Junkyard Heaven

Janisse Ray's Ecology of a Cracker Childhood was much different than anything I've read this semester much in part because it is a memoir.  She uses a lot of strong metaphor and vivid detail to explore the environment of her unique childhood.  Like Gift and Abbey, Ray is reliable.  She has a strong hold on her surroundings.  Just as Gift knows weeds, Ray knows junk.  Ray shows her knowledge of the junkyard and everything in it whether learned from her own experiences or her father.  Ray's passion for the longleaf forests also show similarities to Gifts love of weeds.  Throughout Ray's novel, her writing resembles that of Abbey's at times when describing nature.  She gives vibrant and popping details that set me in southern Georgia.

Her eloquent description of the pine trees singing is one example:

Rustle, whisper, shiver, whinny.  Aria, chorus, ballad, chant.  Lullaby.  In the choirs of the original groves, the music must have resounded for hundreds of miles in a single note of rise and fall, lift and wane, and stirred the red-cockaded woodpeckers nesting in the hearts of these pines, where I also nest, child of soft heart.  Now we strain to hear the music; anachronous, it has an edge.  It falters, a great tongue chopped in pieces.

Something as simple as the wind blowing through the pines is described as this beautiful compilation of song.  She turns around at the end and tells us how the song is now misplaced in time, lost.  The melody has been destroyed.

The difference in Ray's writing with the others is her story.  Her memoir is a powerful and moving story, which tells of her poor and hard times growing up in a rugged land.  I feel that Ray uses her knowledge of the land and its history to make herself more believable.  When she did tell second-hand stories, they came off truthful and valid.  Because of her confidence and telling of the actual facts, I did not find myself second guessing her.

I thought that her stories were unique and outrageous, which made them even more believable.  I absolutely lost it when she briefly describes herself steering and braking cars home with her father, while connected to his truck by an "eight-foot range of iron chain."  Her short anecdotes sometimes serve to describe the traits people or the area, rather than Ray telling us.  Her father might not have had the book smarts, but he had enough brains to understand hard work.  Working five days on the math problem just gives me an understanding of her father's dedication and desire to finish.

I thought that Ray used the major theme of the vanishing longleaf pines to symbolize the life of her father.  The pines, which she was born from, are massive and godlike.  "You look up at leaves so high their shapes are beyond focus . . . you stand and press your body into the ancestral and enduring, arms wide, and your fingers do not touch."  Although uneducated, her father was a smart man and a great salesman who knew how to deal with people and make the best of his business.  Even though "an invasion of a terrible army of axemen" may have caused the vanishing of longleaf pines, this seems like an uncontrollable force.  Her father falls at the hands of a similar force, a mental state that almost seemed unavoidable.

I don't think that I could write about my childhood with such passion and description.  My memory is not as strong as hers.  I think that her circumstances differ from mine.  Her childhood was tough and in the deep south, in the backwoods.  Mine was in the suburbs where both parents held steady jobs.  I believe that those hard times in your life stick out the most, because you know what you had to go through to come out barely breathing.  My past as a child holds few similarities to Ray's.

A Change of Faces

Wednesday, September 23, 9:00 a.m. - As soon as I sit down there’s movement above me.  Leaves spiral down around me.  I look up and see nothing.  A bee zips by my face.  Manny has joined me again.  I’ve given him a little more freedom, and I think he appreciates it.  He is becoming braver each second digging his nose deeper and deeper into the trees and weeds away from the trail.  In the distance, construction of some sort disrupts my thinking.  I am only here from time to time and I’m annoyed.  I wonder how the woodland life feels?

A constant humming brings me back to my seat on the log.  I think that the humming is coming from locusts.  Either way, I think back to when I was eleven or twelve years old in California, Pennsylvania at my grandmother’s house.  I remember walking around town picking the miniature, fragile shells from the trees.  The tiny, needle-like legs would stick to my skin; the cloudy yellow shell crackled like broken glass between the sidewalk and my Nike’s.  The dead skins were in such abundance that a feeling of terror came over me.  I felt that at any moment the over-sized skeleton insects would jolt to life, release their grasp of the bark and attack by first digging through my hair.  Crushing them made me feel better.

