Lilacs - epitome of simplicity and fragrance

Spring, as NJ WILD readers know, has been harsh and tardy.  You know, I have had scant patience with this sluggard season, despite having grown up in Michigan, begun married life in Minnesota.  You’ve shared my laments for spring’s hesitations; rejoiced over first courting red-wings at the Pole Farm; first glimpses of spring beauties near the Brearley House; waited with me for deafening chorales of spring peepers out my Canal Pointe windows.  Even so, I have not quite relaxed into spring.  Not when it’s 30 on my porch night after night at the end of April.

When I was least looking for it, last Friday afternoon, in idyllic Newtown, Pennsylvania, I found incontrovertible spring.  In the dooryard of what may be the oldest frame house in that state, friends and I were treated to our first lilacs in bloom. They were far above our heads, behind a stout oft-painted picket fence.  But they were open and softly lavender and warming in thin sun.  If we were taller, we might have caught their scent.

Lilacs grew tall and hardy in childhood, filling our entire neighborhood with fragrance, forcing us to open windows even in Michigan chill, just to inhale spring.

As I grew and entered school, I would learn that lilacs have other meanings.  Standing alone in New England fields, lilacs testify to the optimism of some long-ago housewife, planting them for children yet unborn.  Often, on New England jaunts, we’d find that lilacs often outlived the family.  What consolations they must have brought to those staunch women, on farms where stones were more prolific than crops.

In Michigan, we would batter lilacs’ hard wooden stems, so that they could take up water.  Then we’d carefully wrap the smashed stems in wet paper, to carry on the interminable busride to a stern teacher, to liven up a barren classroom.

In those rooms, I learned a poem that, unrealized, may have launched me on my poetic journey thirty-some years later.

Very little of Whitman would nuns allow us to hear - but “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed” joined “O Captain, My Captain” in helping us absorb the impossible murder of President Lincoln, on the brink of healing a nation at war.  On November 22, 1963, I would open my Treasury of American Verse to read and re-read those two works, trying to absorb that new presidential death - from which I have never fully recovered.

I had to find Whitman’s lilacs to night, to share with you.  So may we resonate with New Jersey’s “good grey poet” as he turns to the lilacs to carry emotions too deep for ordinary healing:

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed, by Walt Whitman

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,

And the great star early droop’d in the western sky

in the night,I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.

O powerful western fallen star!
O shades of night–O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappear’d–O the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless–O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.

In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle–and from this bush in the dooryard,
With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.

In the swamp in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.

Solitary the thrush,
The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song.

Song of the bleeding throat,
Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,
If thou wast not granted to sing thou wouldst surely die.)

Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep’d
from the ground, spotting the gray debris,
Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the
endless grass,
Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in the
dark-brown fields uprisen,
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
Night and day journeys a coffin.

Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,
With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in black,
With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil’d women standing,
With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,
With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the
unbared heads,

With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong
and solemn,

With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d around the coffin,
The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs–where amid these
you journey,

With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang,
Here, coffin that slowly passes,
I give you my sprig of lilac.

Brenda Jones finds the elusive thrush (not hermit but northern water-) at Bowman’s Hill Wildlife Preserve below New Hope, PA

THANKS TO ALL FOR THE LIVELY SUCCESS OF TIM SEARCHINGER’S TALK AT D&R GREENWAY LAND TRUST THIS WEEK.  The RWJ Room of our circa-1900’s barn was filled to the refreshment tables with eager, intent, concerned citizens, determined to see, know and do what is necessary to counter global climate change.

NJ WILD readers know, we must heed and remove this peril.  One major piece of the solution is to save open land and its wild species, especially so that trees and plants can absorb CO2 in our world.

Princeton University is holding a three-day conference, headed by Tim Searchinger, the end of this week.  See Faith Bahadurian’s welcome comment below.

