A Morning Person's Observations #7: Nesting

I recently spent a week with some of the Blythes in Colorado, then a few days with my Aunt Angie outside of Denver, then took a long road trip with my friend Matt back to Seattle. The morning after we got to Seattle, I took Matt to the Pea Patch so he could see where the magic happens. We sipped our coffee and he identified all the plants (he's much better in a garden than I am!), and I saw the prayer flags dangling from the tree. They made me smile.

flags on fence, with flags in background

more flags!

There are a few flags in the Pea Patch. On the fence, on the trellis, but my favorite is that one hanging from the tree. It's my favorite because a few weeks ago I saw a squirrel bite it in half and then try to run off with one of the pieces, but struggling because there was still an end attached to the tree. Eventually the squirrel figured it out and gnawed off part of the flags from both ends, bunched all the flags together, then took off up the Douglas Fir, I'm assuming to pad its nest. It was hilarious to watch.

flag leftovers

While at the Blythe Spirit, I went out to the Peace Fort, a treehouse my cousin made, to write in The Pine (her log for the treehouse). The cabinet she made to store the log in had a massive pile of sticks leaned up against it, almost like a miniature beaver dam. It seemed too perfect to be made by a critter, so I assumed she had built it to keep critters out. But when I opened the cabinet there was a pile of green leaves to the left of the box that holds the log. The leaves were mashed to perfectly take up the space between the box and the other side of the cabinet, it was so memorizing to look at the way they had been sculpted it took me a good fifteen seconds to realize there was someone home. A critter that Aunt Angie and I later identified as a Ringtail Raccoon (but of the mountain variety, so incredibly small) was pressed as far away from me as possible, probably freaking out.



My Uncle David got the box out and we left the treehouse to Steve Ringtail (we called all raccoons Steve at IslandWood) to winter in. Looking through the log, I was able to deduce that Steve had moved in since the week before, when my Aunt Diane wrote in The Pine. Or possibly she interacted with Steve and his newly created habitat, but didn't think it was impressive enough to make note of it in The Pine. I'm going to assume the former, which means Steve only took a week to nest and secure his dwelling in the Peace Fort. I like that quality in a organism, because I can feel connected to an area after one cup of coffee.

hummers

Drinking coffee at the breakfast table for the past week with my grandfather was a treat. As he cycled through his frequent questions and memories, it felt like a reset to the day. Aunt Angie says there are four languages we rely on when our minds stop working for us and begin to work against us, confusing us, frustrating us. We can still relate to smiles, music, gentle touches, and chocolate. I didn't know this list until the week after cabin time with Grandfather, but one of the things he remembered during both of my visits this summer was the hymn, "Day is dying in the west," that he sang at two sunsets two months apart.

And then the following week would be full of travel and moving before I made it back to my alleyside Pea Patch for my morning coffee. I had my coffee some mornings on my aunt's back patio, watching the hummingbird feeders as the dogs came and went. I had coffee at a campsite in Wyoming. Matt and I drank it while walking toward the water. We stumbled upon a damp sandy expanse just soft enough to capture ALL the prints. It told a story of birds, herons, mice, deer, other critters scurrying across the opening. The next morning I sipped my coffee as we drove through a hazy, hazy Montana. They cut the power in one town as a preemptive measure so we had to go to the next town to get gas.

Whahatoya, one of my nests

And finally back to Seattle, to drink coffee in the Pea Patch with Matt, looking at the flags taken away by the squirrel. When EJ first put flags up at the original Alleyside, she hung them inside, then realized they needed to be rehung outside so as the shreds of fabric came apart, the prayers would travel out to the world. At this moment I like to imagine the squirrel was helping carry the prayers of those prayer flags forth, sending their energy and intention further into the world, so wherever I travel I can carry the feeling I have drinking coffee in the mornings in the Pea Patch, and nest as easily as Steve Ringtail.

A Morning Person's Observations #6: Life and Death in the Pea Patch

One professor who introduced the concept of sit spots to my class told us to not always sit in the same spot. "Get up and explore around your spot," he said. "See if you can find the paths and homes around your spots, where other travelers are coming through."