Back in the woods, the birds have decided to join Manny and I, even though I still see none of them.  I think of Edward Abbey.  What are the birds saying?  Are they saying anything?  They have to be.  One whines as if in pain or in need of some kind of help.  Another sings a beautiful harmony.  Maybe, like people, some are born for American Idol and some just aren’t.  I wonder if the birds would show their colors if I could speak their tongue.  Would they trust me?  (Snow White might be able to give me some tips.)

Leaves are dropping to the floor all around me like a light rainfall.  Everything is changing; the green is quickly becoming different shades of brown, dark reds, candy-corn yellows and oranges.  Nature must be preparing herself for the Halloween season, only her mask is a dead one.  The weeds with the ant-sized seeds that love sticking to my clothes and are decorating Manny’s black fur have become quite a sad sight.  Less than a week ago they stood, strong, healthy, full and green.  Nothing full about them now.  Their leaves are rotten-banana brown and droop towards the soggy ground.

In the leaves at the tips of my feet are an army of ants weaving over and under the leaves.  I move from my log and squat to get a better view.  I’m not sure what they’re doing; it looks chaotic.  They aren’t carrying anything that I can see, but their movement is fleeting.

Movement in the weeds behind me diverts my attention from the ants.  Manny and I go to explore.  Slowly making our way around the trail towards my sighting, I feel my nerves kicking in as if I was going to come face to face with a mountain lion.  I wonder if I will be able to stand my ground for as long as Abbey did with the snakes.  Excited for nothing.  Whatever it was, if anything at all, is gone or well hidden.  Disappointed, I lead Manny out of the woods where I clean his tangled hair before heading home.

The Serpents of Paradise

Abbey is a beautiful writer.  He paints a picture for the reader by not telling us about the desert but showing us the “the voice of the desert rising to a demented howl and blotting out sky and sun behind yellow clouds of dust, sand, confusion, embattled birds, last year’s scrub-oak leaves, pollen, the husks of locusts, bark of juniper . . .”  I have never been to the desert, but Abbey knows exactly how to make his words jump off the page and pull the reader into this Hellish, magnificent place.

When describing the land, I love how Abbey juxtaposes the idea of the canyon and tableland as a red wasteland, a Hellish atmosphere, with the beauty and wonderment of such things as a yucca or cactus flower.  He sees a paradise of life and beauty within the dead land.

"Life not crowded upon life as in other places but scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush and tree, each stem of grass, so that the living organism stands out bold and brave and vivid aggainst the lifeless sand and barren rock."

My favorite essay was “The Serpents of Paradise.”  He has a unique eye for his surroundings and uses the language masterfully to describe the desert.  “The pinyon jays are whirling in garrulous, gregarious flocks from one stunted tree to the next and back again, erratic exuberant games without any apparent practical function.”  The smallest details that the average person takes for granted Abbey manifests into a spectacular event.  He has a phenomenal grasp of the language, something I hope that I can one day perfect.  He uses detailed and extravagant lists to describe everything.  The lists do not slow down his work but only makes it more fluent and visual.  Usually my lists are clunky and distracting completely disrupting my piece.

Abbey seems to have quite a fascination with snakes.  His encounter with the rattlesnake is terrifying.  One of my worst fears is being caught in a pit of snakes, which is just behind being covered in spiders.  I find it interesting that Abbey struggles with killing the snake at such a close range when in fact he doesn’t hesitate to brutally kill a harmless rabbit in the following essay.  This obviously contradicts his statement that it is his “duty as park ranger to protect, preserve and defend all living things within the park boundaries, making no exceptions.  Also, why would he prefer to kill a man rather than a snake?  Maybe this backs his fascination with snakes.

More than once Abbey becomes a snake.  He watches from a snake’s-eye level as the two gopher snakes put on a performance for him.  He is not afraid to get down in the dirt, up close and personal with the couple.  Even when they notice him and advance in his direction, he is “paralyzed by wonder” and does not move.  The fear that kicks so late would have kicked in as soon as I saw the snakes; I would have been at a much greater distance if even still around.  This could be why Abbey is such a great writer; he is not afraid to get into the shit.

“They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins . . . .”

Is this true?  He questions what the coyotes mean when yodeling at the moon or what dolphins are trying to tell us.  How does he know they aren’t whining?  Maybe they do lie awake weeping for their sins.  Do we know what animals are saying?

