Month: June 2014

  • Snapshots of Living

    Snapshots in words and pictures of the last three weeks of life in Middlebury– plant, animal, and human.

    (Disclaimer: All photos were taken yesterday, when I couldn’t resist the sunshine and the realization that things were changing every day out in the garden, and I had better hurry up if I wanted to capture some of the journey. And so, as I am wont to do, I went on a photo-shooting spree after a month without touching my lovely Nikon. Really, it would be more accurate to call these “Snapshots of a Day at 56 High Street, and an Unconnected Assortment of Words.”)

    Green tomato today… what will tomorrow bring?

    New bean stalks rear dinosaur heads out of the cracked earth.

    Love spills out of my ears.

    Green tomato. Yellow flower.

    Rabbits and foxes and hedgehogs, oh my! They eat everything except the chives…

    One lost, baby-size sneaker sits on a windowsill outside a Main Street shop.

    An abundance of thyme. No pun here. 

    My neighbor, Mr. Cardinal, sits on his perch in royal ruby splendor, presiding over my morning commute along High Street.

    Snow pea spirals to get lost in.

    A vine explodes along the back deck. Green exuberance.

    Dreaming already of fiori di zucca!

    I notice two red glitter hearts stick to the pavement as I walk to work. They leave a smile in my thoughts that lasts the day.

    A teenage boy on a bicycle shouts at me as he zips by. His words are unexpected: “Have a good day!”

    So much green. An abundance of green. A superabundance of green! Green green green.

    Watermelon in Vermont? You bet! Gifted to me today at the Middlebury co-op, and planted by my neighbor’s granddaughter in a sunny patch of ground.

    Welcome summer.

         Vibrant

              Fresh.

                  Green.

                      Joyful.

                     Abundant.

    ~~~

  • The Internets: A Story of Love and Hate

    I may be the last person you would expect to see managing communications and social media outreach for a small business. Doggedly resistant to Twitter. Irrationally dedicated to my Samsung flip phone and equally irrationally opposed to Smartphones. Lover of ink and paper. Paper and ink. The “Internets,” as I have been known to call that massive and barely comprehensible matrix of invisible threads (and a troll or two), are no place for a flower-child-smartphone-hipster-bookstore-nerd-in-denial-of-modern-technology-hippie. Right?

    What do you mean? This phone is top of the line!

    Wrong. You must be wrong, because here I am, suddenly Communications Manager for an amazing little holistic wellness center in Vergennes, Vermont called 2 Wolves. (And Events Coordinator, too. I’m sorry, I have to brag a little– it’s my first job with a title other than, “Our Intern,” “Toby Over There” or “Excuse Me Miss”) And here I am, starting a Twitter account on behalf of the center, learning a bit about website building, and gearing up for Instagram next. To a certain extent, I am probably wired for it, being a child of the Information Age. Computer keys feel like home and I can find my way around a website whether I want to or not.

    So there’s the catch. I am, whether or not I resist it, predisposed to excel in this swamp of technology we call communication. Up until now, I have by and large resisted it (with the exception, of course, of blogging… and email… and, well, yes, Facebook. But compare me to the average “twenty-something” and it starts to look a lot more like resistance). I have long resisted the omnipresence of the Internet. Now, however, I plan to bend it to my will.

    Below is a segment of the email I sent to the instructors and practitioners at the 2 Wolves Center before enumerating a long list of ways in which they could help me grow our online presence. I write:

    The internet is an extraordinary and a terrifying thing. It can be an impersonal, vast network of virtual connections, but it can also be very local in its scope. First and foremost, it is a tool that we can use in any way we choose, and I intend to use it to build conscious, cocreative community right here in Vermont. I know many of our students are not plugged in on Facebook, Twitter, etc, but many of them are, and many potential students and participants are as well, and these tools can be an amazingly effective way of building our individual classes and our collective community.

