Cleansing by camping
August 25, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Green Journal , 6 comments
We spent five days happily scrambling up rocks, walking on pine-needle-padded-and-scented trails, wading in crystal clear streams and generally wallowing in dirt.
Poets, writers and naturalists have so eloquently crafted passages and passages of tribute to this breath-taking valley. I would only trample and stumble on their words if I were to put forth my feeble attempt at describing Yosemite and the Sierra-Nevada mountain range.
Nonetheless, every visitor to the national park probably has his or her unique and personal experience while traveling through the valley.
John Muir’s description of the valley as a “tonic of wilderness” came to my mind as we clambered up a long stretch of Stately Pleasure Dome (can it be more appropriately named?) on a perfect evening.
We sat down on the luminous granite, uniquely Yosemite and watched Tenaya Lake stretching and glistening in the early evening sun. It may sound utterly corny to people, but I was overwhelmed with the feeling that I was being cleansed inside out. There were no noises in my head competing with each other to be heard. There were no petty thoughts that ran in and out from the sidelines.
Just the quietness and the smallness I was feeling.
I don’t meditate. But if I ever do, that will be the state I want to achieve.
Even my six year old and three year old, who were normally incapable of remaining silent for more than 30 seconds, were mesmerized by what was in front of them. Richard Louv wrote a whole book to encourage parents and children to play in natural surroundings. In Last Child in the Woods, he listed many practical reasons for staying outdoors.
But right there and then, all the reasons simply slipped away. Looking at my kids, I knew they got it. They were feeling it in their hearts.
Later, on the way home, my three-year old said, “I wish we could be camping all the time and forever.”
“Awesome idea if mom and dad didn’t have to work to eat and live,” I laughed.
When we got home, she dashed straight to her room. A few minutes later, she charged out jingling her piggy bank, “Mom, I think we have enough money!”
Taking a proud breath, she continued, “can we go camping now?”
Children, it seems, do not need to be persuaded to play in the woods.
This weekend as I tried to catch up with my regular blog reads, I saw that Greenbean, Burbs, and Ruchi were exercising their green muscles to fight against the evisceration of the Endangered Species Act.
Fresh from my overdose of nature (actually there is no such thing), I participated immediately with a sense of admiration for these green heroes but also a dose of sadness.
Why do we do these things to ourselves? It’s no different from chipping away at our beautiful home, one brick at a time, for a temporary nickel here and there. Depleted of any poetry in us, are we that different from a pack of hyenas?
I will leave with a passage John Muir wrote in 1877:
“When a man plants a tree he plants himself. Every root is an anchor, over which he rests with grateful interest, and becomes sufficiently calm to feel the joy of living.”
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Back to school camping trip
August 18, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Green Journal , 5 comments
Can you go anywhere without seeing “back to school sales” signs this week? Indeed school is starting for my kids next week. Before that happens, we are escaping to our back-to-school family camping trip for a few days.
Yosemite, here we come!
While Yosemite valley is breathtakingly beautiful, my personal favorite is Tuolomne Meadows in the Yosemite National Park where the sky is open, the domes are spectacular and the tourists are pleasantly fewer.
This is what we will see:
(courtesy of www.wikimedia.org)
and this:
(courtesy of www.yosemitehikes.com)
Be back in a week!
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Bragging time
August 11, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Green Journal , 4 comments
If you are a seasoned gardener, you will laugh at my misplaced exuberance. But hey, this is my first year and a few months ago, I could not tell the difference between a squash leaf and a melon leaf. More laughing at my expense, yeah, yeah.
But we are seeing the fruit of our labor. The corn is not quite there yet, but in a few weeks, these fragile and thin-looking ears of corn will be consumed with great enthusiasm. We are a little crazy about corn around here.
These are our baby melons. They may look like mature watermelons and cantaloupes. But remember that camera adds 10 pounds? They are only a little bigger than a decent sized egg. But aren’t they cute?
Here are our consistently flowering and fruiting strawberries. Every week, the six plants provide us a pint of strawberries. For the first year, I suppose it’s not too shabby. You natural green thumbs, humor me, for once?
Our carrots have come and gone. They were sort of deformed, stretching and bulging in all sorts odd directions. I happily ate them in a big bowl of salad nonetheless.
Tomatoes are late this year, though they are forming little green orbs. We did leave the plants alone for a whole month, leaving them to the sole care of a hastily rigged and barely working automatic sprinkler system. It was a miracle that most of them even survived.
