Make room for blackberries

A colleague told me about a time when she needed to chop down a thick stand of weeds at the edge of a ditch, so she took her machete and swung through the weeds, mentally giving each weed the name of person who had annoyed her: telemarketers, demanding students, annoying neighbors, and so on. This allowed her to kill two birds with one stone (or whack two weeds with one machete): she cleared the weeds while harmlessly working out her frustrations.

What names would I project on the weeds I pulled in the blackberry patch this week? Take that, telecommunications problems! Curses on you, neverending road construction project that makes me sit in traffic waiting for a flagman to let me through on two separate parts of my morning commute! I spit in your face, spring floods!

I hadn't intended to do any weeding in the blackberry patch this summer; in fact, I'd written the blackberries off as a lost cause for several good reasons: they never got properly pruned over the winter; grapevines have been colonizing the back end of the patch; and the flood that took away our driveway and garden shed dumped a pile of silt and debris on the blackberry patch. What happens to blackberry bushes that sit under five or six feet of water? I didn't particularly want to find out. Add to that a busier than normal spring and the need to move a bunch of stuff to Jackson and I pretty much pushed the blackberry patch right out of my mind.

But then the other day I was mowing and noticed the wild berries turning red on the edges of the woods--their tart, juicy goodness made me wonder whether our poor neglected blackberry patch would be producing any fruit this summer.

But I can't pick berries if I can't see 'em, so I decided to wade in and start pulling weeds, thick stands of jewelweed and joe pye weed stretching over my head. I can pull out jewelweed easily with one hand, but the bigger weeds require both hands and every ounce of strength, and then if they let loose suddenly I end up reeling backward. I saw spiders and beetles and heard buzzing bees, swatted grapevines out of the way and knocked down flood debris, and I saw plenty of dry, lifeless blackberry canes.

But I also found berries. I pulled a lot of weeds, cleared the healthiest portion of the patch, and picked two big fat blackberries, leaving many more to ripen. It may take a year or two to bring the patch back to full production, but this year we ought to have enough to make all that weeding worthwhile.

Take that, pesky weeds! Thanks for the great workout, but now it's time for you to make room for blackberries.
 

At home in nature or nature at home?

Sunlight filtering through leaves throws shadows on a moss-covered rock, making it look upholstered, like a comfy pouf I could put in my living room, but that would be a mistake: the fabric-like pattern depends upon a specific set of circumstances that would be impossible to recreate indoors. And so I appreciate the rock but leave it sitting where it belongs.

Lately I've been reminded of Gene Stratton Porter, the author of The Girl of the Limberlost and other best-selling novels in the early years of the twentieth century, who, in her fiction and many magazine essays, promoted an aesthetic diminishing the distance between people and nature. She loved to create outdoor "rooms" dissolving the walls that separate us from nature, and she loved to bring nature indoors by filling her homes with moth collections and woodwork intricately carved with leaves and owls and other woodland creatures. Every time I've walked through her houses, I've wondered how many trees she had to sacrifice to demonstrate her love for trees. And once her former gardener told about a time when Gene wanted to create a beautiful display of trilliums around a rotting log, so she set the gardener to work transplanting the delicate flowers, causing him to remark upon the massive number of man-hours required to make a spot in the woods look "natural."

My personal aesthetic is more aesthetic; all I require is that every room in the house have some spot of beauty on display: an interesting fabric, a photo of grandkids or birds, a pretty shell, a bit of needlework. That sun-dappled stone I saw in the woods makes me want to find a fabric that recreates the effect, but I'll leave the stone itself where it belongs, in a dynamic, fluid environment. Who knows what it will look like next time I visit? 

Shadows on a rock.

Lovely Lake Katharine

See the face?

Bigleaf mangolia trees stretch far overhead

I love the way the light dapples the water

 

Death by a thousand bites (or just one bite in a really bad place)

Summertime and the living is easy, as long as you follow one simple rule: whether you're working, shopping, picknicking, or mowing the lawn, try not to think about the mosquito bite in your armpit.

I know it's hot! I know the air's so thick with humidity that you could part it like a curtain, and every tiny movement causes sweat to pour out directly over that mosquito bite and make it feel as if your entire armpit is on fire, but whatever you do, don't think about it. In particular, don't think about scratching it. In public. Like, at the grocery store.

