Minutia

Twelve years in one place and the bits and pieces of a life really accumulate. I have reached a point of total satiety. I need major, big time fung shui or something akin to that. I need to clean out and organize. I cannot stand the boxes and boxes of "stuff" lying around anymore. The piles of books on the floor and in the closets. The flotsam and jetsam of many years, hidden in those boxes, some with lids on, some open. I am throwing away stuff, recycling magazines and giving away books the past few weeks. Boxes and boxes. It's painful, yet I know it must be done.

I need to free up space on my shelves for books that I treasure and know I want to keep. Since I am a compulsive book buyer -- new and used -- there is no giving it up altogether. I like to know books are there, unread repositories of knowledge, deep thought, humor, lives lived, science explored, pasts recalled, society documented in photographs. All this wealth of knowledge and yet I know I can never read or know but a fraction of what is there. It's easier to sit on the computer and wile away the hours on the Internet, the modern-day multimedia, entertainment, commucation device/drug that cradles me in it's cocoon and shuts out the immediate world in favor of one lived in cyberspace.

But leaving cyberspace I am confronted everywhere in my immediate, four-room physical environment with the saved objects that, daily over the years, accumulate and which, upon inspection with the intent to get rid of, remind me of the life I have lived, the tiniest and most concrete souvenirs and valued papers, clippings, photos, and "objects" which for one reason or another have lasted and endured, even if never looked at or thought about them for years.

Still, like the unread books in piles overflowing on the floor beneath the full bookshelves, these "documents" and objects form the patchwork quilt that is the continuing narrative of my life. I discard these things at some subtle level of psychic peril, with regret and with the pain of loss, but with resignation that once I have looked them over and decided what to throw away, there is no going back.. small parts of me are gone forever. This is one reason the sudden loss of all ones precious keepsakes in a flood or fire is so devastating. Not just photo albums, but a lifetime of memories called to mind by the simple, ordinary things we acquire and hesitate to part with, help us to know who we are now. They are in a sense, part of our identity.

I share with you now just one tny corner of this world of objects, papers and books that I am surrounded by, in this instance the contents of an inverted boxtop, one of those lids that seal security storage boxes. This lies on top of two sealed boxes, whose contents are unknown to me.

*** a beautiful Zen wall calendar from 2004 with magical quotations and black and white photos of great beauty and profundity.

*** A copy fo Yahoo Internet Life magazine from June 2000.

*** A 2007 Nature Conservancy wall calendar that I took down just the other week, I think because there were already two other calendars on the dining room walls.

*** A copy of Natural Awakenings Healthy Living Magazine for June 2007

*** The National Geographic Special Publications book, "Raging Forces: Life on a Violent Planet," just what I need to see as hurricane season enters its busiest two months here on the the coast of South Carolina.

*** Two old Life magazines, collectors' issues I am sure, from December 1966 and November 1970. The cover story on one was "The Draft: Who Beats it and How" and the cover on the other is, Co-ed Dorms: An Intimate Revolution on Campus." I found these at the used books place and will not be tossing them any time soon. These are a chronicle of life during the time of my youth.

*** A John Ford Clymer painting that is the cover of an issue of the old Saturday Evening Post magazine, a bucolic country scene, sentimental and romanticized.

*** A solicitation from the American Diabetes Association.

*** A photo copy of an article from an old magazine about books titled, "Books Carve Your Character."

** A brochure for Charleston's Piccolo Spoleto Festival with a magnificent photo of Angel Oak on the cover.

*** A picture of a landscape at sunset on fund-raising material from the Southern Environmental Law Center.

*** A photo of my favorite barbecue buffet restaurant way out in the country.

*** A thank you card from someone I helped at work in February 2006.

*** A state Audubon Society newsletter from March 2006.

*** A Nature Conservancy newsletter

*** Copies of articles printed from the Internet back in March 2006: one about "Peak Oil" in Salon.com; another on Leo Strauss, the father of neoconservativsm; an interview on Working for Change with Erik Reece about strip mining in Appalachia; and a copy of the poem "To a Skylark" by Percy Shelley ("Hail to thee, blyhe spirit!/Bird thou never wert,/That from Heaven or near it,/Pourest thy full heart/In profuse strains of unpremeditated art...."

*** More newspaper clippings and a brochure for the "South Carolina Birds: A Fine Arts Exhibition" held at the City Gallery in Charleston in April 2006.

*** A 2005 Texas Highways wall calendar.

*** The book, "Standing Up Country: The canyon lands of Utah and Arizona."

*** A photo greeting card I bought at the farmer's market of a beach scene with sea oats.

*** At the bottom, a travel pack of antibacterial hand and face wipes (Wet Ones) and an unopened package of Dr. Scholl's corn removers. (Just in case)

Midsummer

I’m on the beach in the middle of the day, in the middle of July. It’s low tide and a very different beach from the one I visited yesterday evening when the tide was high and there was barely enough room to set up a chair between the sea oats and the water.

