Painting

My Black Lab Jackson

I've been painting a lot lately, mostly wildlife but I decided to do a portrait of my two-year old lab.

Reflection of the Apostle Islands

It’s been over a year since I last saw the waves cut out the east facing rocks of Sand Island.  I’d forgotten the different color stone and green ceiling moss of the caves.  I had even forgot the fine, soft sand.  It rained the first night; bear tracks I’d seen the first day were washed into the lake.  The second night I sat on the pier and gazed at the stars, but it wasn’t so much gazing as gaping at all the illumination of the sky without a moon.  The basin of the big dipper was as big as my hand stretched out. The tide was inland five feet compared to that morning.  The waves were long dark shadows on the surface of the water and moved like quick spears thrown in the night. 

I woke up at 6:30am and watched the sun rise to the right of Oak Island.  It started pink and quickly turned to a royal blue shining with gold filaments.  I waded in the surf near the shore to find an agate.  I walked to the south end of the beach where a cliff cuts off the sand but didn’t find any.  Instead I found myself staring at a pile of black onyx, red quarts, sandstone and other colored pebbles.  These were the colors of the earth polished by water and warmed by the sun.  The waves fought against my kayak the entire paddle back, and I couldn't help but feel that the island didn't want me to leave just yet.

Parents in the Wild

This was a paper I wrote for a freshmen college class.  I got a pretty good grade, so I thought I'd post it.

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            Can you even imagine your parents swinging from tree to tree, building a house out of logs or mud, living in a forest or desert, and instead of their morning coffee they drank from a brook?  Can you imagine them living without cell phones, computers, television, or a job? I don’t know any who can.  Even if our parents don’t live like a modern day Tarzan they still affect the way we, the children, react with nature.  While reading Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild and Richard Louv’s The Last Child in the Woods, coupled with my own experiences, I have discovered three major nature-child relationships formed due to the influence of parents and adults.  The first being that some parents have influenced their kids to hate the outdoors because it’s potentially dangerous and holds no “future.”  Second being that some children use nature as an escape from their parents or the “adult” world, and the third is that some children have grown to love nature as a way of connecting with their family.

            Remember the days when the kids who spent all day inside were considered the weird ones?  Nowadays it’s quite the opposite.  Whether or not it is the intention of the parents a large percentage of kids aren’t spending time outside. It could be to keep their children away from nature out of fear; they don’t want their kids to get hurt, lost, or in trouble.  Kids could get hurt if their fort collapses on them, they could fall into a river and drown, or they could get lost or kidnapped. “Nature can frighten a child”(Louv 7). Even if a child were to risk injury in the pursuit of outdoor play he or she could face misdemeanor charges for “the illegal use of open space”(Louv 27).  You can look at the tree, but you can’t climb it.  A forth-grader in San Diego was quoted saying, “I like to play indoors better ‘cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.”  Richard Louv offers the explanation that parents think nature is an unorganized waste of their child’s time, a view which is reflected in the child’s view of nature. “One boy said computers are more important than nature, because computers are where the jobs are”(Louv 13). You can’t get a job with only tree climbing on your resume.

            This is enough to stress out a child; he or she may try to escape his or her parents and this restriction on playing. John Burroughs once said, “I go into nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in tune.” I think this perfectly describes Chris McCandless.  McCandless risked misdemeanors in the Detrital Wash, and was even given a ticket for hitchhiking. He played in places he “shouldn’t have.”  His cross country teammate said “He would lead us on long, killer runs through places like farmers’s fields and construction sites, places we weren’t supposed to be”(Krakauer 112).  Another example of how some kids (the other runners) are too afraid of rules or getting in trouble to enjoy the outdoors. Chris McCandless hated his parents; he was disgusted by their wealth and his father’s bigamy. They made his “entire childhood seem like a fiction”(Krakauer 123).  Even his sister hated their parents and “also like Chris, she clashed fiercely with Walt and Billie as an adolescent”(Krakauer 129). Louv says that “in nature, a child finds freedom, fantasy, and privacy: a place distant from the adult world, a separate peace”(Louv 7).  Chris felt healed in the wilderness, he wrote to Ron saying, “the very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure”(Krakauer 59).

On Chris’ journey to Alaska  he was “at long last… unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess, a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence”(Krakauer 22).  This was his escape; he was free from his parents and the adult world.  He wanted so much to be separated from his parents that he even changed his name!  Like Adam naming the animals, he felt the name his parents had given him gave them power over him; he had to get rid of it; the name Alexander Supertramp gave him that freedom.