Summer mornings in my back yard are hidden from the golden rays of the lemony sun.  My house stands between a bright tangerine sunrise and my pre-pubescent face.  The newborn dewy grass tickles my bare feet and glides between my toes like a silk blanket.  I am not interested in the green, though.  I have my sights set on my great wall, a fence of mud and rocks.  A giant mound of dirt, my climbing wall, my Aggro Crag, is piled to the side of the yard.  I dig my hands into the soft clay and form figurines, soldiers of the Earth, to battle across the miniature Alps of suburbia.  I am a regular Picasso.  Worms and spiders and beetles claim there territory; they weave in and out of the hard, rocky mud as if they are weaving it together.

The chatter and singing of the airborne community is drowned out by the heavy artillery in my soon-to-be neighboring yards.  Ancient steel dinosaurs, Long-necks, Triceratops’, Stegosaurus’ dig their teeth and claws into the ground destroying and shortening my playground.  The metal and viscous banging of tools and machines sets a rather unique scene for my men going into battle.  As the the burning globe  peeks over the roof of my home, I fall out of the shadows of morning and into the light of war.

Some Company in the Woods

Thursday, September 17, 10:00 a.m. - This morning I decided to bring one of my good friends to my spot in the woods.  Before journeying into the woods, he insisted I walk him through the neighborhood.  Manny is my sleek black lab who is not even a year old.  The woods I refer to are located a street over from mine behind the houses across the street from my house.  My house is in a housing plan off Route 19 called Glencannon.

Eager to show Manny my place, I encourage him not to stop at every mailbox in every yard to sniff the ground.  Once we reach the opening in the woods, I feel more welcome than I did last time when it was later in the day.  The clover surrounding the entrance is plentiful and green.

Finally, we reach our destination and Manny begins to use his super senses to explore.  I take my usual seat on the log.  The woods seem more lively in the morning; I hear a wider variety of singing birds.  The sun dives through the trees dropping golden bars of light onto the ground.  Manny's found a relaxing spot in a pile of brown leaves with a stick that seems a bit too long.  He manages to cut it down to size.

I can't help but notice the diversity of weeds surrounding me.  I still have no clue what I'm looking at, but I'm attempting to draw some of them.  (I hope my writing is better than my drawing, or I'm screwed.)  The weeds that I enjoy most are the taller ones that are grouped in threes.  Their tiny flowers atop are white, which makes them stand out from everything else that is dying brown or thriving green.  Maybe next time a field guide would help.

A hard gust of wind pushes the trees around in a synchronized motion causing a whirlwind of green and yellow leaves.  My log is scattered with moss;  the bases of trees around me are covered in moss.  The moss also climbs to certain spots of the tree trunks.  The moisture and softness reminds me of Gift talking about walking barefoot on it.  Too bad there's not a nice carpet of moss around me now.

I hear birds flying over head.  One sounds like it is squealing; others talk in ways that I'm struggling to find words to describe.  The birds are like Navy Seals, camouflaged within the branches and leaves.  The sun isn't helping either.  Now that I hear the sound, again, I don't think it is a bird.  It sounds like a creaking wooden floor or even hinges on a door that need greased.

The sun points out glistening cob webs that are connecting three thin trees like they are holding them from crashing to the woodland floor.  Things seem to have calmed since Manny and I have been here.  Maybe we've disturbed the population of the woods, like when you walk into your first class at a new school.  The normal chatter comes to a whisper as everyone stares and wonders about the new kid.

I've sort of forgot about Manny as he rummages through a tangle of weeds.  He exits covered in tiny prick-lies, which obviously I have also failed to correctly identify.  On our way home, I spot a patch of dandelions in my neighbors yard.  I grab one and attempt to color Manny's black coat against his will.  The yellow doesn't smear quite as well as it used to against my classmates skin.

Weeds

Nancy Gift's A Weed by Any Other Name is probably not a book that I would read on my own.  However, I found the text to be somewhat nostalgic and funny at times; I found myself learning about the weeds that I grew up in.  I didn't know much about weeds, except that most people don't like them.

I thought that Gift did a wonderful job with her metaphors.  They were very visual and easy for almost anyone to understand.  They made what might seem like a boring subject come to life and jump off the page.  In her first section, she compares trimming the multiflora rose to some sort of "blood sacrifice."  She moves on to immediately compare the thorns of the bush to "the size of bear claws."  Later, when talking about the perfect turf, Gift  says that "the grass is perhaps an inch in height but thick, more like green chipmunk fur than like my father-in-law's thinning crew cut.  Green chipmunk fur is about how natural the turf is, too."  The idea of green chipmunk fur is ridiculous just as her view of turf.

