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| Wednesday,
12 March
2003: Cuyahoga Valley National Park "Thermometer this morning, about 7 A.M., 2 degrees, and the same yesterday. This month has been windy and cold, a succession of snows...the spring birds all driven off." --Journals of Henry David Thoreau, March 13, 1857 Paul and I arrived at Gillette House in the National Park on Sunday afternoon after the 13 hour drive from Massachusetts to Ohio. So the past two days, I've been unpacking, meeting up again with people that I met here a year ago. It was this cold a year ago, but not so much snow. The whole northeastern quarter of the U.S. seems to have had more cold and snow this year than in a long time. In Massachusetts, the day before we left, we got whacked with another 8 inches or so (after a 27 incher on Presidents' Day.) I've been lining up, marking, and reading Thoreau's journals for early March, and in nearly all of them, March seemed more springlike. But this morning, I came across the 1857 spring, which sounds a lot more like the 2003 spring. A creek runs in front of Gillette house, just the other side of the road we're on, and a bedroom and living room window face it. This morning around sunrise, we opened the curtains and had coffee just looking at all that white with gray sticky trees and underbrush and rising high up on the hill behind them, pines so dark they look more black than green. Paul said, "You may need to lean this way to see it, but there is a red bird there. It has to be a Cardinal, doesn't it?" I did lean, and it was a Cardinal, but the teeny beeniest one I have ever seen, and a male at that." We were far from it, but even so, it was much smaller than usual, as though you could take the smallest brilliant splash of red and sit it on one of the youngest sapling twigs. All that white and brown and one fleck of brilliant red. (And now I think of my American Lit professor Bill Hamilton in 1971 explaining that to the Transcendentalists (like Thoreau), every experience represents a supernatural fact, and I think Thoreau would do something with that Cardinal.) Yesterday morning, Paul and I took a long walk up the hillllll and I do mean hill) to the Center and beyond, and then later in the day, drove to Peninsula and checked out the library, which is so good. I need to find out what the difference is in funding libraries in Ohio and Massachusetts because libraries seems soooo much better off in Ohio. I recall the Lynn librarian told me she had to write grants for all their money except the employees, who are paid by the city. During meals and walks, Paul talks a lot about the "situation in Iraq," which my emails are full of too. News comes in on theWomen Poets List Serv about a lot of people arrested just for saying they are against the war. Alice Walker and Maxine Hong Kingston and 23 other women writers were arrested for standing in front of the White House in protest. One man in a small town near Albany was arrested for wearing a t-shirt that said, "Peace on Earth." I guess you can only wear that in December. Yesterday afternoon, I met with two groups of kids who are at the Cuyahoga Valley Environmental Education Center (CVEEC) from Beachwood. We wrote poems about place. I told them that when you first come to a place for the first time (or a second time anew, as many of them are doing also) you experience it strongly, and it's a good time to get that experience down. I read my poem, "Ohio Rag" and they read aloud some poems I had from Dayton school kids about Ohio, and then we tried to write poems about this place-- the Cuyahoga Valley in general or the CVEEC or specific sites. In fact, most wrote about the wilderness or nature experience itself, it being so different from Beachwood, where they've just come from. (When I think of Beachwood as a place, I think of the Beachwood Mall, and not being a shopper, that's not a pleasant association. I need to remember to tell them about a wonderful poet who lives there, Bonnie Jacobson.) Here are some of my favorite lines that they wrote: The wind whispers to me like my friend tells me a secret. --Shali Way out here, animals have homes,/out there, buildings cover them. --Doni Crooked like an old granny's back/Hilly like waves of an ocean,/In the middle of nowhere but in a certain place.... --Jacqueline Hills, water, snow, the gray trail that is dwarfed by everything else.--Jon The smell of pines wraps you like a blanket.--Yuhjung Han Fox scat/deer track/aroma of fresh green pine trees. -- Mandi [Nature's] water are her tears she cries because of how little of her there is in the world.--Courtney Snow as hard and crunchy, but cold/ Ice as slippery, hard as gold.--Niara Saturday, March 15, 2003 , 6:00 a.m. “It is fine clear weather and a strong northwest wind. What a change since yesterday!” —Journals of Henry David Thoreau, March 16, 1859 The weather this week has been so various. When I walked out Thursday morning, a day predicted to have a high of 46, it felt relatively warm, so the reports on a few school closings in Cleveland seemed curious, but within an hour or two, it was freeeeeeezing again, and it rained a freezing cold rain all day. On schedule for the day was “Creative Hike,” and our group of students was divided. Many had layered for it, wanted to hike, so Colleen took off with them and gave them the full experience. They came back a full hour later, layered with mud and accounts of sightings and very exciting adventures (“&thenhepushedme&Ipushedhim&wesawscatofalotofdifferentanimals&otherstuff.”) Meanwhile, I stayed back with three people who preferred not to hike. These three were students who had written the best poems or done the best art, so it was fun to be with them. And I remember that given the choice in school, I always opted to stay in the classroom rather than go to the playground. Not because I didn’t like going outside. I could spend hours in the woods at Sippo Lake. I hated the meanness of the playground. (I’ve been thinking a lot lately, even before I came here, about the unsupervised times at school and how very cruel kids could be. Our long bus ride was the worst. I’ve been writing a poem about it for a few weeks now.) The four of us worked on poetry broadsides. Later in the afternoon working with Megan, I shared my journal with the group, asked them to make any entry, perhaps beginning with a quote maybe one of these quotes by their classmates, and to take into account what was going on here and beyond us, either back at home in the city or in the larger world. Here is what Sarah wrote: “The only thing to fear is fear itself.” (Winston Churchill) It seems that there is so much more to fear than fear right now. Terrorist attacks become more likely every day, and our country is considering going to war with Iraq. At the CVEEC, you forget all that. The only thing to concentrate on is nature,and it seems as if nature is concentrating on you. Nature appeals to all five senses, and the second you get there, you fall into balance. When I returned home, Paul said
that
I had missed two wild turkeys just after I left that morning, right out
on the front lawn. I said I didn’t know if I would recognize a wild
turkey
as such, that I had seen pheasant but wild turkey—how did he know? (On
and off, Paul has been acting the part of Louis Bromfield’s manager,
“Eeeww,
nature!”) He said, “Oh, you’d Sunday,
16 March
2003, Noon |