And there’s a whole symposium on Feeding the Hot and Hungry Planet on Campus next week, see http://web.princeton.edu/sites/pei/2009Jan_Aug.html.  Faith Bahadurian

“Humans can increase nature’s chances of success by protecting large, varied nature preserves that will be more resilient to [climate] change” Jill Riddell “Our Climate Challenge”,Chicago Wilderness Magazine

MOTHER EARTH IN PERIL AT OUR HANDS

EARTH NIGHT @ D&R GREENWAY LAND TRUST

“The Hot & Hungry Planet”

WED., APRIL 22

TIMOTHY SEARCHINGER, Ph.D., PEI/Woodrow Wilson School

6:30 REFRESHMENTS, 7:00 PRESENTATION: www.drgreenway.org

Dear NJ WILD readers,

This “Hot & Hungry Planet” is our new reality, thanks to excesses increasingly catalyzing catastrophic climate change. Here’s your chance to celebrate Earth Day, –or shall we say, “Earth Night–”?, at a free Earth Day Program to be held Wednesday night at D&R Greenway Land Trust, where I work.

“The journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.” Participating at D&R Greenway will prove a giant step, in terms of awareness, practical measures, and hope itself. D&R Greenway Land Trust has saved 20 square miles of New Jersey land, by this, our 20th year.

Timothy Searchinger’s professional focus is the role of agriculture in the acceleration of climate change.  He will address the challenge of feeding our hungry planet and manage emissions.

What could be more appropriate, in the GARDEN State?!

Searchinger comes to us from PEI - Princeton Environmental Institute.  This august body is headed by Steve Pacala, Ph.D.  As you know, Steve, with his Princeton colleague, Rob Socolow, dared mention “Global Warming” in the face of severe political scorn, manipulation and denigration concerning science in general and climate change in particular.

Steve and Rob’s “pie chart” approach to solving Catastrophic Climate Change inspires and buttresses many presentations and publications on that topic, including Al Gore’s book and film.  These two men may be seen as the 21st Century’s Rachel Carsons.

D&R Greenway’s circa-1900 barn serves as their executive offices and conference site.  Their Johnson Education Center is at One Preservation Place, Princeton: off Rosedale Road, between Elm Road/the Great Road, and Province Line Roads, slightly north of Johnson Park School.  [www.drgreenway.org]

Our New Reality:

“Can modern biotechnologies help tackle global poverty, fight hunger and climate change, while contributing to overall sustainable development of the world?”

Princeton Environmental Institute

Read the rest of this entry »

One of Spring’s first gifts…

Spring Beauties appear Frail, yet defy this gelid spring.

Those pale pink stripes are pollinator ‘landing lights’,

guidingwandering insects straight to the heart of the matter.

Someone generous sent this evocative poem today

honoring Spring Beauties.

NJ WILD readers are accustomed to my urging us to reach out when those hot link alerts arrive, every time we can, to save our planet.  Though we focus on New Jersey, my concern is the EARTH.

Remember, all that it takes for evil to happen is for good people to do nothing.  Doing something, seemingly so small, as alerting our senators and representatives to our concern for nature, works miracles, plain and simple:

Your actions and those of thousands of other Care2 activists resulted in many recent successes. Thank you for helping to make the world a better place. US Environmental Protection Agency Objects to 5 Mountaintop Mining Projects Over 100,000 of you took action to end mining projects that involve the blasting away of entire peaks, and then dumping millions of tons of waste rock in the valleys below, causing permanent damage to the ecosystem. We campaigned with our partners, Sierra Club, EarthJustice, and Appalachian Voices on these issues for several years. The EPA has now objected to 5 different permit applications because of concerns that the projects would threaten water quality, and has asked the Army Corps of Engineers to place holds on the projects. This is not a complete victory, but is a very positive first step.

Even though Brenda Jones has been blessed by this Carolina Wren, there’s something wrong with this spring.

It’s not, as e e cummings would have us expect, “mud luscious”, let alone “puddle wonderful!”

Spring 2009 remains dry as bone.  Many weeks ago maple trees let down fully a third of their blood-red spurts — as summer trees jettison parched leaves.  Touching those ruddy first flowers, I felt more dust than life.  In those spent flowers, I found nothing soft, fruitful or yielding.

