Year 3: Part 5: Post 2: Looking at Changes

Well, for the first time a semester has started and I have no classes at all, as per Charlie’s suggestion.

I plan on taking a number of talks and workshops and things, so I can get some credit this semester, but I think he made the suggestion because he’s going to make me very busy later in the semester and wants me to have time to get ahead on my work hours. So I’ve been working a lot, both on campus and off.

It’s funny, Charlie said he wanted trail work to be the thing I did to meet my athletics requirement (even though technically I don’t have an athletics requirement as I got it waived since I’m already a runner), so I’ve been doing trail work, but I’ve only just now started to realize what he meant. I mean, obviously hiking trail maintenance is physically demanding—it’s exercise, especially when I have to hike out to distant worksites and back in time to meet my various other commitments. But there’s something else, too.

The thing is, I was home visiting my parents this past weekend and my brother and sister-in-law came over with the baby—and my sister-in-law said something like “Wow, Daniel, have you always been that graceful? Why are you single?”

Yeah, that’s what I thought, too—huh?

First, I didn’t know women liked graceful guys. It’s not really a word I associate with masculinity. Second, I’ve always been kind of tall and awkward. Grace isn’t something I’ve ever associated with me.  But a lot of people have been saying things like that to me lately. Mostly women, which I’m not exactly complaining about. Someone at work asked me if I’m a dancer. Someone else told me I have excellent posture. A woman actually whistled at me on the street a week ago—which I kind of liked, although I don’t think I’m supposed to. Women don’t like being cat-called, I know.

I think I must actually have better posture than I used to. I move better. That’s what they’re noticing.

I was thinking about this, and it’s really been a long time since I’ve gotten injured, like tweaked a muscle or something, at work. And while I’m really not all that strong—I mean, I do alright, but it’s not like I’m built or anything—I’m better at moving heavy objects than most of the other guys at my landscaping job. I can move around balled and burlapped saplings, cases of equipment, that sort of thing, that it normally takes two or three guys my size to move. I wasn’t always like that. 

Something’s changed.

I’m pretty sure that what’s changed is the way I move, the way I handle my body. Again on Charlie’s advice, I’ve been attending Karen and Kit’s morning exercise classes for close to a year and a half now, as a way to support the physical part of my trail-work. Karen’s class is general fitness, flexibility, and body awareness, while Kit’s is what she called practical yoga—instead of the traditional asanas with their poetic names, she has us doing movements and poses that are useful for daily life. I think it’s mostly the same poses, but re-named and adapted a little. So it’s a body mechanics class, plus medication and breathing exercises. And when I work in the woods, I use the poses and movements from the classes whenever I can apply them, so that I won’t get injured when I’m alone out there. And I guess it’s spread to the rest of my life, too.

And I think this was what Charlie meant. The thing is, trail work isn’t like running or aerobics, which you can basically do wherever you go—it’s more like competitive football or something. To get a chance to play, you need to be good enough and lucky enough to get yourself on a team, and there isn’t necessarily going to be an opening in your area. So it’s not like trail work is necessarily something I’ll be able to take with me when I graduate.

But I will be able to take proper body mechanics with me. It’s like how Charlie used listening to birdsong to get me to become more aware of sound, he’s used trail work to get me more aware of my body, myself as a physical object.

And apparently, it’s made other people more aware of my body, too. Which, as I said, I’m not complaining about.

Year 2: Part 5: Post 4: Going by Night

Speaking of trailwork--

I mentioned the craft I'm learning, trailwork, last week. I haven't talked about it in a while. I was really busy for the first part of the summer but there hasn't been as much to do recently.

The trails I'm responsible for are in the woodlot behind campus and the conservation land behind that. Neither is open to the public because the land conservancy behind us doesn't really want visitors--the idea is to protect some rare wetland plants that they don't want anybody in there messing with. We're allowed in, though, because that was a condition of sale--the conservancy land used to be part of the school's property, but the masters sold it on the condition that we could use the land for educational purposes. Now and then, scientists and other people associated with the land conservancy walk through our campus to go up there. The trails are for them and for us.

Charlie's landscaping team also maintains the conservancy land--we've been up there removing invasive exotics a few times this year. I'm doing the trails, though, myself. I had to patrol every single trail in its entirely, removing blow-downs, cutting back brush, and cleaning drainage structures. There's miles of trails back there. Charlie says that there isn't much to do because the trails get so little use, but that must be relative. It took me many weeks to do all of it, because I never had time to do much at a stretch--and if I had to stop halfway through a trail, of course I'd have to re-walk the section I'd already done when I went back to work, so that made it take longer. That project was part of why I was so busy this summer.

Now, I'm done all of it, but Charlie has me surveying for invasive exotic plants we missed earlier, so I have to walk the entire trail system again. I've gotten very good at hiking quickly and now I'm getting good at reading a trail map and using a compass, since I have to mark where the plants I do find are. And of course, I'm still going tracking once or twice a week with Rick. So, basically, I'm spending almost more time in the woods than out of it.

