Megan A Grove

English 380

Spring 2007

Marx

 

Patterns & Cycles: Literature, Modoc, and Myself

 

                  Throughout life and our experiences we recognize patterns; and react to them. Each pattern illuminates part of a cycle. How that cycle functions or how strongly it shapes us is difficult to understand? A strong pattern for me which has been influential in shaping who I am is Nature. I was privileged to grow up in a stark, beautiful, high desert landscape where we spent almost every day outside playing and learning. I also enjoy the outdoors as a successful equestrian both personally, and as an instructor. I have chosen a career as a landscape architect exploring and building the interface between the environment and people. And when presented a choice to fulfill my graduation writing requirement the allure of the title ENG 380 Eco-Literature was too great to resist.

                  Nature is rife with complex, interwoven, endless cycles. These cycles and rhythms have fascinated man throughout the ages. We see a pattern and are attracted to it. They comfort us as they create a sense of familiarity and expectation. These cycles are often archetypal driving the way we interact with the world around us including: day and night, the seasons, life and death, youth and age, camaraderie and solitude. From personal struggle and introspection to social and political turmoil we often look to Nature as an ideal to learn from. Eco-literature and the pastoral tradition is our literary classification for a wide and varied group of men and women who have done that; and written of their experiences and opinions using Nature as their muse.

Through the course of this class I have selected a few of the patterns and cycles which resonated within me. Where to begin? Let me illustrate with two descriptions of life both provocative and rich with cyclic patterns. From the beautiful description of the creation of life found in Genesis in the bible here is an abridged version:

[Gen 1:2] And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

[Gen 1:3] And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

[Gen 1:5] And God called the light Day, and the Darkness he called Night. And the evening and morning were the first day.

[Gen 1:9] And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

[Gen 1:10] And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

[Gen 1:12] And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed it was in itself after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

[Gen 1:21] And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the water brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

[Gen 1:25] And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

The same expansive character of life in Genesis is also found in Aldo Leopold’s description of life even though it uses a different set of vocabulary; “In the beginning, the pyramid of life was low and squat; the food chains short and simple. Evolution has added layer after layer, link after link. Man is one of thousands of accretions to the height and complexity of the pyramid. Science has given us many doubts, but it has given us at least one certainty: the trend of evolution is to elaborate and diversify the biota.” (p. 215-216) Each description evokes the inscrutability of life and yet contrasts with such different perspectives. I find it reassuring the subtle placement of the evening flowing into the morning in Genesis. It is the emphasis of the birth of the day and renewal, which I find comforting. Just as I find imagining myself as a link in a complex set of chains more apposite than being the apex of divine creation with dominion over all.

                  Moving beyond the miracle of life my interest was also stimulated by the unique perspective of the tree utilized by many of the authors we read including Berry and Muir. Amidst his superb descriptions of the landscape, its processes, and his adventures through them John Muir revealed a fascinating rumination on the idea of a journey in the chapter of his book, The Mountains of California, entitled A Wind-storm in the Forests; “We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not extensive ones, it is true; but our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than-tree-wavings—many of them not so much.” I must admit I am enamored with the idea that all of our life’s efforts are no more, or less significant than the swaying of a tree in the wind and I am intrigued by the contemplation of continuously experiencing anew even though you have not physically moved at all. How does being in one place for so long affect perceptions and preferences?

                  The landscape of my life for the first twelve years in Modoc County was covered in Great Basin sagebrush scrub communities which extend along the eastern edge of California from the eastern base of the Cascades across the Modoc Plateau and south across the lower slopes of the Sierra Nevada down to the Transverse Ranges. The dominant shrub is of course the Great Basin sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) which grew together with buckbrush (Ceanothus cuneatus), and Great Basin wild-rye (Leymus cinereus) on our ranch. (Holland, p. 357-360) It is startling to realize my favorite native plants I have learned during my college education are reiterations of those standards of my childhood. I am drawn to California sagebrush (Artemisia californica), California wild lilac (Ceanothus griseus), and even though it is a terrible invasive species Veldt grass (Erharta calycina) growing along the dunes in Los Osos.

                  The reading of selected authors in Eco-Literature has confirmed my own sensitivity to patterns and man’s universal appreciation of cycles. I enjoyed the complexity and layering within each author’s words as a parallel to the intricacy and patterns of Nature; of Life. I want to embrace the changes within myself as well as acknowledge the changes occurring around me. Mary Oliver’s declaration in her poem Sleeping in the Forest expresses my desire for self-invention, “By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.” And Wendell Berry’s The Peace of Wild Things echoes my own personal experiences searching for respite from overwhelming chaos and fears in the sweet embrace of Nature. His words so strongly convey his need; my need for the natural environment; “When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,….I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

                  As I search for my path in life I always contemplate the patterns and cycles around me. Nature with its indefinite patterns has influenced me just as much as my family has. The idea of being part of a grander cycle is vastly reassuring to me. After reading Gary Snyder’s Axe Handles; I realized I am an axe handle waiting to be shaped and I am the axe shaping other handles. The following poem I wrote in my Eco-Literature Journal is I feel a culmination of my experience from childhood till now in this class expressing my iterations, my patterns and is the final note I would like to leave you with.

 

Thoughts Inspired by Gary Snyder’s Poem “Axe Handles”

By Megan Grove

                                   

Tool shaping, blade biting

Raw wood refined.

Parents presence, elder molding

Green youth tempered.

 

From axe handle to child,

To literature steeped in reference.

From evening to morning,

Winter wanes and springs waxes.

 

Stone crumbles to dust,

And plants decay,

Gives birth

To virgin soil.

 

Written word begins to fade,

Read once more,

Gives birth

To a new voice.

 

Generation upon generation feeding the cycles.

We are a stone cast into a pond.

It has sunk from sight,

But the ripples remain.

 

Life Reiterated.

Works Cited

Berry, Wendell. “The Peace of Wild Things.” California Polytechnic State University. 9 May 2007. <http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/courses/380/Berry/WBerry.html>.

“Book of Genesis.” The Bible, King James Authorized Translation. 1611.

Holland, V.L. and Keil, David J. California Vegetation. Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company. 1995.

Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. New York: Oxford University Press. 1949.

Muir, John. “Chapter 10 A Wind-storm in the Forests.” The Mountains of California. California Polytechnic State University. 20 Apr. 2007. <http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/courses/380/380syl2007.html>.

Oliver, Mary. “Sleeping in the Forest”. California Polytechnic State University. 25 May 2007. <http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/courses/380/maryoliver/maryoliverpoems2.htm>.

Snyder, Gary. “Axe Handles”. California Polytechnic State University. 23 May 2007. <http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/courses/380/snyder/380snyder.html>.