This has been a dry, sunny, not too cold, clear winter in Seattle. One morning before daylight savings, there was still only a corner of the Pea Patch in sun. I went and stood under the Doug Fir hanging over the fence, the opposite corner from my usual bench sit, to soak in the morning Vitamin D while I sipped my coffee.

The chickadees were out that morning. I know I'm not running late if the chickadees are still in the Pea Patch. They grew more and more comfortable with me standing below the Doug Fir, and flitted to branches closer and closer to me. Finally, one hang upside down from a cone and started pecking at some of the seeds. I hadn't been close enough to them yet to see what they eat, it was amazing.

It's been a year since David and I moved to the Pea Patch apartment. A year of sitting and sipping my coffee back here. I just noticed this morning that the white flowers on the tree have blossomed again. It's important to notice this when it happens, because in a week or two the first spring storm will take them all down. I love that I've sat under this tree for a year and am familiar with this pattern.

But I love how the Pea Patch continues to surprise me too. A gray cat slipped under a bush and came up to me meowing, and rubbing against my legs. I pet this gray feline for a bit, then the cat went down toward the tulips and slipped out of site. About five minutes later, the chickadees started a call and response. Some other birds chimed in, one that did four long high notes. And the arpeggio bird, which I haven't heard in a long while! I've never seen it, or I should say I've never connected its call with a bird I could see, but when I first heard it at my sit spot at IslandWood, it sounded like a young child learning arpeggios on the piano, eagerly jumping up and down along the notes.

The intensity and rapidness of the responses toward the calls made me wonder what the cat was up to. It seemed like they were pointing the feline friend out to any other birds, which was good of them since no one had belled the cat.

Somehow or other a crow died in February. Its carcass hangs from the one of the top branches of the chestnut tree, swayinh ominously above the apartment building in the breeze. As the weeks go by, it doesn't seem to have decayed much. There are certainly more flies in the Pea Patch at first, then not too many. I wonder if they've eaten out the core of the carcass and moved on, and all that hangs now are feathers on bones. But there'd have to be meat holding the feather to the bone, right? No way to explore this further, the carcass is so high in the tree. It will be a fun item to pay attention to, what happens to a decomposing crow that's so far out of reach? Can't get scooped up like roadkill, can't get eaten by anything except creatures that can fly/climb that high.

Some patterns are repeating in the Pea Patch, and some new intriguing ones are just starting.

A Morning Person's Observations #5: The summer's colors

The birds sit on top of this tree

This is one of the first times in Seattle I've been really excited when the summer was ending. The overcast sky, the slightly cooler temperatures, the shorter days. I'm loving it all. Mostly because it's all signally that it's time for the school year to start, and I'm really excited to be teaching again.

The p patch is full of dark greens. I went out this morning to sit on the bench and take in the world and it was actually wet for the first time in months. A light morning rain had made the whole garden smell earthy. There were some birds on top of the Douglas Fir, they were robin-sized but their silhouettes showed skinnier beaks.

Before I get swept away in the excitement and beauty of this fall in Seattle, I want to take a moment to reflect on my gratitude for this summer. The p patch gave some amazing colorful moments and helped me relax. I went from a stressful anxious time to a positive, relaxed attitude thanks to many things, one of them being mornings in the p patch with the plots of summer colors.

I wandered lonely as a cloud...

These remind me of the Lupine Lady

And this makes me think Tom Sawyer and friends were here

"The summer sun will set," she said, "if you leave it up there long."

Maybe someone else likes drinking coffee in the p patch :)

That floats on high o'er hill and vales

These flowers lasted through the first April rain, then turned to summer snow!

Rosemary!

David thought these were centipedes when we walked out to the p patch at night!

The squirrels love these chestnuts!

Another alleyside, same old dinosaurs :)

Can you spot the snail?