The most important parts of the book, to me, were when Gift showed her views toward two certain ideas.  She illustrates her disgust for lawn-care chemicals and herbicides.  She feels that society has forced people to conform to the clear and tidy yard, instead of the natural yard.  "We may not want every weed in our yard, or every critter, but we want to keep a yard that weeds and critters can live in, because that means the yard isn't too poisonous for us, either."

I completely agree with this view.  My parents have a small garden on the side of our house where they grow tomatoes.  If we ever hired a lawn service to raid our yard, I would have second thoughts about eating anything grown there.  Again, I laughed when Gift discovered that her parents had "sold out" and "employed the Evil Empire."  I thought it was interesting how she acted after feeling angry and betrayed.  She refused to let her kids play in the yard and refused to plant in her parents gardens until the clover and violets reappeared.  Like most of us, she saw herself reverting to a childlike manner when arguing with her parents.

One scene in the book that stuck out to me was when her neighbor sprays his yard, and Gift is in her yard playing with her “yearling daughter.”  “Having him spray upwind of us was an offense I was not willing to ignore.”  She does two things here:  defends the safety of her child and backs up her anti-herbicide views.

While reading this I became enraged.  I wanted to walk over there with her to confront this simpleton.  I can only imagine myself doing the same thing for my family.

Another point that Gift continues to touch upon is the newly formed barrier between children and nature.  With the profound advances in technology, kids are finding more and more reasons to avoid the outdoors.  Gift says that she believes that she learned something by playing with plants.  Today, most kids don’t have that opportunity.

I can remember, as a child, pulling at foxtails as their seeds popped off or collecting dandelions at recess to “paint” my friends arms and clothes, whether they liked it or not.  I have a fairly bitter memory of thistle, partly because of my parents.  In the fourth grade we had to pick a thistle and use it for an art project.  I forget the exact process of the project, but I know it dealt with carving the weed into a thin piece of metal.  The bitterness comes with the final result.  My artwork is still no where to be found, whereas my younger brother’s hangs proudly on our basement wall.

Gift constantly compares herself to weeds.  “If the definition of weeds applies to people, I felt like a weed there - a person out of place with the locals.”  I can relate because I constantly feel like a weed.  Maybe everyone is comparable to weeds.  As at certain times we may feel out of place or out of our comfort zone, we each have different periods or seasons of growth and prosperity.

My Woods

Monday, September 7, 6:40 p.m. - Walking into the woods is almost cinematic.  An entrance, as if a giant door once stood here, is surrounded by trees and their hanging branches of brown and yellow leaves.  Across the muddy trail a daddy long-leg spider scurries, while a tiny frog hops deeper into the brush away from the dangerous trail.  The trees closest to the trail are marked or painted with red arrows pointing towards the direction I am already walking.  Down the path, I find a tree that has done its time standing tall.  The tree is now a log; it becomes my seat.

The log is thick and spotted with soft, green moss.  I set a folder on the rain soaked log to keep dry.  As I sit thinking of what to write, a yellow leaf catches my eye as it floats to the soggy ground to join the growth of death.  It makes a sound, like a small paperclip falling onto a pile of paper on the floor.  I am reminded of a question, "Does a falling tree make a sound if no one is around to hear it?"  I've read that the answer is no and that the tree only makes sound waves, not sound.  For sound to exist, an instrument such as an ear must be a part of the equation.  This whole debate reminds me of Pattiann Rogers and her idea that Nature encompasses all contradictions.

Before I go too far off, I refocus on my surroundings.  I am tucked back in the little bit of woods still remaining in my neighborhood.  I'm actually surprised this is even still here.  More homes and mini-strip malls are taking over the trees and trails these days.  I can remember when I was nine or ten years old, and my friends and I owned these parts.  We lived and got lost here.  The constant humming and chirping of insects and birds is calming.  It almost drowns out the motors from the highway.  Talks of extinction usually focus on animals, but is there a time when the woods will cease to exist?  Technology seems to move children, today, where as not so long ago we would hop on our bikes and cruise the woods for edible berries or small creeks where the crawfish just couldn't hide from us.