Charlie also keeps assigning me landscaping work that relates to trailwork somehow. If someone has to dig with a pick-mattock or cut with a machete (Charlie's two favorite tools for trailwork, besides the axe), that someone is me. The other week we had to re-do the lining on the frog pond in the Formal Garden, and that involved taking apart the rock walls lining the sides and putting them back together--a job for three people, one of whom was me. I still end up getting stuck with cleaning and maintaining the tools, more often than not, and that is not a coincidence. I know he wants me to learn these skills viscerally, not just intellectually.

"Anyone can memorize the procedure for building a waterbar," he says, "and everybody who can comes up with a new way for how waterbars should be made. You won't find two organizations that do trailwork the same way and you won't find many that will pay you more for your skill than they'd pay a new recruit. But you learn how to work with the soil, how to work with your body, that stays with you."

Spending all this time in the woods, I naturally run into Rick fairly regularly--he comes onto the main part of campus every day and attends classes and other events, but he gathers most of his food and supplies in the woodlot, so he's there a lot. Sometimes, especially if I took my dinner into the woods with me so I could work late, I'll pass him going in while I'm heading out.

The days are getting shorter now. It's dark by 8 PM, and it's sort of surprised me. I've gotten stuck in the dark a mile or two from campus a few times, though of course I always carry a flashlight--everybody does, for moving around the Mansion at night. It's just wasteful to light a whole room up so that one person can spend ten seconds walking across it.

So, last Saturday I was walking out of the woods by flashlight around 9, when I saw and heard a large, moving, dim darkness approaching. I called out and Rick's voice answered me. I turned out my light to save his eyes and we stopped to chat a moment.

"Why aren't you using your light?" I asked him. I'm sure he has one.

"When you go in the dark with a light, you know the light,*" he replied. "But the dark, too, is important to know, and I want to know it. Besides, what if my flashlight broke? What if my eyes broke? I still want to know how to get around."

I smiled in the dark and, on impulse, sang "if I ever loose my eyes and all my colors all run dry, oh if I ever lose my eyes, away-ay-o, I won't have to cry no more.**"

I heard Rick chuckle in the dark.

"Did Charlie teach you?" I asked him, meaning the trick of walking in the dark. "He started to teach me, back in June."

"He taught me it was possible," he said. "I've been teaching myself. He did give me the idea of using a walking stick--it's better than a cane, you know. It can stop me walking into things with my face." His walking stick is as tall as he is, with the hand-grip near the middle, in contrast to canes made for blind people, which have hand-grips at the top and are used only to investigate the ground.

"Heavier, though, I imagine," I said.

"Yes. Ebony's cane looks very light."

"You know," I began, "Ebony would probably laugh if she knew you were out here learning to be blind. Does she know? She has no interest in being blind at all. She's convinced she can see, or that she should be able to. Or something." I still can't quite explain what Ebony says about herself. It comes out all muddled when I try. I could not see Rick's expression. His voice came to me out of the dark.

"I've hardly ever talked to her," he admitted. "I doubt we know much about each other. But she should be able to see, in a way. I imagine that for human beings not to see must surprise the brain. Like missing a step on the stairs, you know? But I should be able to have darkness. I should be able to navigate with my ears and my toes."

I remember Charlie telling me, that night we explored the woods together without flashlights, to pay attention to what I could feel with my toes and how I found I could stay on a trail by texture alone. There was a pause, and then Rick spoke again. He sang.

"And if I ever loose my mouth, all my teeth, north and south. Oh, if I ever lose my mouth, away-ay-o, I won't have to talk."

"Goodnight, Rick," I said, smiling, and without another word he walked past me, into the living, green dark.

I took off my shoes and walked the rest of the way without my flashlight, by the feel of my toes and the shape of my view of the stars. And I got where I was going.


* these words are a somewhat mangled quote from Wendell Berry. Rick could not remember the quote accurately.
** these words are from Cat Stevens, also imperfectly remembered.

Year 2: Part 3: Post 5: Back into the Swing of Things

Note;  I've way over-committed myself, between one thing and another, and with the landscaping season in full swing now something has to give. So I'm dropping down to one post per week, until further notice. This will be the last Friday post. On Mondays I'll continue to post as normal.

I've  made it seem, I think, like I spent all my time on the Island in this busy, confusing daze while having natural history crammed down my throat. It's actually been a lot more organized than that and I've had a lot of fun learning. We've touched on history, geology, weather, all sorts of topics and I've really gotten a chance to explore the place. It as though, on campus, I've been working on getting to know a place very well, and here Charlie's having me do it again, but faster and in not as much depth, with a different place. Maybe the point is to make sure I know how to get to know somewhere, so I can do it with multiple places?

Anyway, Charlie and I rode back in the vans with the rest of the trip because Allen and his family aren't going back to campus right away. I don't know where they're going. I didn't ask. I didn't tell the other students where I had been and they didn't ask me.

We just got back and now the trail work season is about to begin. I think I told you that I'm going to be doing hiking trail maintenance as an athletic pursuit. I've been working for months now in Kit's practical yoga class on proper body mechanics and form, so I don't injure myself while working. This week I'm going to re-take the chainsaw safety and handling workshop, plus I'm going to take a class in using and maintaining an axe. I already know how to clean and sharpen all the other tools. And then Charlie's going to teach a workshop on hiking trail maintenance and then set me loose on the trails. I can ask Rick to help me if I need it, but it's my job. It seems like rather a lot, and I don't see how I'll really know what I'm doing by then, but then I never seem to know what I'm doing these days, and I manage to do it anyway.