Say you're pushing your shopping cart around the store, enjoying the refreshing air conditioning before you have to plunge back into the outdoor sauna holding the entire midwest in its crushing grip right now, when suddenly that mosquito bite starts to itch and sting like an entire Fourth of July fireworks display under your arm. What should you do?  

Don't scratch. Don't even think about scratching, not just because scratching one's armpit in public Simply Isn't Done but because you'll eventually have to hand your money over to the cashier with a hand that smells like sweaty armpit, and if you happen to be walking up the seasonal items aisle and notice a set of grilling tools on sale, do not even think about grabbing that pointy meat fork and using it to scratch your armpit until it's raw and bloody, because then they'd make you buy the bloody meat fork and how will you ever show your face in that store again?

If you must think about the mosquito bite under your armpit, you might wonder how a mosquito managed to sting you in that relatively inaccessible spot. I mean, what were you doing, wandering through the woods waving your arms in the air? You couldn't have been signaling for a touchdown during baseball season, so maybe that pesky mosquito targeted your armpit at the precise moment when you were reaching up to refill the hummingbird feeder. Lucky little mosquito. Hope it enjoyed that blood meal because someone ought to get some pleasure out of this experience and that someone certainly isn't you.

Especially don't think about the mosquito bite in your armpit while you're lying in bed trying to get to sleep at night despite the feeling that millions of creepy-crawlies are continuously feeding on your armpit. You're alone in the dark; no one would ever know if you just reached over and started scratching until you found some relief, but let's face it: there will be no relief, not even if you scratch it bloody, and then every ounce of sweat you excrete will make it sting even more and it may even get badly infected, and who wants to deal with an infected armpit? You think a mosquito bite is bad! Imagine asking your beloved doctor to look at the massive oozing pulsing glob of pus colonizing your armpit. So don't scratch. No good can come of it. Sit on your hands if you have to.

Don't even think about it. Think of anything else besides the mosquito bite in your armpit, even though there's a mosquito bite in your armpit and it's never, ever going to stop itching until you break down and grab a sharp metal implement like a paring knife or a meat fork or your car keys or even a bouquet of long-stemmed roses at a booth at the Farmers' Market. Do not--repeat NOT--grab the bouquet by the blossoms and start tearing at your skin with the thorny stems until the blood pours down your arms and they find you laughing and bleeding on the sidewalk in the middle of town and call for reinforcements. "Put down your weapon," they'll say, but you'll be so engrossed in the sweet relief of scratching that you'll threaten anyone who comes near you with the thorny stems, and the next thing you know you'll be shot dead on the sidewalk and someone will have to peel those stems out of your cold, dead hands.

But look on the bright side: at least you won't have to think about the mosquito bite in your armpit.

Field notes from afar (but not too far)

We knew we were the first hikers on the Salt Creek Trail at Lake Katharine the other day because we kept walking face-first through spider webs stretching across the trail--now there's a good reason to take turns leading the way. Blistering heat and humidity make it hard to spend time outside these days, but at 7 a.m. the woods were still cool, shady, and fragrant with blossoms and rot. We saw some interesting fungi and creepy patches of white finger slime mold, but at Lake Katharine the main attractions are trees: towering sweet gum, groves of birch and beech, and bigleaf magnolias with leaves as long as my forearm. Next time I'm taking the camera.

This morning I took the camera out for an early trek up the hill behind our house, where the wild raspberries are redding up and wild grapevines are colonizing a dead tree. Hopeful bounded alongside, happy to have some company after my weekend away. We heard an indigo bunting and some tufted titmice, but otherwise the upper meadow was utterly still, with not so much as a butterfly stirring.

Down in the lower meadow we marvelled over the debris from our May flood still clinging to tree limbs three feet above my head. (Well, I marvelled. I don't know whether Hopeful marvels over anything or how to determine her level of wonder.) If the debris is three feet above my head, and I'm standing in a field ten feet above the level of the creek, then the water must have been...really high. Wish I'd seen it.

A patch of bee balm looked flattened but the chicory is blooming all along the driveway. I know chicory is as common as dirt in disturbed soil, but I love to see their cheery blue flowers brightening up the roadside in midsummer. 

In the high grass along the edge of the meadow I found a little group of Asiatic dayflowers blooming and I wondered why I'd never seen them in that spot before. Several obvious answers suggest themselves: 1. The flood washed them in. 2. I've never walked past that exact spot during the brief time when they're blooming. 3. Our wet spring made the meadow too mushy to mow, and the resident meadow-mower has been splitting his time between home and Jackson and therefore hasn't done as much mowing, which allowed the dayflowers to bloom in the tall grass that would normally have been cut down by now. 

