Today I sat in the sunshine listening to the tones of creeks and counted thousands of baby salmon. Now I have wriggling, mottled, silvery little Chinooks dancing in front of me when I close my eyes.
Lilac is flowering and so are the Orleans irises.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
wanting to blend in with the slate and the serpentine
Here is my problem.
I love this place. And I want to know everything about it. I want to know its geology, its botany, what plants I can find on a walk through the woods that will cure me of nosebleed or headache or flu, how to gather, process and prepare acorns, how to stalk a deer, how to spear a salmon, how to fell a tree and mill it into planks and hammer together a cabin, how to conjugate verbs in a language--Karuk-- that no one speaks anymore, when to look for morels. I want to walk every ridgetop and dive every bend in the river and wade every creek until the geography is under my skin. The amount I want to learn about this place is staggering. Overwhelming.
My problem is that I come from elsewhere and I will always be a transplant. No matter how much I learn, no matter how much I can absorb. I came from the outside and it's probable that I'll return to the outside. No matter how "native" I ever come to feel, I'll never be native--in the sense of ethnicity or of having grown up on the river, or both. So I end up feeling, and not knowing quite how merited this feeling is, that I don't deserve to live here, that I don't deserve to love it, that my desire to learn is just so much eager college-girl idealism, that it's very superficial, that I could move on to another place tomorrow and start feeling the very same way about it, so why bother to learn in the first place? That just knowing a bunch of stuff about a particular place doesn't entitle you in any way to it. And I don't mean entitlement in the sense of owning the land. I mean entitlement in the sense of calling it your home.
Then what does entitle a person to call a place their home, precisely? I was always good at feeling at home anywhere I went, until I arrived here.
And what does "native" mean, anyway? Is it my DNA that makes me inadequate to call myself a river person, my short tenure here, my general lack of place-based knowledge, or all three? And where is my home? And who is my community? Sometimes I think you can claim a home, claim a community; and other times I think that they have to claim you. But this goes back to my general inner debate about life. Lead it, or let it lead you where it will? I don't feel brazen enough yet to choose THIS place as MY place, but if I stand off from it will I be able to fully experience it?
One thing I do know about life on the river is that I am a woman who needs to get out of the canyon sometimes. I need to get into the high country, see some horizon, some perspective. What the river does is it channels your thinking, and mine doesn't need to dig its own channels any deeper. It needs to overflow onto the floodplain and widen itself.
I love this place. And I want to know everything about it. I want to know its geology, its botany, what plants I can find on a walk through the woods that will cure me of nosebleed or headache or flu, how to gather, process and prepare acorns, how to stalk a deer, how to spear a salmon, how to fell a tree and mill it into planks and hammer together a cabin, how to conjugate verbs in a language--Karuk-- that no one speaks anymore, when to look for morels. I want to walk every ridgetop and dive every bend in the river and wade every creek until the geography is under my skin. The amount I want to learn about this place is staggering. Overwhelming.
My problem is that I come from elsewhere and I will always be a transplant. No matter how much I learn, no matter how much I can absorb. I came from the outside and it's probable that I'll return to the outside. No matter how "native" I ever come to feel, I'll never be native--in the sense of ethnicity or of having grown up on the river, or both. So I end up feeling, and not knowing quite how merited this feeling is, that I don't deserve to live here, that I don't deserve to love it, that my desire to learn is just so much eager college-girl idealism, that it's very superficial, that I could move on to another place tomorrow and start feeling the very same way about it, so why bother to learn in the first place? That just knowing a bunch of stuff about a particular place doesn't entitle you in any way to it. And I don't mean entitlement in the sense of owning the land. I mean entitlement in the sense of calling it your home.
Then what does entitle a person to call a place their home, precisely? I was always good at feeling at home anywhere I went, until I arrived here.
And what does "native" mean, anyway? Is it my DNA that makes me inadequate to call myself a river person, my short tenure here, my general lack of place-based knowledge, or all three? And where is my home? And who is my community? Sometimes I think you can claim a home, claim a community; and other times I think that they have to claim you. But this goes back to my general inner debate about life. Lead it, or let it lead you where it will? I don't feel brazen enough yet to choose THIS place as MY place, but if I stand off from it will I be able to fully experience it?
One thing I do know about life on the river is that I am a woman who needs to get out of the canyon sometimes. I need to get into the high country, see some horizon, some perspective. What the river does is it channels your thinking, and mine doesn't need to dig its own channels any deeper. It needs to overflow onto the floodplain and widen itself.
Monday, April 13, 2009
i wake up to woodpeckers
I need a way to help me appreciate, record, and reflect on my year on the Klamath, while it's still in progress. Hence, this blog.
What's blooming in the woods now?
Dogwood
Fawn lily
Milkmaids
Saxifrage
Maple
Madrone
Bay
Trillium
Wild strawberry
Alder
Redbud
Monkeyflower
Indian paintbrush
Lupine
And much more, I'm sure, that I haven't the chops to identify or even notice. Spring in the forest is much subtler and slower to unfold than spring in the suburbs or a city park. It's this wave of bright green that builds and builds, taking over incrementally, without you really noticing until one day you wake up and the canopy is a riot of leaves instead of a skeletal graveyard of bare branches.
What's coming up in our garden?
Peas
Potatoes
Onions
Spinach
Chard
Radishes
Lettuce
Broccoli
Cauliflower
As a completely novice gardener, I have to give myself a pat on the back for the mere accomplishment of getting seeds to actually germinate and become small plants. It is amazingly satisfying, even though all I did was stick some seeds in some soil and pour on some water. They did all the rest.
I go to bed hearing tree frogs and wake up to woodpeckers.
What's blooming in the woods now?
Dogwood
Fawn lily
Milkmaids
Saxifrage
Maple
Madrone
Bay
Trillium
Wild strawberry
Alder
Redbud
Monkeyflower
Indian paintbrush
Lupine
And much more, I'm sure, that I haven't the chops to identify or even notice. Spring in the forest is much subtler and slower to unfold than spring in the suburbs or a city park. It's this wave of bright green that builds and builds, taking over incrementally, without you really noticing until one day you wake up and the canopy is a riot of leaves instead of a skeletal graveyard of bare branches.
What's coming up in our garden?
Peas
Potatoes
Onions
Spinach
Chard
Radishes
Lettuce
Broccoli
Cauliflower
As a completely novice gardener, I have to give myself a pat on the back for the mere accomplishment of getting seeds to actually germinate and become small plants. It is amazingly satisfying, even though all I did was stick some seeds in some soil and pour on some water. They did all the rest.
I go to bed hearing tree frogs and wake up to woodpeckers.
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