These trails don't get a lot of use so they don't need a lot of work. The only big deal is that there are a lot of them, many miles, curled up together like some giant intestine in the woods. Most of my job is to hike every inch of it at some point this summer and cut back brush, clean out drainage structures, and cut away any blown-down trees. There might be a couple of larger projects, it depends on what I find on my patrol.

And I need to fit all of this into my free time, which I don't really have any of, so I'm going to have to hike fast, work fast--probably every day--and never get hurt. That's why it's an athletic practice.

And I'm also taking Karen's introductory martial arts and fitness class again, and I'm hoping to be able to keep running with Ollie. If I'm not in excellent shape by fall it'll be some kind of backwards miracle of unexplained unhelpfulness.

I got my class schedule today and somehow I've signed up for five classes. They're all things I wanted to take, I did sign up for them, but somehow I didn't realize there were five of them. At least I won't get any homework from two of them. Besides Karen's class, I'm taking Physics and Fiction, which is a physics class taught through writing, reading, and discussing science fiction, the Psychology of Magic, Creating Campus, which is about the science behind the campus landscaping, and Messing Around Outdoors, which of course I've taken already, but never in the summer so it will be different this time.

I'm looking forward to all of it. I'm looking forward to running with Ollie again, to tracking and hiking with Rick, to getting into these weird philosophical and political discussions with Nora, to spending more time with Veery. I'm back from the Island, and it feels like I've been away from campus for years and years. All the trees are fully leafed out, I'm walking around in shorts when I don't have to wear my uniform, and I'm totally ready for whatever insane thing this summer is going to throw at me.

Part 4: Post 10: The Art of Magic

The phoebes under the car port roof are about to fledge. They’re kind of hard to see, because the nest is up on a ledge and a little back. The angle isn’t good. But I can see the adults flying in with food,

and I can hear the chicks, their dry, raspy begging. And just lately I can see their heads over the top of the ledge. They must be standing up higher in the nest, moving around.

So I’ve decided I want to be there when it happens. I want to see the phoebes fledge. Of course, most of the time I have somewhere else I need to be—working, eating breakfast, going to class, labeling trees—but I’m trying to maximize my chances. About the only time I have where I can really be any place I like is when I do my homework, so I’m doing my homework on the corner  of the porch, by the wheelchair ramp, where I can see the nest.

So I was sitting there today and this man drives up, gets out, and walks into the office. The phoebe sat in the lilac bush and cheeped at him irritably, but I don’t think he noticed. When he came out again, a few minutes later, he was carrying a pamphlet. He’s a prospective student, I guess. He’ll be starting next February—and I won’t be a yearling anymore. That’s strange to think about, that of course I won’t always be a yearling, I won’t always be the new kid here. For that man who ignored the phoebe, I’m the mysterious one in the Harry Potter robe.

And honestly I think I may have a claim to a certain kind of magic, because that man didn’t notice the phoebe even though she was talking to him, and I did. I’m not a birder or anything—I didn’t even know they were phoebes until Rick told me, I didn’t even know there was any such thing as a phoebe. But I can see things now that other people can’t see. I’m sitting here in my wizard’s robes watching something that is invisible to ordinary men.

But at the same time, I hardly know anything. I’ve been watching the other newbies gradually choose up masters, get started on various courses of study…and there’s a difference between us and the senior students. It’s like they take knowing certain things for granted that we don’t even know at all yet. Dan has finally persuaded Kit to start teaching him on viola—he took lessons as a kid, apparently, and remembers how to play some songs. He sounds ok. But he’s going to have to work for a while just to get good enough at producing sound where he really sounds like a professional.  Maryanne is in her second year and studying guitar. I don’t know how good she was when she started here, maybe she always sounded great, but that’s not really my point. My point is that she’s busy figuring out how the guitar fits into her work as a therapist. She doesn’t talk about it much, but when she does she says things like “at first you need a teacher to learn about the guitar. Then, the guitar becomes the teacher.” There’s a qualitative difference, maybe as big as the difference between that man who didn’t notice the phoebe and me.

I’m thinking again about how all these different subjects relate to each other, how they are “ways in,” as Allen said. I know how athletics is a way in. I’ve found that way in myself while I’m running. And obviously spirit and magic both are—though I still don’t know how Allen’s magic of perception manipulation and Kit’s magic of causing practical change in accordance with the will are actually the same thing. And healing has been linked to magic going way back in history. But how, exactly, does healing relate to spirit? And where do art and craft fit in?

Art I think I can get. Maybe. I’m thinking about how I feel when I draw or paint. Not all the time, but sometimes, I feel different. Calmer, more focused. I find things, sometimes when I paint. This come out of my hands that I didn’t know were in there. I think, maybe, if I spent a lot of time in that calm, focused place, and really paid attention, it could teach me something.

[Next Post: Monday, July 22: The Loss of Reason]