Speaking of Jackson, I enjoyed my first full weekend at the parsonage but it will take some time to get accustomed to being surrounded by neighbors. I can stand at the kitchen sink and look into a half-dozen backyards, and I assume that they can look into mine--and see what? A garden shed, a charcoal grill, a horde of robins feeding in the grass. I've seen few other birds, and I hesitate to hang birdfeeders for fear that they'll provide a buffet for the local feral cat population. At least we'll be close to Lake Katharine and some other notable beauty spots. I expect to make friends with those bigleaf magnolias, and if the price of admission is a few spider webs in the face, that's a price I'm willing to pay.

My bottlebrush buckeye is blooming!

I love the tiny pink anthers at the end of the stamens.

Dead tree supporting wild grapevines.

Tufted titmouse.

Wonder? Marvel? Or something else entirely?

Asiatic dayflower.

Debris in tree.

Chicory

Wild berries--tiny but delicious

 

Moving issues

I've been trying to re-use existing nail-holes to hang pictures on the walls at the new parsonage, but the pictures keep ending up at eye level for NBA basketball players--except the one in the bathroom, which ends up at eye level for a four-year-old.

But if that's the biggest headache this move has caused, I'm not complaining. I have moved houses while eight months pregnant; I have followed a moving truck across the state while driving a Honda Civic carrying two small children, a cat, and a rabbit; and I have moved into houses that had holes in floors, collapsing septic tanks, and a basement full of mold. By comparison, this move is a piece of cake.

That's partly because we don't have to move everything we own, or even most things. One advantage of splitting our stuff between two houses is that both houses feel a little roomier, but a big disadvantage is that we don't have two of everything. We've had to buy a few things, and by "a few" I mean--well, I've lost count. We bought only two pieces of furniture brand new--a bed and a sofa--but everything else is secondhand, including two darling little end tables I picked up at a thrift store for $25 the set. (They remind me of my grandma's house.)

But in addition to the big-ticket items, I keep having to go out and stock up on annoying little doohickeys: dish drainer and dish towels and throw rugs and picture hangers, cleaning products, picture frames, soap dispensers, lamps and welcome mats and placemats and laundry hampers. Do we have an extension cord? Soap dish? Lightbulb?

But things are coming together nicely. We still need to haul a few pieces of furniture over from the other house and I'm still hunting for some things to hang on the walls, but the place is starting to feel more like home. Well, except for the pictures, which might make a basketball player feel at home but just make me feel short. But how do I move the nails if I can't find a hammer?  

And now, here's a challenge: 

This is the current state of the living room. I'm going to an art show next week and hope to pick up some things to hang on the walls and we'll be moving some houseplants over here next week, but I need some help with the fireplace. The fireplace opening is covered with plastic to prevent cool air from rushing out in the summer and in in the winter. It's a shame, because it's otherwise a lovely fireplace, but now I need to find a way to camouflage the white plastic. Hanging fabric? Large planters? Decorative screen? I welcome suggestions.

Julia Baird on brandishing titles like a torch

I remember the first time it happened: I was sitting in the waiting room at the dentist's office, flipping through a magazine and trying to ignore the usual daytime television drivel, not exactly dreading my dental work but not much looking forward to it either, when the friendly hygienist opened the door and called for "Dr. Hogue."

Did you hear that? Not "Miss Hogue" or "Ms. Hogue" or "Bev" but "Dr. Hogue." I'm not a fool: living in Appalachia, I know there's no better way to alienate my neighbors than to brandish my academic credentials in public, but on the other hand, it feels good to occasionally receive a little professional respect, even in the dentist's waiting room. 

In today's New York Times, Julia Baird examines what happens when that respect breaks down (read it here).  In "Women, Own Your 'Dr.' Titles," Baird explains, "It had never occurred to me to add 'Ph.D.' to my name on Twitter until I was slammed for mentioning that I had one." Daring to assert her credentials subjected her to online attacks from those who "viewed the degree not as a sign of expertise but as a provocation, a pretension."

Academics were divided in their response to the uproar, "with a horde of women revealing that they, too, had been taunted for using their titles, while many men who had not received such criticism were baffled." She offers examples of the unequal treatment of men's and women's titles in media and academe, but I just sat there nodding, recalling the former administrator who consistently used "Dr." only for male academics, referring to women at every rank as "Professor." Nothing wrong with "Professor," but why the gendered distinction? And then there are the relatives who will introduce my husband as Rev. Hogue and me as just plain old Bev.