I am surrounded by trees, but as winter draws closer this weak and dying canopy lets in the dull sky.  There are no clouds but a hint of more rain is in the air.  The population around me sounds extremely busy, yet I've only seen nose-diving leaves.  I bite my tongue.  A beautiful, bright-red bird lands for a moment as if to tell me to look harder.  Through a few vines, which are hanging desperately to a lowercase r-shaped tree, the bird bounces among the branches before flying deeper into the trees.

Before the heavy rain kicks in, I decide to leave.  I stand up to see that I have had a friend for an unknown amount of time.  A black and white caterpillar scoots across my folder.  It stops its unique gyrations when I move to pick up the folder.  I lean the folder at an angle so that the furry creature with furry black and white horns can move back to the moist wood.  It takes full advantage of my kindness and worms its way back onto nature.

The walk out seems tougher than the walk in.  I stumble over anaconda looking vines that slither across the path; I walk against the red arrows, out of the woods and into a light fog.  I rejoin the cookie-cut houses of civilization.

What is Nature?

Pattiann Rogers says, "Nothing that is goes against nature, because nature is the way things are."  What exactly is Nature?  Throughout her rant, Rogers smacks the reader in the nose with the juxtaposition of several provocative images and names.  "Pedophiles and saints equally are nature."  Dazed and teary-eyed from the initial impact of that left hook I came up with an idea of how I viewed Nature.  When I think of Nature I see everything beyond the hustle of everyday life, beyond the realm of chaos.  Outside of the bumper to bumper, pollution infested atmosphere there exists a tranquility - Nature.  After taking into account Rogers' views, I was forced to rethink my Mickey Mouse-crafted definition.  Rogers' goes on to say:

We cannot legitimately use the word "natural" as synonymous with the words "unsullied," "pure," or "righteous."

Nature is not just beautiful landscapes and exotic inhabitants; it is sometimes cruel and viscous.  From destructive hurricanes to uncontrollable floods and rabid animals to disease spreading insects, Nature embodies the "cruel and benevolent."  Maybe I was being naive but, in my opinion, when asked what nature is most people will give the Disney version.  The truth is that Nature holds as much horror and disgust as everyday life, which backs Rogers' essay.  I believe she sums up her entire piece with one quote:  Nature encompasses all contradictions.


Thoreau begins "Walking" by saying, "What I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World."  At some point in time, whether stemming from an ice age or an atomic bomb, civilizations have been forced to survive in the wild.  Literally, the wild can be a person's savage or barbaric nature.  Somewhere inside everyone lives a primitiveness that may or may not come out.  To say a person is wild can mean they are crazy, where as a wild animal is something that is of the wilderness and cannot or should not be tamed.  But I'm not sure if Thoreau sees Wildness and Wilderness as the same thing.  I believe the Wildness is something beyond the status quo.  If the world fell to a nuclear holocaust, everything would become chaos and wildness.  The Wilderness is beyond the boundaries of modern civilization.


Thoreau, who speaks highly of himself as a man of the Wild, looks down on modern civilization.  The odor of musquash on the trapper's coat is a much sweeter scent to him than that of the merchant's or the scholar's garments.  He finds wonderment and beauty in everything these civilized people would see as below them or a means of exploitation.  "I seek the darkest wood," Thoreau says.  His sanctuary lies in the deepest corners of Earth where the fearful refuse to explore.  


Speaking of Nature, Thoreau states that "her chronicles inform us when her wild animals, but not when the wild man in her, became extinct."  Although I am probably not the epitome of the wild man in nature, they do exist.  I would not say the wild man is extinct, maybe just dying off.  I believe that as long as man exists the possibility of the wild man can not be disregarded.  Society today continues to push towards less freedoms and less wildness.  Thoreau is correct in saying that "all good things are wild and free."  The more we are restricted and confined, the less use we have just as the tanned skins of tigers used for shoes "is not the best use to which they can be put."


A challenge for my writing is this course.  I have not done any type of nature writing.  Nature and the environment have always caught my attention whether it be walking through the woods, building a tree house as a kid, or spending hours watching Planet Earth on the Discovery channel.  Through this course I want to shed the clothes of the spectator; I want to become or at least find the wild man inside me.