A Morning Person's Observations #4

The New Sit Spot

The first morning in my new apartment, I sat on the steps on my patio thinking this would be my new sit spot.  Goodness am I excited about that patio, but it would not be a nice place to drink coffee each morning (apparently I'm a coffee drinker now).  There is nothing but wood and concrete, and I heard some birds, but didn't see a single one fly overhead on the day I sat on the terrace.  There are some empty pots for a garden underneath the staircase, so I figured if the landlady didn't mind I could create some greenery to watch each morning.

Then I went to throw out the trash and explored a little in the alley behind my building.  To the right there was the sign of a garden plot.  As I got closer I saw it was actually a ppatch!  There was a bench leaning against the wall, with the perfect spot to sit and watch the ppatch as someone sips on their morning tea, er, coffee.

Spring sunlight in the ppatch

There's a sign with a number to call if you want a patch.  I'm sure the waiting list is enormously long, but I got on the interest list anyway.  However, if I only spending a year in this apartment, never get a ppatch, but still sit and enjoy the setting every morning with my cup of coffee, that will be enough, that will be perfect.

It's Lent and I'm feeling lost.  Since the GED changed, everything at work feels like a different moving part, moving away from the rest of the puzzle instead of coming together.  I'm trying so hard to figure it out, to give the students concrete steps forward with their education, but everything I say sounds like a broken promise.  "No we don't have the practice tests yet," "No you don't have enough credits," "No your old scores aren't saved anywhere."  All of this is out of my control, but it's so frustrating and trying to navigate the pieces has burnt me out.


So, I'm giving up doing too much work and taking on sitting in the ppatch.  I'm giving up going out and taking on cooking long, slow dinners at home.  I'm giving up spending my evenings glued to the computer screen, and taking on long, slow baths, reading more books, seeing more friends, playing more games, and longer nights of sleep.

The ppatch has already given me hopeful signs of spring, I think one bush must be the Indian plum, because it was buds when I first started sitting in February, and now its blossoms are the size of my hand.  They look like hands opening to the sky during meditation.  The chickadees and robins make frequent appearances, talking to one another as they pass through and check me out a little.  Two pigeons, darker than most, spent a flirtatious morning cooing and following each other around the adjoining balconies and gutters.  This is what I love, having a moment in the secret world that is always here, that I tune out when I'm focused on my human schedule.

This morning the crows came and sat on what Ann (a smoker and coffee drinker in the ppatch I met today) says is a chestnut tree.  One held a large twig, the other stared me down for a second, as if to challenge my place in the patch.  I didn't back down and took a sip of coffee without batting an eye.  Then the sun broke through the clouds and lit up the row patches, and the crow accepted me and took off.

The highlight was a month ago, creeping slowly and quietly into the ppatch, trying hard not to spill my tea (back when I still could get through a whole day on tea, sigh).  I looked to the top of the Doug Fir that is on the other side of the fence, but hangs generously over the ppatch.  Often on the bare branch sits a crow or sometimes a robin.  Today there was a hawk!  It had been making an alarm call that I mistook for a squirrel.  After I sat on the bench it stayed a little longer, scouting the situation.  It gave up, possibly thinking I'd scared away any prey.  As justice, it soared away calling out again, scaring away any prey for me.

My hawk identification is horrible.  It was tiny for a hawk, and almost all white on the underbelly.  My initial google research suggests it was a Short-tailed Hawk by the looks, but the International Union for Conservation of Nature says that hawk is keen to stay tropical, so back to square one.  Hope it shows up again and gives me a better look.

A Morning Person's Observations #3

Rolling with Fluidity

I've written a couple times about my new job this year, running a GED program at a non-profit for Seattle homeless youth.  In February, Madden and I moved closer to the city, and Andy joined us.

Back patio, my spring sit spot

Through the spring and summer, I would crawl out of my window onto our back patio for my morning sit spots.  I saw a lot less from this location than my previous spots.  The only natural, permeable space back there is in the garden bed.  My main observations have been of the ants coming to and from the garden bed.

There was a board leaning up against my window, and every night at the same time I heard it rattle.  Finally I fell asleep with the blinds open, and saw a little mouse crawl up it one night!