I'm happy to be plain old Bev in most settings, so I don't get bent out of shape when the "Dr." gets dropped, but Baird is correct in connecting this lack of professional respect with the long history of disregard for women's voices. This whole conversation harks back to Rebecca Solnit's essay "Men Explain Things to Me," in which she describes an encounter with a man who doubted her expertise on the topic of a book that she had written. "Every woman knows what I'm talking about," writes Solnit:

It's the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment in the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence.

Julia Baird's encounter with online trolls who doubt her expertise is just the next step in this progression. "For centuries," she writes, "the voices of women have been muted, discounted and minimized. Our right to speak has been questioned, our power undermined, our authority mocked....We are repeatedly told to apologize, to shrink, to shut up."

"So don't," she commands, and let's give Dr. Baird the respect of allowing her to have the last word:

You don't need a title to speak. But if you have one, use it. Find your voice, and raise it. Stake your authority, and state it. Don't recoil. Don't back down.

Sometimes authority should be worn lightly. But sometimes it should be brandished like a torch. 

Take me out to the ballgame, again and again and again

Friday night at the Cleveland Indians game I was suddenly tempted to pursue an alternative career (in case the whole teaching thing doesn't work out): baseball stadium usher. I suppose the pay can't be particularly good, but on the other hand, they get to attend every game and enjoy the excitement alongside the fans, and the ones I observed got plenty of exercise.

The woman who ushered in our section worked hard wiping rain off seats, leading people up and down the steps, reminding fans not to put their feet up on the railings, and fussing over the small children. We were in the family section so there were quite a few kids, and the usher was quite taken with our two-year-old grandson. She told me she works in a preschool so she loves being around children, and although she appeared to be in her sixties and limped a bit on the steps, she never stopped smiling.

And neither did I. It was a great game: Cleveland creamed the Detroit Tigers, and I got to see my favorite player, Francisco Lindor, hit a home run. It was Dollar Dog Night so we ate an absurd number of hot dogs with that yummy stadium mustard, and later my son brought me an ice cream cone so massive I had to share. The grandkids enjoyed watching the fireworks every time a player hit a home run, which kept happening. The game was rain-delayed by nearly two hours, so we left in the seventh inning because it was way past our bedtime--but not before seeing Yonder Alonzo hit a grand slam. 

Just about everyone fell asleep on the way home in the van, but before he nodded off, my grandson volunteered this assessment of the situation: "Baseball fun." Indeed it is, and wouldn't it be great to be able to enjoy that fun in person more than once or twice a year?

I need to rethink my retirement plan to include a second career as a baseball stadium usher. Sure, maybe I'd have to deal with the occasional intransigent fan, but think of the perks: The games! The fireworks! That great stadium mustard! I just worry about getting up and down all those steps over and over. I guess that means I need to retire before my bad hip gives out entirely. (How about next week? That way I wouldn't have to worry about my fall syllabi.)

Of buckets and birds

Can I still call it spring cleaning if I do it on the first day of summer? This morning I was washing algae off siding on the north side of the house, reaching as high as I could while the step-stool I was standing on kept sinking deeper into the soft ground and threatening to topple over on top of the bucket, but all I could think was: I'm glad I didn't try to finish this on Tuesday.

I did start the job on Tuesday morning, cleaning as much as I could without a step-stool until I was interrupted by a wasp busily building a nest below our electric meter. I'd have stopped anyway because the heat and humidity were oppressive. How hot was it? Hot enough to cause a local stretch of Interstate 77 to be closed after heat made the pavement heave.

The heat made me want to heave too, even when I tried to beat the heat by walking up the hill very early in the morning. I took the camera in hopes of finding butterflies among the blooming milkweed, but soon I was sweating so profusely that I had trouble holding on to the camera. At 8:00 in the morning!

Today was a better day for outdoor work: a little overcast, a little damp, but not too hot or humid. I had to ask the resident tall person to help clean the last bit of algae I couldn't reach even with the step-stool. And then I rewarded myself with some time amongst yardbirds and hummies, which have reached the territorial stage, guarding certain feeders and chasing away any visitors that violate the invisible borders. They're fun to watch and they sound like tiny motorboats zipping through the air.