    There it is. The Internets (that’s “the Internet” to you) are a tool. Neither good nor evil in of themselves, but simply a vast, swampy, troll-ridden universe of as-yet-unfulfilled possibilities. Some beautiful. Some terrifying.

    So here I am. Trying to create something beautiful and meaningful with that troll-swamp of invisible roads.

    ~

  • Waiting for the Invisible

    I expect this garden will teach me many things this summer. Though garden is perhaps too tame a word to describe it– too civilized. No tidy rows or neat squares here. On all sides of my house the land extends outward and upward in near vertical lines, and the eye loses track of the boundaries between the cultivated and the wild. Pockets of arable soil dot the landscape, reclaimed from the hill by sheer determination. Vines tangle with maples and violets fraternize with garlic chives and clover. Beans that were planted in one patch willfully assert themselves in the neighboring one– “volunteers,” as my friend Rae calls them.

    Nine days now have passed since I planted what remained of these plots. (The owner had already planted beans and peas, chives and thyme some weeks prior.) I contributed squash and zucchini, cucumbers and collard greens, turnips, parsley and arugula. Nine days later and I begin to lose patience. Where are they?

    The herbs and tomatoes I bought as starters stand strong in their pots by the driveway. Turnip shoots emerge from the earth in droves; the zucchini begin to display a few shy leaves; and the rest… the rest remain hidden, continuing along a mysterious, underground journey that I can only guess at. Well, thanks to high school Biology I can do more than guess, but even so, where are all the rest? I ask, exasperated. I don’t even like turnips!

    Calm down, I remind myself. Breath. In and out. These are seeds, not magic beans, and they don’t in fact grow overnight. When I ‘woofed’ (worked on an organic farm) in Sicily, I arrived in June, at the start of a lengthy harvest season. Zucchini already a foot long and figs falling off the trees. There was no waiting; I enjoyed an instant gratification of food production matched only by… supermarkets. And fairy tales.

    But in the real world of dirt and seeds and seasons and cycles, there is a germination period: 4-12 days for cucumbers, 7-14 for squash. That’s a lot of days. Nine days in, and I have to remind myself to have patience; to quiet the pessimistic, doubtful voice in my head whispering, they’re never coming.

    Where are those darn plants? They’re coming. Are we there yet? No, but we’re on our way.

  • Next Stop World, First Stop Vermont

    Dear readers, friends, internet… I’m back in Blogland.

    I think I have for some time now unconsciously defined The World as “that which is not here.” There is The World, and then there is Brookline, MA (my hometown). There is The World, and then there is Vermont (my current home). The title of this blog, begun as a travel blog in autumn of 2012, reflects this mindset. I was Here, and I was going There.

    Always reaching waiting longing for There, I think I have sometimes inadvertently obstructed my experience of Here. Of Vermont. I only kept a journal when I traveled; only blogged; only wrote poetry. As if only that stimulation– of the new and the changing Elsewhere– only those inspirations, merited contemplation. Here was the place I settled for when I could not be There. Here, the mountains were Green, but There, they were Emerald.

    But from where I sit presently– dappled sunlight prickling the deck of my new house (I moved this past weekend) and wrapping me in its warmth; birds singing about today, only today; wind chimes punctuating my thoughts– Here seems Emerald-bright. Last I wrote in this blog, my focus was on movement, wandering, physical musings through space. And never fear: the wanderlust burns steadily and I will travel again soon. But for the next few months, I hope to focus on finding stillness in stillness, as well as in movement. I will tend my garden, practice yoga, work my five jobs, and I will write. About the food I grow, prepare and eat, about the woods I explore, the mountains that pulse beneath, the people I meet. About the abundance of adventure, inspiration and daily wonder to be found Everywhere– Here included.

    I don’t know how often, but let’s try for every week or two. And please, hold me to that. Remind me if I forget. Welcome to Here. Fasten your seat belts, and enjoy the ramble.