Zucchinis and squashes are flowering; those will be on the bragging list for next week.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Once a geek always a geek
August 7, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 5 comments
Yesterday I had some time to read an incredible article by Nathan S. Lowis, a chemistry professor at the California Institute of Technology. Though the paper is one year old, it includes so much astounding information that makes my head spin. I love numbers because they speak facts to me.
I’d like to share some of his thoughts in the conclusion section first:
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In the United States, we spend more money buying gas at the pump in ONE hour than we spend funding basic solar research in our country over an ENTIRE year.
In that ONE hour, more energy from the sun hits the earth than all of the energy consumed on our planet in an ENTIRE year.
We don’t yet know how to capture the solar energy cost-effectively.
We spend $200 Billion annually to fund the Iraqi war (I added this from NYT), $28 Billion on health, and $0.028 Billion on basic solar research.
I translate it to myself: We can avert the climate crisis IF (big if here) we have the will power and the vision further than what’s on TV tonight.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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It worked! sort of
August 5, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 1 comment so far
Vacuum cleaners are not that complex technically. However it is still frustrating to trouble shoot and to fix if you are like me, a hopelessly non-handy person. But after lamenting about the lost art of fix-it, I had to try and try to fix (or break) our vacuum cleaner.
But sometimes, with enough perseverance even I can fix a simple household appliance. Well, sort of.
After two hours of laying out all the unrecognizable parts, reading the trouble shooting section of the manual, pulling my hair out and cursing up a storm, I managed to make the vacuum run.
I can’t say it is fixed because I still have two small plastic pieces that don’t fit anywhere. The power cord no longer retracts. Yeah, I fixed something while breaking others. Don’t know how long it will last, but the vacuum cleaner is doing its job so far.
Considering other options - tossing it into the garbage or paying half of the price of the vacuum for repair, I am happy with the outcome. Honestly, I even felt an inflated sense of accomplishment. “It’s not like it’s a car or anything, or even a bike,” you say. I know, but someone has to pat me on the back.
But if it breaks again, I am taking it to a repair shop. While playing around me, my kids asked, “what are you saying?” as I muttered too many curse words. THAT is worth avoiding.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Sustain a sustainble life
August 4, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Green Journal , 4 comments
What does it mean to live a sustainable life?
Arduous clearly stole my would-be-brilliant thoughts last week. Fortunately I tucked away the rest of my random opinions that could only be surfaced and comprehended by a jetlagged mind at 3am. So here is my spin.
Coming back from our recent trip to China, I was disheartened. It may be hard to tell from my previous entries. But I would be blind if I could not see the consequences of 1.6 billion people trying to live like us. With India thrown in, that is 2.7 billion people potentially increasing their resource consumption by magnitudes. Frankly we don’t have any right or ability to stop them.
There are about 250 million registered cars in the U.S. Imagine 1 billion more cars on the road in the near future.
We consume 28 billion pounds of beef annually in the U.S. Imagine 140 billion more pounds of beef that may be produced in the horrendous factory farms every year.
On and on, you wonder why I was disturbed. I asked myself at 3am one jetlagged morning: “honestly do you really think it matters whether you bring your own bags to the stores?” I could not produce a satisfying answer.
Then a couple of days later, Crunchy Chicken asked an interesting question – would you behave differently if energy and water were free in terms of financial and environmental cost? Most people mentioned that they’d probably keep their houses a little warmer in the winter and a little cooler in the summer.
Then it clicked for me. Even if energy and water were free and even if all 2.7 billion people were striving to emulate our lifestyle, it would not change most of the things I do now.
I’d still enthusiastically
I’d still use green cleaning products, buy organic produce and meats, eat less junk food, apply non-petroleum based lotions, because I do all these things out of health concern not obligation.
I’d still recycle and compost, I’d still bring my own bags and cups to the stores, I’d still use homemade napkins, I’d still not buy crap from Target, I’d still repair our household tools and gadgets as much as possible, because I do all these things out of habit not obligation.
Sure I could use a longer shower or turn up the heat a couple of degrees in the winter. But these are hardly sacrifices.
I can’t seem to cut traveling out of my life, though I try to do it with as little impact as possible, I let my children get plastic (gasp!) lego pieces, mostly from second hand, I enjoy occasional restaurant outing, and we patronize the ones that use local and organic ingredients.
This is how I plan to sustain a sustainable life - living it with joy and leaving room for eco-sins now and then.
Thank goodness I am just into stock car racing, bi-annual home remodeling, or weekly shopping. Otherwise I might have to suffer some serious sacrificing for the common good.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Copyright 2007 Organicpicks
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