Starting in October, there has been construction on our apartment building and we're not supposed to

use our patio until February.  I've taken to walking to work some mornings to sip my tea on the way to work and try to naturalize this way.  On several occasions back in the spring, I saw bees tumble out of cups of flowers!

Bee having a snack

We moved the center, and then the new one needed to undergo some more construction after we got all of our stuff there.  Luckily, SFBC took my classroom in for a few weeks so I didn't have to stop teaching so close to the GED's deadline.  It's still been a difficult fall, leaving a construction site at the apartment in the morning to meet with staff at another construction site at work until it was time to go to the church and teach.

I stopped seeing a lot of my regular students, the ones who can still finish before the deadline.  I've broken down from the stress a lot and found myself sleeping and watching TV more.

I've missed living in a natural setting this year.  Living close to Volunteer Park and taking walks there has helped.  I'm moving again in February, and hope to find the perfect spot this time.  Urban enough to get to work and the grocery store with no problem, and some natural gifts incorporated somehow.  Hopefully no more construction!

A Morning Person's Observations #2

In Defense of Spiders

If you don't like them, don't come and visit me.  They are everywhere.  Under the sink in the bathroom, by the trash can in the kitchen, over the doorway to the back patio.  Some of them have spindly little legs and look as gentle as Daddy Long Legs.  Some of them are stocky, striped, and remind me of the Wolf Spiders at Fraser we would trap in buckets, equally harmless in my opinion, but ferociously designed.

My love for living creatures is based heavily on their ability to deplete the environment of mosquitoes.  The more mosquitoes something eats, the more I love it.  Which is why I don't get a creepy feeling around spiders anymore.  I have boundaries with them.  They are allowed in my room, but not in my bed, so anytime they are over or next to my bed they are caught in a cup and removed outside.  They also are allowed in the bathroom, but not in the shower, and go through the same removal process when found there.  I usually do this with grace, but I must admit I can think of at least three times when the spider I have removed seemed big and fierce enough to me that the cup and paper were dropped in the lawn and I ran back inside and closed the door between me and the Aragog (the cup and paper were retrieved the next morning).

For the most part though, spiders are friends.  The trickiest boundary I have had to navigate with them recently has been related to the hammock.  While walking up the steps to the clearing where the hammock lays, both hands full with my tea and cereal, I usually feel a bit of web on my face or hands.  One day, it goes too far.  I walk directly into a spider web and see the culprit scuttling on the belly of my T-shirt.  A lot of tea was sacrificed to the earth, and the spider was flung unceremoniously, but I am hoping harmlessly, as well.

I would like a clear shot to the hammock from the back door, but I always feel wrong messing with spiders outside, since that's their home and I should be the one to adjust the boundaries.  For now, I have gotten better about double checking and maneuvering around the webs, and the spiders have gotten a bit better at building up higher, out of head reach, at least for someone who is 5'2.

Little dreamcatchers

So we figure out how to co-exist, and I take my place in the hammock for a morning sit spot.  Spiders are magical to me, the way the longer you sit in one spot, the more webs start popping into view, seeming to materialize from nothing.  I remember talking to my childhood friend, Mariam, about her Islamic faith.  She told me a story about Muhammad (peace be upon him) being persecuted by a group of angry people.  He hid inside a cave, and a spider spun a web over the entrance, protecting him.  I think about this story as I lay in the hammock and count more and more spider webs surrounding me.  The spider webs are dreamcatchers, trapping all the negative energy in the world, keeping bad thoughts and feelings at bay.

Listening to the Chickadees, I find an additional surprise for the sit spots: slugs mating on the first step up to the clearing with the hammock!

A Morning Person's Observations #1

6/12/2012 - First naturalizing in Queen Anne

I heard them this morning, the chickadees!  I'm glad they live on this side of Lake Union too.

slug trail, look close!

As I sip my tea, I look between my feet and see a slug trail that went all over a plant by the back stoop, but the slug was nowhere to be seen.  I hope to find it one day.

