up and days are clear and hot until October or November. Here it is early June and its been cloudy and cool most of the spring. Very unusual. Alysia’s garden feels like an English garden.

I’ve introduced you to a new area I call The Play because of its potential for photographic presentation and exploration of the effects of my divergences on the land. The area of most intense interest is the inflection point of the gully head at the foot of the basin. There is about a 5 meter length of bare subsoil/bedrock at the head of the gully until deposition starts to cover the gully bottom.

I hypothesize that my divergences upslope (you can see one just beyond the white pole at the top of the left picture) will shift relative balances so that this bare gully head will gradually revegetate. What fascinates me is how this “reversal” will actually happen (if it happens) so I am watching and photographing closely. So far I’ve noticed two possible “agents of change”.

As gophers tunneled through the soil above the hard topsoil, they pushed some of the excavated soil over the side. Three such piles are visible in the right-hand picture. I can imagine that the next rainy season will wash this loose soil away but it is also possible that this layer of soil lying on top of the hard subsoil will allow some seeds to grow and help anchor this soil in place.

        

January during a rain storm                                                                    Late May

The other agent of change is hundreds of filaree fruits blanketing the subsoil at the very head of the gully. Filaree has a fascinating seed-planting adaptation. The twisting tension in the drying filaree fruits end up in “shooting” the fruit a couple of feet away from the plant; the gully bottom has collected more than its share of this El Nino spring’s abundance of filaree fruits. The base of the seed-bearing fruit has a very sharp point which can stick into minute cracks. The carpels twist in low humidity and untwist in high humidity so that each day the carpel twists and untwists. The carpel is shaped like the pawl in a rachet-and-pawl; it can catch on things. This transfers the twisting motion to the fruit end and the seed can be screwed into the crack.

Now what is the effect of this inter-twisted mat going to be? Maybe it will bind itself into a small knot of twisting and untwisting carpels and hardly be present by the time of the winter rains. Maybe the mat will catch leaves and become a mulch. Maybe a hundred seeds will sprout and revegetate the subsoil in one year’s time. Perhaps it will all float away with the first runoff. Or perhaps it has always floated away before but my diversions upslope will reduce the velocity of runoff and the mat will remain grounded this time and something new will become possible.

 

Chrysalis Graduation

We had our eighth grade graduation last week. Our graduations are from the heart. Afterwards I received the following email from one of the members of our sponsoring county board of education who was in attendance.

I just wanted to tell you how impressed I was by your graduation ceremony. As you may, or may not know, I am one of the partners in the Health Improvement Partnership that promotes the framework of the 40 Developmental Assets and asset building in our youth.

The graduation was without doubt the most asset building event I have attended in Redding ... the inclusion of the entire community in dinner... the eighth graders introducing the graduating kindergartners... the teachers speaking about each graduating eighth grader with feeling and knowledge about them... , the shaking of hands at the end of the ceremony... I could go on.

Thank you for the one truly empowering and meaningful graduation that I attended this year, and I attended many. In particular, your gift to the young man... well, it left me feeling that our connections in the world go on and on and on. I had spoken with his mother earlier in my wanderings and she was so happy with Chrysalis. She stood next to me to shake hands with the young men and women at the end of the ceremony and she was speechless. He walked down the path holding his new gift in one hand and shaking hands with the other. You have given his life hope, direction, meaning.

Every time I have anything to do with Chrysalis I am more impressed. You and your staff are truly wonderful asset builders. Thank you for making education a dance!

 

There are several heavier topics I had tried to include within this Cairns but the quarter got too overwhelming and I want to fly off to Japan free of this Cairns so farewell with this issue. I’m off on an adventure.

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