The ocean is now quite a ways off from the dunes. People are out sunning, watching, reading, baking under a hot sun. A small child is building a sand castle with elaborate turrets of wet sand dripped from his hands. A teenager has just dashed into the waves, cooling off quickly, exuberantly.

This whole tableaux is timeless. It’s like the days stand still, motionless in the wind-tempered heat. My niece and nephew, here from the perpetually cool Pacific Northwest, are reveling in the wind and surf, and water they can actually swim in that isn’t 56 degrees in the middle of summer.

I remember when we’d come to this beach in the 1960s for summer vacation, leaving New Orleans behind for a week or 10 days. What a different world it was here! We’d arrive, unpack a few things, and then race out to the beach. That first day of vacaton seemed to promise an unbroken expanse of carefree days stretching to the horizon. The days passed, and we hungrily clung to each one, filling as much of it as we could out on the beach -- taking walks, swimming, body surfing, lying in the sun, listening to the radio, observing the passing scene as the hours went by.

At about 1 pm, we’d struggle in for lunch, sun-ripened, hot, a bit flushed, and ready for some air conditioning. My favorite lunch was a cheese sandwich with fresh summer tomatoes and mayonnaise on soft white bread, the kind of sandwich that was so delicious on a beach day, and which invariably clung to the roof of your mouth. This would be washed down with an ice-cold Fresca, a soft drink they don’t bottle any more, as far as I know.

Toward the end of the week, as the glorious vacation drew to a close, the pain of impending separation became more intense. Our steps were heavier. We did things a bit more slowly. We savored each hour on the beach more than ever.

I realized that summer was fleeting, school beckoned once again in a few weeks, and a part of my youth was slipping away, although I didn’t think in those terms at the time, of course. The endless summers never lasted long enough those many years ago, and they were gone before we knew it.

Sometimes, like today, I feel like a smoothly functioning machine, all cylinders effortlessly providing the power to move me through a day that has one task after another to be accomplished, some simultaneously, it seems. I marvel at this ability to answer phones, do Internet research, talk and joke with co-workers, work on a project that has to be sent off in a series of e-mails, remember to write a going-away card for someone, attend a farewell lunch, answers more questions, write, pick up the phone, answer e-mail and voice mail...on and on.

Today was so busy that it seemed as if I was caught up a swirling tempest of activitity, little tasks and big ones, one right after another, that had to be done and when done, were to be replaced by other tasks that had to be accomplished. All in a ceaseless movement, orchestrated by me in some kind of orderly fashion, but yet part of an unconscious design, too. It all had to be done, and therefore, it would be. I felt myself doing too much, and yet I was so caught up in it all that I couldn’t stop and slow down. People were depending on me. I was depending on myself. The day passed liked a speeding arrow.

At one point, after two hours of work on an e-mail, I sat back, pressed the send button, and discovered, without any notice or warning, that I had been timed out, logged off, and with that fateful click, lost everything I had been working on. I struggled with my disbelief and anger only momentarily, received some knowing sympathy from a co-worker, and then went to my desk, opened a fresh template, and by sheer force of will rewrote the whole thing plus anther e-mail in one hour flat. Afterwards, I wondered: where on earth did I find the means and strength to do all that?

Three and one half hours later, after sitting by the waters of a tidal creek near the beach to eat seafood, wind buffeting me off the marsh, I at last began to wind down, slowed by both necessity and pleasant surroundings. I wasn’t a machine anymore, flawlessly energized, pistons firing.

Walking on the beach as darkness fell, calm now, ocean sounds greeting the twilight, the day was past. The elements seemed joined in proper perspective -- the darkening sky, the land, the sea. All was harmony with nature. The day just past was harmonized only to some frantic human clock of schedules, deadlines, people waiting for answers and replies. Fortunately, I was able to reply. But on that brief oceanside walk this evening, I didn’t have to listen to anything but the wind and the waves.

Sand castles

Yesterday evening about 8, I drove out to Folly Beach to sit awhile in my chair and wait for sunset and the close of the day. I read a favorite book off and on. It was one of those summer days that was too perfect. We’ve had rain recently to quench the drought, and today the temps were in the upper 80s, there was a nice breeze, just right, and the skies -- how can I describe them? Such clarity that all the colors were saturated perfectly and crystal clear. The blues were unmistakeably blue. The white cumulous clouds seemed irridescent. The Spartina grass in the marshes has attaned its soft, pastel summmer-green shades, signifying to me that life in this estuarine environment must now be at its summer peak.