There is a gentle coolness in the air, temperature is the low 60s.  It's dry, but feels fresh.  There are partial clouds in the sky.  Basically, Seattle before the Fourth of July.  If I was in D.C. I would swear it was fall and not summer.  My new sit spot is on the back step, below Raffaela's (upstairs roommate) porch, so it's shaded and tucked away in the forest of our backyard.

The chickadees make their namesake noise for me again.  I can hear them and many others, but I can't see any of them yet.  I'm the new kid on the block, and they're not sure if they're ok with me coming out to play.

6/13/2012 - Familiarizing with the neighbors

I was lucky enough to look between my feet, and see the slug this morning!  Somehow it is the ugliest and cutest slug I've ever seen, all at once.

Some of the birds emerged this morning, just for a moment.  I vainly assumed they had come to see me, that after two days I had become a consistent, reliable, and safe presence.  Then I heard Raffaela by the side stairs to her flat.  They had come over because they had been disrupted elsewhere.  Still, once they saw me they seemed curious.  They were probably a type of sparrow.  What one of my college professors, Jay Roberts, would call LBJs (Little Brown Jabbers).  Their brown feathers were a dark, rich brown.  The tail feathers were long and royal looking.

I notice some of the flora characters this morning.  A few Bracken ferns, a Maple tree, Big Leaf I believe.  A few other species I'll need to identify later.  And the familiar morning glory with its beautiful white flowers, crawling all over the horsetail fern with a King Midas touch, choking the life out of anything it comes across.

In the coming weeks, my roommates and I all leave for two weeks, and we return to find Raffaela's bike under the outside stairs, covered in Morning Glory!

6/14/2012 - Nesting Ninja

One of the LBJs made an appearance today, third day in a row and it seemed willing to tolerate me.  The bird looked like a wren to me.  Tiny body with a long, elegant tail sticking straight up.  A white headband cuts across the eyes, making me think of a ninja.

Ninja wren nest

Ninja wren picked up some fluff that looked like dandelion bits.  It shook them against the ground, dusting them with dirt.  I still find it funny the way birds move, such twitchy little creatures.  Ninja wren went to deposit its nest materials in a hole between the house and Raffaela's porch.

I notice today that one of the ferns is bracken, but the other one looks more like Spiney Wood Fern.

6/20/2012 - Naturalizing at Green Lake

I've been staying at Chris' all week, dog-sitting Denali while Chris and everyone are in the backcountry for staff training.  We sat on the front steps this morning, Denali in front of me, just in case the couple across the street walking their toddler tried to attack me (he has some neurotic wolf guarding tendencies).

I've heard naturalists say don't try to do a sit spot with a dog.  This advice makes sense, but I do also like the different dynamics you observe sitting outside with a dog.  The flies were swarming because of a present Denali had dropped in the front yard yesterday that I hadn't cleaned up yet.  The bees also swung by, particularly interested in the purple flowers Ally (Chris' roommate) had planted.  They had giant pouches of pollen hanging off of either side of their abdomen!

E.J. found a dead honeybee once, with a honey bubble still attached to its leg.  She put it in a tiny, clear box, in her car, and I could stare at that bee for hours and the bubble that still hasn't popped.

I try to make my morning sits only about observing, leave the stresses of the world for later, but I can't help but think about all the bees that are dying, and wonder what a world without honey, or pollinated flowers, would be like.

A robin perches on a telephone wire and sends out a call twice.  The robin's ears must be better than mine, because after the second call, the robin flies over George's (the landlord who lives next door) house, presumably to find someone who had answered the call.

Denali and I are done sitting, so we head out on our walk.  We see the rabbits he chased once when I let him off leash in a field before noticing them.  That experience must not have left a lasting impression for the rabbits, or maybe they recognize that he's on a leash, but either way, they barely scooch away as he lunges for them and tries desperately to break my hold.

I head back to my house to get ready for work.  As I sit on the corner of Dexter and Westlake waiting for the 30 to take me to the Seattle Center, the top grass and hay layer beside the bus bench starts throbbing, like a vampire digging through a grave (I watched an episode of Buffy last night), or a critter trying to break the surface (more likely).  The bus comes before I can see what comes out of there.