The other 2/3 remain and are burgeoning, but barely.  Every maple bloom that I saw on my Towpath walk from Quaker Bridge toward Lawrenceville and the Brearley House this morning was limper than overcooked spaghetti.  It even rained this week - but somehow it rained wrong.

Relentless chill or persistent rainlessness or both seems to have stilled both peepers and wood frogs.  I’ve heard peepers waken in January.  For a handful of recent days and nights, the penitential clapper-racket of wood frogs has delighted my ears, spinning out an exultant post for NJ WILD readers.  But now, both the empty flood plain around Canal Pointe, and all my long walk to Brearley House and back present exercises in in silence.

Last week, the ground at the Pole Farm, off Cold Soil Road was canyoned and cracked as Illinois corn fields in August.  We were out on an evening owl prowl.  But dusk’s winds were so gelid and relentless that predators couldn’t have heard a mouse or a vole over the roar. Brenda Jones found the winds too strong for her powerful lenses, giving up her photo quest as we gave up the owls. Read the rest of this entry »

Dear NJ Wild Readers,

Awhile ago, I reminded us that we could do something to demonstrate our determination to end destructive climate change - turn out our lights for one mere hour, all around the globe.

Did you wonder, as I did, what actually took place?

Here is the first report I’ve found.  As I discover more, I’ll add to this post.

Meanwhile, we can rejoice that countries beyond counting took part, and “attention has been paid…”

As I write [to practically every legislator on those hot links that feel my life's purpose now], “We are here to be Earth’s stewards, not her despoilers!”

Thank you for risking lighlessness for Mother Earth.  cfe

Vanessa Gera, A.P., “The world switched off the lights yesterday for the second Earth Hour, dimming skyscrapers, city streets and some of the world’s most recognizable monuments for 60 minutes to highlight the threat of climate change.  Time zone by time zone, nearly 4000 cities and towns in 88 countries joined the event sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund to dim nonessential lights from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Earth Hour Executive Director, Andy Ridley, said, “Earth Hour has always been a positive campaign.  It’s around street parties, not street protests; it’s the idea of hope, not despair.  That’s been incredibly important this year, because there is so much despair around, as well as cutting power usage and being more sustainable and efficient.”

All of this is good news - once again, someone with a vision has created a new reality.

Margaret Mead is supposed to have said, “All that it takes, for evil to happen, is for good people to do nothing.”  The opposite is true, as Earth Hour 2009 proves — “all that it takes for good to happen is for good people to do something.”

THANK YOU!

What was your experience of Earth Hour?

If you’re hearing a strange clickety-clack anywhere along the D&R Canal and Towpath, you may wonder what on earth it is.  A machine?  Tom Sawyer dragging a stout stick along a picket fence?  A nun making sounds of disapproval over some student’s incorrigible behavior?

None of the above.  Rather the mating cries of minuscule creatures — one of the first signs that spring is incontrovertibly here.  Sometimes, they’re heard even before the jingle-bell peepers; and, this year, soon after that raucous chorus began.  Purportedly the most widely distributed of all frogs, wood frogs arrive as a crowd, beginning their percussive courting in wild wet areas.

Creature not of ponds or streams, but of moist, densely vegetated woodlands, these miraculous ones emerge abruptly from winter’s deep freeze in search of temporary wetlands for courtship and breeding.

Don’t bother trying to see these tiny beings - they’re the next best thing to invisible.

They live in my second-favorite spring phrase: vernal ponds.  Near the vernal, or spring, equinox, temporary ponds provide ideal habitat for wood frog breeding, hatching, feeding and growing.  The trick is, these vernal ponds need to persist long enough for all those processes to be fulfilled.  That for which humans can hardly wait, –the advent of heat, the absence of rains–, can stop wood frogs literally dead in their tracks.

Something else that brings on the vanishing of vernal ponds is the leafing out of trees — that which ends the reign of my other favorite spring phrase, Read the rest of this entry »