Swarming hummies is a sure sign that summer has finally arrived--high time to finish the last bit of spring cleaning. At this point, anything that I've missed will just have to wait until next spring.

brown thrasher

towhee

song sparrow

house finch

Richard Russo on writing, comedy, and life

In The Destiny Thief: Essays on Writing, Writers and Life, Richard Russo says some interesting things about writing, comedy, and life. In the title essay, on the quirks of fate that propel some toward achieving their goals while others abandon them, he writes:

A writer's truest self hides in the same dark terrain where self-doubt and anxiety dwell--those dread whisperers—and it’s that self they constantly assail. They are, I think, the original hackers, determined to hijack the code, to show us who’s boss, to confuse us into thinking the danger comes from without, not from within. Like Odysseus, we have little choice but to lash ourselves to the mast and listen to their Siren song, knowing all too well that they want us on the rocks. There is a narrow passage. There must be.

In "Getting Good," a long essay on what it takes to get good at writing (practice, guidance, feedback from a writing community, maturity, insight, and some other things I'm forgetting), he considers the difficulty of accepting rejection:

Writing communities provide the necessary understanding that the word ‘no’ isn’t personal; that’s important because personal is precisely what rejection (a nine-letter synonym for ‘no’) feels like. When a computer says no—as mine does several times a day—I don’t take it personally, unless I’m really pissed off. After all, it’s just a machine. It’s telling me I’ve done something wrong, which I’d prefer not to be true but invariably is….I don’t take the machine’s intransigence to mean that I’ll never be any good at operating it or that I’m not good enough in general, either. I just have to find my mistake and fix it, after which, assuming I haven’t put my boot through the screen, we can be friends again.

Helpful insight. My favorite essay, though, is "The Gravestone and the Commode," in which he examines the hazards of writing comedy and the close proximity between laughter and pain. A few choice excerpts:

My writing students used to ask, How do you make things so funny? To which I usually replied, I don’t make anything funny. I’m simply reporting the world as I find it....

The problem for a writer with a genuinely comic imagination is not “making things funny” or even locating enough funny things in the real world to write about. Rather, the problem—and it’s the same for any artist—is getting other people to see things as you do, to honor the truth of your idiosyncratic way of seeing. Art, in the end, may be little more than this: convincing people to set aside their natural reluctance long enough to register your vision....

The greatest obstacle comic writers face is that far more people truly see the gravestone than they do the commode. They look on the world and see death, ignorance, poverty, bigotry and injustice, and they see nothing funny in any of it. Worse, they suspect there must be something wrong with people who do....

The final test of what’s funny or not is whether it’s true. Of course I don’t mean if some incident actually happened, or even if the story has been embellished or exaggerated. What I mean is: Is it true to our experience of life? Is this the way people really are? Is this how the world truly works? Not coincidentally, this is the test of all good writing, not just comic writing....

The best humor has always resided in the chamber next to the one occupied by suffering. There’s a door adjoining these rooms that’s never completely closed. Sometimes it’s open just a crack, because that’s all we can stand. Most of the time it’s flung wide open on a well-oiled hinge, and this is as it should be. Those in favor of shutting it tight are always, always wrong.

So true--but those of us who like to stand in that doorway have to be careful or we'll end up getting our fingers smashed when the door slams shut.

But trilliums can't swim! (And manatees can't fly!)

What's big, fat, and homely and swims slowly in Florida's rivers?

If you answered "a trillium," you are clearly delusional. Nevertheless Trillium is one of the proposed names for a young female manatee orphan currently residing in the Columbus Zoo.

As a press release from the Columbus zoo explains (read it here), a rescue team found the calf and her mother suffering from the cold in waters off the Florida coast in February. The article describes the mother as "negatively buoyant," which is bad news for a mammal that lives underwater but has to surface to breathe. When the mother died, the calf was taken first to the manatee rehabilitation facility at Sea World in Orlando and then to the Columbus Zoo.

Now that she's healthy and thriving, she needs a name. Her companion, a rescued manatee calf called Heavy Falcon, "received his name as a nod to the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launch that took place on February 6, 2018--the same day he was rescued." In what ways does a manatee resemble a rocket or a bird of prey? Look--up in the sky! It's a manatee! (Not.)

The other rescued calf, though, still lacks a name. Her caretakers have found her "more shy and cautious than some of the other manatees" and laud her "sweet demeanor," which may be one reason they've proposed naming her Trillium. Both trilliums and manatees thrive only in very specific conditions, but that's about the only similarity I see. Trilliums are small and elegant, while manatees are most definitely not.