Goodbye Alleyside

My room at the Alleyside

The reverse culture shock from Haiti has been rough.  I made myself get up the first week every morning, drink my tea on the front porch, and think about how beautiful Seattle is, the greatest city in the world.  I want to go back, but I don't want to miss the moments now by obsessing, so I'm forcing myself to focus on the present instead.  There's been a move to Queen Anne with some new, exciting naturalizing to come.  In the meantime, the last of the sit spots from the Alleyside:

April 30, 2012

Windy.  Overcast.  High 50s.

"Look how lucky I am!" Chris said this morning.  "My car is covered with pink petals!"  I needed this, a reason why the wind and cold was so good and beautiful.

The wind picked up those petals and made them dance on the street, the way sand dances on a drum being played.

Each tree has a patch of color under it today.  Pink petals, green pollen.

The robin woke up even earlier than I did.  It looked well fed.  Plump, perched on the tree outside my window, which has bloomed substantially in the past week.  Chris saw it fly to our neighbor's roof, where its partner joined it.

A common Alleyside visitor! photo by Kate Maher

Weeks later Kate and I were sitting on the back porch at the Alleyside and saw a hummingbird perched on a telephone wire.  We commented on how exotic hummingbirds seem, but then there they are in the city in Seattle, sitting on the telephone wire like any crow, pigeon, or gull would do.

Birding and Porchin'

New camera!

Sit Spot - April 12, 2012 8:30 a.m.

High 50s, lower 60s.  A little cloudy.  Clouds are slowly moving NW.

The heron is the first sighting of the morning.  Darker than a Great Blue, slate colored.  It's heading west, working its way to the Sound.  Jake and I spot it two evenings later, same heron, same shade, same direction, different time of day.

On this morning of April 12, a mom is packing up a stroller to wheel her kid somewhere on Stone Way, right under the heron soaring west.

Two robins make appearances.  One of them flits about the yard, gathering nest materials, and stopping for juicy worms if it is so lucky to find one.  E.J. was working in the garden the other day, and one of these robins was busy working by the side of the house, tugging and munching on good worms.

The other robin sits up top on a telephone wire and keeps an eye out for its partner.  They don't chirp at one another, they stay within eyesight.  The robin on the ground poops on the curb then hops under Madden's car as some humans walk by on the sidewalk.  It's so funny to see it walk, and hard to describe.  It moves quickly, like a run, but with the pace of a walk.  Scurrying is probably the best word.

A chickadee flies in to sit on the lower branches of the Cedar tree.  It doesn't do the call that named it (chicka dee dee dee), instead it makes some short peeps.  I never realized how high pitched Chickadees were.

Then I hear the laughing birds.  Each time I see them, I think, "Finch."  Something about the beak, or size and shape of the body.  The truth is I'm not an expert with birds, really I just feel like they are finches.

They are also in a pair, everyone seems paired up by now.  The one I've seen make the laughing sound has a red breast.  This laughing noise sounds like a child on the piano learning arpeggios.  Jumping up and down across the notes, showing off how well it can hit them.

Two smaller birds who I don't know, and don't come close enough to introduce themselves, are also paired up together in the grass.  They are about the size of chickadees, maybe even a little smaller, but they don't have any markings I can notice.  They chirp back and forth as they go about their business.

The crows are soaring about up top, they don't come down to the street on April 12.  They are acting reasonably sane.  Last Saturday, the second day of Passover, when we had our Seder, they were going crazy.  One crow would perch on a tree or roof, and call out to the murder of 7 or 8.  As if the perching crow was directing the rest of them, the murder would dance, swoop, turn, and dive together.  This was around the time of the full moon.  E.J. thought they were acting out the story of the plagues.

On April 12, runners and young professionals move by, all in a hurry.  Their ears or eyes are shut out by earplugs or a smart phone.  I do not write this to judge them.  In an hour, in the middle of my work day, I am glued to the computer screen or absorbed with texting my students.  These are just more patterns I'm noticing.