I was named after my grandmother on my father’s side who died shortly after I was born.  Anna was an adventurous, strong woman.  I sometimes wonder if my dad spent so much time with me because he missed his mom.  He’d take me fishing and when I wasn’t catching anything he’d let me reel in one he’d already set the hook on.  He’d never claim it was his fish either.  When we came home I had always caught the bigger fish.  My dad doesn’t put up with that sort of thing now of course. We’d take our dog on long walks through the parks by our home and we had the most beautiful garden with blue ribbon winning dahlias, vegetables, and lilies, my favorite.  That’s where I learned to love the wilderness.  It reminded me of spending time with my dad, time I don’t get much of anymore. Louv heard a fifth-grader say, “When I’m in the woods… I feel like I’m in my mother’s shoes”(Louv 13).  Some kids use nature to escape their parents, others to remind them of their parents.

The nature deficiency of today’s children is a result of parenting.  Parents shouldn't expect their kids to naturally want to be healthy, or to play outside, they have to be taught and allowed to love the outdoors.  Some lucky kids find it on their own; other’s aren’t so lucky. It is up to the adults of this world to show children the joy that comes from being outside and existing with the earth rather than ignoring it.  One cannot love something they don’t know about. If we want to save the earth, future generations must love it.

Harvey - A Short Story

  Of all the people I've known throughout my life, Harvey was my greatest friend.  He was older, bigger, and wiser.  The first time I saw him he greeted me with open arms raised up like a praise to God.  I could tell he was waiting for a hug so shyly I stepped in to hug him.  His embrace was a soft wind against my back while my face brushed against his rough, dry skin that was covered in hairy moss.  He seemed overjoyed to meet a perfect stranger; always praising God.  I concluded that he was a lonely man.  His name was etched poorly on his coverings.  I watched him reach towards his neighbors, children and grandchildren, but they kept their distance.  They even sheltered the young from him, always at arm's length away.  Mingling only with each other, some even reaching out towards me, but never Harvey.

I began to visit every day.  He would set out little things for me to eat; leafy greens mostly with occasional meat that I'm sure were insects.  He meant well so I excepted.  He even spent the morning collecting fresh dew for me to drink.  As the months passed autumn cooled the air I noticed his hair was beginning to frost over and fall gently to the ground in flakes.  When I came to greet him in the mornings his arms were still outstretched, though I could feel his skin swell with water.  

Weeks passed and soon all his hair was gone.  His grandchildren didn't have hair either.  I wondered if they were supporting him, in their own silent way, but they still kept their distance.  I asked if everything were okay, but he never said a word.  I suddenly realized that since the day I met him, I had never heard him speak.

Harvey hadn't said a word our entire relationship.  I must have imagined his deep voice and rich laughter that disturbed the birds in neighboring trees so much they took flight.  I had told him so much about my self; I was mad at him.  I had told him about my family moving around and not understanding the pain they caused me.  The beds I'd slept in and never made.  The lip piercing from a Saturday night I didn't remember.  All I knew about him were assumptions I made from the clues I had.  The small children that resembled him I assumed were his grandchildren, but they could belong to his neighbors.  His tattoo of a heart with initials that didn't belong to him always puzzled me, but I never asked because it seemed to cause him pain.

The anger got to me and I didn't visit for a long time.  From October to the beginning of December I didn't visit.  It was the wind against my window that made me decide to visit again. I wondered if he was okay.  I threw on my black coat and ran outside.  I arrived at his home as the wind picked up.  He turned his arms towards me in the wind when a brutal airstream knocked him off his feet.  Harvey lied still.  I rushed over but he didn't move.  I tried to drag him, to get him on his feet again, but I wasn't strong enough.  Tears streamed down my face and burned my cold cheeks as snow started to fall.  I ran around frantically yelling for his neighbors to help, but they just looked on, swollen and cold.  I wiped off the piling snow until my hands were numb, then a thin lace of snow covered his body like a blanket.  

I left him there with his neighbors staring.  I ran home and locked myself in.  I tried to black it all from my mind.  I tried to go on with my life, but I couldn't stop thinking about him.  I didn't return until the spring.  I didn't know what to expect.  Had some one moved the corpse or was he still there, ravaged by animals?  I had not told anyone anyone from my town about it only his neighbors knew.  Thought they hadn't seemed to care.

I brought him flowers, purple irises, the ones we used to gaze at in the summer months.  The closer I got the more a lump grew in my throat.  I recognized some of the kids; their hair had grown back in full like the first time I saw them.  They all kept their distance but looked on with something I interpreted as joy.  I turned to where their outstretched arms pointed, and there, where Harvey once stood grew a new tree from his broken truck. 

End