Don't get me wrong--I love manatees! But there's just nothing about a manatee that says "Trillium." Fortunately, the Columbus Zoo has offered some other options for names, all associated in some way with Ohio:

• Carmen, "A nod to 'Carmen Ohio,' The Ohio State University alma mater." I'm trying to picture a manatee lumbering along the sidelines at a football game while the fans sing "Carmen Ohio." Can manatees sing?
• Scioto, the river that runs through Columbus; its water ends up in the Gulf of Mexico, home of manatees, a connection that should remind us "how actions we take in Ohio can make a positive impact for the future of manatees and their habitats." It's a noble sentiment but "Scioto" always makes me think of the Steve Canyon comic strip, and you'd never fit a full-grown manatee into those little square panels.
• Sloopy, from the title of the state rock song of Ohio, "Hang on Sloopy." Not only has the rescued calf demonstrated an ability to hang on through difficult times, but the word "sloopy" sounds the way manatees look as they slide through the water. 

Decisions, decisions. I wouldn't want to be responsible for sticking a name on such an impressive creature, and I definitely don't want to hand the naming duties over to whoever came up with "Heavy Falcon." Fortunately, the Zoo is asking for our help: manatee fans can cast a vote on the Columbus Zoo website (here). Results will be announced June 25. 

If enough people vote for Trillium, then one of these days I'll go hunting for trilliums in my springtime woods and suddenly picture a massive marine mammal swimming toward me in her slow, sloopy way. 

Warning: big trashy rant ahead

Lately when I walk up the hill through the woods, when I hear the wood thrush's call and see a deer crashing through underbrush and see the honeysuckle and chicory blooming, when I reach the stretch where the only visible house is the one the box turtle carries on his back, I often wonder what makes some people think This would be a great place to dump an old sofa--and let's toss some beer cans and a McDonald's bag out the window while we're at it!

I'm tempted to post a sign saying These woods are not a landfill, but I doubt that the kind of person who dumps a sofa in the woods would treat such a stricture with respect. What is it about this peaceful place that attracts such inconsiderate slobs?

I know the answer: the very remoteness of these woods makes people think that no one's watching. But don't they know there are more effective ways to discard a sofa? I mean, just set it out by the curb with a sign that says "Free." Someone will come along and take it away.

Or there's always the dump. Here's a true story: we don't have garbage pickup at our house, so anything that can't be recycled, composted, or burned goes into a big plastic trash can, and then stuff too big for the can gets stacked up in the garage. Sometimes it takes a year to fill up that trash can, but eventually it demands to be taken to the dump. So last week my husband filled his van with a couple of trash cans, some broken appliances, and various bits of scrap metal washed up by the creek. (For a while the creek kept bring us pieces of a washing machine. How long would we have to wait to get the whole thing?) Then he drove off to a metal recycling yard, where they gave him $48 for a pile of scrap, and then he went to the dump, where he paid $6 to dispose of the rest of the stuff. Even if you add in the cost of a couple of gallons of gas, he came out around $40 ahead.

So why don't the slobs take the sofa to the dump? They surely had a vehicle that could carry it, since they surely didn't haul it out to the woods on their backs. I'd gladly give them the six dollars to pay the disposal fee if they'd ask. But somehow they'd prefer to dump it in the woods.

Maybe they're trying to cover up evidence of a vicious murder--but no, burning would be the smart way to destroy evidence. Or maybe they carry memories of some horrible woods-related mishap, a camping accident or an encounter with a bear or a bunch of bullies, and they'll do anything to get back at the woods where the damage occurred. Or maybe they're just inconsiderate slobs.

But name-calling solves nothing. Here's what I'd like to do: I'd like to gather up all the people who toss their beer cans and fast-food wrappers out their car windows and who dump sofas off the backs of trucks, and I'd like to take them for a long, slow, quiet walk with a bunch of bird-watchers equipped with spotting scopes. I'd like to make them stand quietly and watch prairie warblers and indigo buntings in the tops of trees, listen to the sound of the creek water riffling over the rocks, watch a turtle make its stately way across the road, and feel the butterflies breezing past their cheeks. If they could see the depth and richness and beauty that suffuses the woods, maybe they wouldn't see the place as a landfill.

And then I'd like to hand them all a pile of trash bags and say Get to work.