In short, the summer world I observed all around me seemed to be in perfect harmony. Everything was just right. It was a day when you could really feel glad to be alive and experiencing all this beauty in the world.

As the light of day gradually yielded to evening’s lenghtening shadows, and the people who had been out on the beach went inside or left for the day, I found myself contemplating the moment when I, too, would pack up and head in. I waited a little longer. Thin clouds over the ocean glowed with color. The sky was still illuminated, but the land was growing darker. However, land and sky would soon be as one as night fell.

As I listened to the surf’s ceaseless sound upon the shore, I noticed, as I sometimes do, individual waves crashing on the beach with quick, little jabs at the shore. They stand out. They quickly subside. The larger waves have a rather full-throated roar about them as their full force spends itself in a smooth outpouring of energy, rhythmic and soothing most of the time, but sometimes strangely discordant as it momentarily seems like noise instead of the steady, gentle sound I’ve heard all my life at that same place on the Atlantic Ocean.

I watched an older couple walking along the beach, just before I went in and recall thinking how robust and healthy they seemed. Middle or late 60s I would guess, but there was something about them that seemed to defy the march of time. I suppose it is good to be as vigorous and active as you can be at any age.

One of the things I like most about being at the beach is the chance to observe people. Families are here now for their vacations, and I see all the various generations enjoying their summer routines.

And, when I go out to take my place in this seasonal tableaux of carefree existence, I almost invariably see someone’s abandoned sand castle, sometimes elaborate, sometimes very simple, left standing until the next incoming tide crumbles its loosely-packed walls, turrets, and moats and sends them all back into the ocean.

As I observed one up close the other day, I noticed that the builder’s name, Jared, was inscribed on one of the walls. I wondered how much fun he had had constructing that castle out of his imagination, and I remembered how I would sit for what seemed like hours at the water’s edge letting wet sand drip from my fingers to ornament my own youthful sand castles, watching closely the approach of the waves and building up my fortress ceaselessly as the water washed parts of it away. Then, finally, a big waves would come and inundate the whole thing, and I’d have to take my plastic bucket and shovel and go to another spot and start all over again. As children we didn’t seem to mind starting all over. It was all play and not the serious business of older kids and adults.

Sand castles. I haven’t built one in a long time.

White clapboard house and washtub

Two vignettes and one wished for:

I put up calendars on the walls in my rooms, and many of them have scenes and paintings I like to look at repeatedly. They are soothing. They relax this restless soul, who from time to time takes a break from the computer to see what the world outside is like, or was like in another age.

I’m looking at a picture in late May. It’s of a white clapboard house in the country with a woman sitting on the front porch shelling peas. Windows are open to catch the breeze, wash is on the line drying. A cat is on the bottom stoop of the steps leading to the kitchen. Part of a big maple tree is becoming fully leafed out. In the yard and surrounding the house are flowers -- daylillies and impatiens. An old pump is in the yard, too, with a blue bucket attached to the spout to receive cold, fresh water from the well it draws from. Shadows from the sun create a mosaic of light and dark spot on the grass. The cat is looking directly at me. The scene is frozen in time. Sometime in the 19th century. Fifty years ago. 75. I can’t tell. But contained in that little world, depicted in that calendar painting, is a universe of right order, hard work, gentlesness of spirit, goodness of heart.

The other scene is in autumn. A country house, but large, a big porch this time, surrounded by tall trees. A white picket fence. A swing in a tree. Two boys and a girl on their bikes heading for the dirt road in front of the house. The dirt road winds into the distance toward low hills and mountains, among other houses, barns and fields. Maybe it’s Connecticut or New England. At least, that what it reminds me of, and of how much I would love to visit New England some day and drive down such a country road, so different from the ones in my own piney woods of Lowcountry South Carolina.

Another scene I’d like to see: An old country store with people gathered in front in chairs and on benches, leaning back, taking in a quiet, late summer afternoon in the country. Hardly a car passing by on the road. Inside are old-fashioned jars filled with candy, and long wooden counters, and hardware supplies, and general merchandise -- all you’d really need, mostly, for a simple life. And I’d stop my car and get out and walk in the front screen door with the Merita Bread sign on it, and head for the soft drink case, open the lid, put my coins in, and retrieve a bottle of the iciest cold, Orange Nehi drink that ever quenched a thirst in July, and with it eat some crackers, and walk around in the store, smelling the good smells, hearing the old floorboards creak as I walk on them, looking up at the ornamental pressed tin panels in the old ceiling from when the building was constructed in the last centry. And I’d sigh a sigh of relief and satisfaction, knowing that not all of these places were lost to the world of megamalls and hard-driven commercial appetites, and traffic and noise with not much quiet civilization left. I am transported out of the present, and I wish it would last.