A few weeks ago, there was a Hummingbird.  I looked at a Crow sitting on top of a house up Interlake, and a hummingbird came and hovered next to it for a fleeting moment.

When I walk up to my room after my sit spot on April 12, I see the Red-Breasted Laughing Finch sitting in the tree outside my window.  I think they are building a nest over my windows.  Fine by me.  I can't think of a better bird song to wake up to on Seattle spring mornings.

You can barely see their nest above the diagonal beam

Chickadees in the Trees

October 8, 2011 10:00a.m. Low 60s and partially cloudy

Last night, the cloud cover in Seattle finally parted enough that the moon shown through.  Then I woke up this morning to sunlight streaming into my room for the first time in weeks!

I made some tea, bundled up, and went outside.  The only patch of sunlight I could find was across the sidewalk, under the Cedar tree by the curb.  I heard the Black-capped Chickadees first, then saw one flitting around the front door, perhaps attracted to the bird feeder Emily Jane puts out in the tree by the porch.

Until now, I've only seen and heard the chickadees by the side of the house, further away from the road.  This was the first they've appeared during my morning front porch sit spot.  From what I could tell, there were two of them.  The first one was pretty bold.  It hung upside down on one of the lowest panels of the house.  Then it flew over to the cedar tree, and perched all over the trunk, upside down, right side up, and finally settled in a branch.  I "psh psh"ed at it and it moved a branch closer.  Its friend bounced around a little further back.  Whenever a car drove by, or someone walked by with their dog, they both flew high into the Cedar where I could barely see them.

I have noticed many naturalists and environmentalists in this area are deeply curious how people got started naturalizing and building a relationship with the environment.  Some naturalists' stories start with a place-based experience, growing up in a rural area, having woods nearby to play in as a child.  Many others stem from having mentors and teachers who were enthusiastic nature lovers.  I've been thinking about my journey as an environmentalist, and am grateful to my creepy memory for the clear moments I can hold onto from when I first naturalized.

I think the Blythe Spirit, our cabin in Colorado, had a lot to do with starting me on this path.  One of the first summers in La Veta I can remember was when I was about 7.  The family was hiking to the meadow, and one cousin wanted a break before we passed the stone wall that supports the hill next to the cabin.  I wanted to keep going, probably mostly to argue with 4-year-old Jack, so Uncle David walked with me.  We walked to the meadow without stopping once, except for a moment around the bend while Uncle David explained his different questions about how the creek had once formed the cliff we were standing on and the one across from it.  At the time I did not understand the concept of rock being shaped by water, and did not immediately absorb the idea he was presenting.

When we got to the meadow, we kept going a little way through the trees at the other end.  We looked back at one moment, and Uncle David asked if I saw a bit of color.  I got excited because I did see a bit of red, it was Aunt Gretchen's shirt and the rest of the family had made it to the meadow!  Before we started back to meet them, Uncle David pointed out the color he had been referred to, which was a butterfly he had seen instead of Aunt Gretchen.  I shrugged off that moment, because again I was eager to brag to Jack and Laura Beth about how fast I had walked.

Photo by Carol Blythe

What's interesting to me about those two moments, Uncle David pointing out the ravine and the butterfly, is that although at the time I am sure I acted disinterested, those tidbits have remained with me to this day.  I vividly held on to that hike, and my perception of natural areas has probably been formed by it.  My favorite thing to do in my free time is to sit quietly in the woods, looking for butterflies or other creatures.  When I am in the woods with other naturalists, I love to talk about how features of the land came to be the way they are.

Experiences like these give me hope as an educator.  I have probably gone for hikes with hundreds of kids, ages six to sixteen.  I have heard more than my fair share of whining, complaining, seen plenty of eye rolls, had kids anxiously ask for "lodge time," to go home, to get out of the woods, to not have to stand quietly for one minute, to not have to listen for the birds, to not have to stop hiking to learn about the plant or tree.  Maybe they will never look back on those hikes again.  But maybe they will hold the full meaning of my lessons somewhere deep inside that will guide them for years to come.  Either way, my journey as an environmentalist allows me to feel blessed to share the potential of this path with others.