Spiraling, but it's fine
Also: Victorian women enjoying Maine; nature writing and Alice and Wonderland
Dear friends,
Another quick post this week, because I am worn down. All the good intentions and careful boundaries I set out in January have fallen by the wayside and now I’m floundering to pick up the pieces again. That sounds dire but all it really means is I’ve stopped running and practicing yoga and haven’t even been getting outside very often! It’s crazy how when you lose that momentum, even for just a couple weeks, it can all feel like it’s spiraling out of control. I’m fine, I promise.
Anyway, as I’ve written before, I could use a vacation. The itch to get out into the woods and feel my legs and lungs burn from fresh air and exertion is strong! Since we probably won’t get out to finish our Long Path hike until later this spring, I might need to get a weekend trip to old faithful (Harriman) on the books asap.
What I’m reading
These photographs of women enjoying the Maine outdoors came through my Instagram feed this week, and they are a delight. [Hunter Dukes for Public Domain Review]
I also really enjoyed this short blog post on wonder and nature writing: “Those writers who have gotten humanity to care about the natural world — which is the world — have done so because they themselves have moved through it with a sense of wonder, each of them an Alice making a Wonderland of Earth.” (Click through for the lovely art from rare editions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.) [Maria Popova in The Marginalian]
Fun fact, I wrote my college thesis (one of them; there were so many English majors at Barnard that we weren’t allowed to do year-long theses because there weren’t enough professors to go around so instead we took two capstone seminars and wrote two longish papers, instead of one very long paper) on Jonathan Franzen’s novel, Freedom, which I really liked, even though my impression after the fact was that people thought the book was silly and that writing a paper about it was extra silly??
Rereading that paper now (yes, it’s still on my hard drive), it’s sort of touching how I was thinking about environmental issues and personal responsibility long before I thought of myself as an outdoorsy person or someone who was passionate about nature and the environment. Or maybe I did, I just wasn’t comfortable articulating it yet? It’s hard to remember how we were.
An excerpt from that 2010 paper:
After years of postponing his own save-the-world plans in order to raise a family with his wife, Patty, Walter Berglund takes a job with the Cerulean Mountain Trust. Ostensibly, the Trust’s mission is to create a permanent refuge in the Appalachian Mountains for the cerulean warbler, a species of songbird. The wealthy man behind the Trust, Vin Haven, decides to “blow more than half his total wad” to help protect this one bird (210). However, he has certain conditions, one being that the future site for the Warbler Park must first be exploited by coal companies using a controversial mining technique called mountaintop removal. In spite of the conditions, the idea of finally accomplishing something after years of inaction appeals to Walter immediately. He believes he can mitigate the damage of mountaintop removal with science-based reclamation, and that saving this one species will ultimately be worth any irreparable harm done to the environment during mining, and he can create a model for other conservation programs in the process. The advantages and disadvantages at first seem to balance each other. However, as the deal becomes progressively more unsavory, Walter’s “Vision” devolves into tunnel vision with regards to the cerulean warbler, and his fantasy about an ideal example of land reclamation and species conservation. In his hurry to accomplish something, anything, even for just one species, he loses sight of the costs and the consequence of privileging one over many.
It's like that gif of Alonzo Mourning sitting on the bench shaking his head and then coming to a quiet realization. "I'm not running because I'm depressed. I'm depressed because I'm not running." Happens to me once a year it seems. Hang in there