Four Holes Swamp

Deep, dark, murky, forbidding? Not at all. Saturday afternoon was spent walking a boardwalk trail deep into the interior of a bald cypress/tupelo river system known as Four Holes Swamp, located in the rural interior of South Carolina. It is a place of soaring 1,000-year old cypress trees, and clear, tea-colored water flowing in braided channels through the bottomland to join with the main stem of the river/swamp system. It is an oxygen factory. The air is clean, and light filters down to illumine flowing water and sunken logs. Nothing is ever done by man to alter this pristine environment -- the last remaining such virgin stand of this type of swamp forest left in the world, spared decades ago by a far-sighted lumberman named Francis Beidler, for whom the protected forest is named.

The only sounds to be heard during my walk were birdsong. Approximately 140 species of birds have been found here as well as numerous species of trees, including an astonishing variety of oaks, hickories, and elms, many of which are suited to watery environments. But there are pockets of higher ground where upland varieties of hardwoods can flourish. It is a place of amazing diversity, a refuge for the soul and spirit. A visit there never ceases to lift me up and out of the sordid realities of the world outside with its work tensions, bad news in the media, traffic, congestion and pollution. Here you enter a realm free from all that. It has been left to the forces of nature, all 11,000 preserved acres of the swamp.

As I sat on a bench overlooking Goodson Lake, about half way down the trail, a man whispered for me to look up into the tree overhead. There I saw a nest with what appeared to be two fledging blue herons, quietly waiting for their next meal. What a sight to see in my binoculars! By this point there were occasional little breezes stirring the leaves, but only temporarily. It was generally a still day which only made the quietness of the place seem more pervasive. And it was not hot at all for this time of year in South Carolina. It was, in fact, a very pleasant day. I can’t say I’d want to be walking this trail in mid-July, however.

One of the amazing things about this place is the water that flows across the swamp in narrow braided channels or else in flatter sheets with just barely perceptible movement, at least at this time of year. In summer it will all be dry except for the main swamp channel. From the boardwalk you can look down when the sun if out from behind the clouds, as it was intermittently Saturday, and see perfect reflection of the trees and foliage in the water. With a slight wind, these reflections shimmer and then become still again.

All those who love this place -- and people from all over the world come here -- are watching the results of court and other actions designed to stave off two area developers who have taken advantage of non-existing zoning laws in the rural county this swamp flows through and are attempting to build a major motor speedway for car races just one mile from the borders of the preserve. It has been a two-year fight thus far, and, as of now, the end result seems hopeful for the preserve. It is inconceivable that someone would want to destroy the ingegrity of this place with noise and pollution from cars spinning around a track, but that is what has happened. There is no limit to the depths to which some people will sink in their contempt and utter disregard for the natural world and those who care deeply about it. To them that pristine forest is nothing but a bunch of woods and swamp that should be drained and developed. Nothing is worth saving to them.

As I walked the remaining half mile or so of the trail up through slightly higher ground in the swamp, past huge overcup oaks and soaring tulip trees, I saw half a dozen egrets, take flight from their watery perches and fly off into nearby trees. Then there was silence once again.

Forest trail

After a two hour drive through rural South Carolina countryside, green and lush with spring and on a day that was mild and cool with a gentle breeze, I arrived at the wildlife sanctuary. Before me was a two-mile long gravel road that led to a complex of buidlings, including an old farmstead and house. Around a bend, I headed toward the trail that led to the Savannah River.

Winding down this road I entered an area of near wildernes, or so it seemed. All sounds from the outside had long disappeared to be repalced by wind and birdsong. I pulled up to a picnic area alongside a small lake filled with huge cypress trees. I turned off the engine and soaked up the peace of this most special place I had wanted to visit for some years.

After a short time spent in contemplation and wonder at the lake, I made my way to the trailhead and entered a world of deep green, shade and the most astonishing array of birdsong I have heard in some time. To my left was a swamp bottomland forest filled with oaks of every variety and to my right was the cypress lake. Such a contrast -- two very different natural worlds on either side of the trail.

As I walked deeper into the woods, I found myself listening to the rustling of squirrels foraging in the woods. I spotted a small armodillo burrowiing into the soft earth, oblivious to my presence. Blue-wiinged butterflies danced ahead of me on the trail. And above all else, the wondrous songs of the birds that filled this forest of old growth trees, a place primeval and unspoiled.

Alone amidst this natural wonder, I found it very difficult to turn around and head back to where I had started. I wanted to hold onto the moments of grace found here. But life is change. The time for departure would soon be upon me. What memories I hold onto and cherish as I look back on that trip just a few days in the past.

Webb Wildlife Center