Native Places

An Unnamed Stream and an Angel

In life we are sometimes lucky to have an angel. I’m thankful for a faithful Quaker who wore a rose in his lapel every day. Years before I was born, Arthur Kirby Moore built a park along an unnamed stream on the western edge of Greensboro, North Carolina.

My childhood friends and I played in the park Mr. Moore built. We made dams in the rocky creek, launched toy boats, and caught crayfish in the shallow pools where sunshine filtered through the trees. We explored nature with our own hands. We didn’t know it then, but we were learning to be stewards of the earth. 

The park ended at Friendly Road, but the stream carried on, under a bridge and into the dark woods beyond. We followed it there. We knew that a nameless stream was really a river of dreams. 

Years later some of us became doctors, a sailor, an architect, a furniture maker, and a spy. 

Our angel, Mr. Moore, would be happy to know that children love his park today as much as ever. I stop by whenever I can. 

Golden Crowns

It’s late October in my garden and the leaves on the 100-year-old willow oak tree are turning yellow. When the early morning sun touches the top of the tree, I see a crown of gold. 

Another crown is in the news. On October 19 thieves broke into the Louvre in Paris to steal the Crown Jewels. And according to the New York Times, “The thieves dropped Empress Eugénie’s hugely valuable crown on their way out. It is covered in 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds.” 

I think of Empress Eugénie’s crown bouncing on the stone pavement outside the Louvre as I watch the golden leaves of the oak tree in my garden flutter to the lawn and come to rest.

French authorities say that the stolen Crown Jewels are worth $100 million. They may be melted down by the thieves and never returned to the crystal cases in the Louvre.

The golden crown of leaves on my oak tree returns every year. 

Labor Day

It’s Labor Day, and folks are celebrating the end of the summer. Pumpkin spice is everywhere already, the drugstore’s put out Halloween decorations, and a friend is wearing flannel. 

But in my garden, the cicadas are singing their hearts out. The song goes something like this: “I’m a single green male, my hobbies include singing, flying, and looking for a life partner.” If all goes well, the female cicada will lay eggs on tree branches, nymphs will drop, burrow underground, and feed on roots for 13–17 years; then emerge, molt into adults, sing, mate, lay eggs, and die, restarting the cycle.

How’s that for taking the long view? 

The garden tonight is a symphonic chorus. At nightfall the hummingbird is sipping nectar from the Impatiens flowers, getting ready for her winter trip to Mexico. The cicadas are singing in the darkened oak trees. At 8:15, cue the katydids, who will be joined at 8:20 by the cricket section, who will be singing until dawn. 

In all but words they seem to say: Stay in the present! Live every day as though it’s your first!  

Evelyn

As I said goodbye to my six-month-old granddaughter Evelyn on an April morning in London, my heart sank. Then I boarded a Boeing 777 bound for Raleigh, North Carolina. When I got home, I puttered about in the garden then went to bed thinking of London pubs and parks and Evelyn and her parents. 

At dawn the next day, a catbird sang outside my bedroom window. I decided to do what I aways do whenever I’m troubled: Sit in my garden.  At 8:20, the garbage truck roared outside the garden wall, disrupting my serenity. “Welcome back to reality,” the massive truck seemed to growl, adding a whiff of rotten cabbage to the moment. 

Suddenly I heard a Swainson’s thrush singing from deep within my plum tree. This olive-backed thrush, weighing less than a bag of airline pretzels, will fly 4000 miles to its nesting place in Canada. That’s farther than my 545,000-pound Boeing flew to bring me home. 

There’s nothing like a garden to lend perspective. 

Cicero wrote that if you have a library and a garden you have everything. Hearing a thrush in my garden on a spring morning, I agreed with him. But to Cicero’s list I would add the people that you love. 

Lenten Roses in Snow

It’s been a winter of political sound and fury. Scattered announcements, meant to knock us senseless, fly at us like the driven hail.

But in my garden one February afternoon, a bowl-shaped flower opened about six inches above the snow. My first Lenten rose. But, hey, who cares about a small, grey-green plant in a frozen garden when the country seems to be crumbling, right? 

Well, me, for one. 

I envy these flowers. In the cold of winter, just as the gardener despairs of spring, these slender petals open, keeping watch on the unshakable rhythm of life. 

Not a raging orator, but sometimes a little pink flower in the snow can offer hope. 

The poet Jim Harrison wrote, “The government offers you nothing but apprehension. Only you can offer yourself peace.”

The next morning, my Lenten rose had three new buds and I glimpsed an upward path: Its roots were spreading underneath the snow. Soon new colonies of flowers would burst into the light like little rays of hope.

Thorncrown 

We left Fayetteville, Arkansas, at 10:30 one recent morning and drove northeast across rolling hills dotted with dairy farms. We were on our way to see a tiny wood and glass structure nestled in the Ozarks near Eureka Springs. 

At noon we arrived at our destination: Thorncrown Chapel, built in 1980 by a retired schoolteacher “to give visitors some inspiration,” he said. 

That schoolteacher, Jim Reed, asked Fayetteville architect E. Fay Jones to design a “small glass chapel” on his property. Jones had apprenticed under Frank Lloyd Wright, and it showed. His stone and unpainted wood houses were celebrated for their uncommon, organic beauty within their natural settings. 

Jones had waited 30 years for the opportunity to design a church. And yet, his concept for a roof woven from ordinary framing lumber, rising quietly among the trees, its whole footprint smaller than a pickle ball court, was too unusual for Mr. Reed. He rejected it. 

Fay Jones, a gentle soul who never raised his voice, was crushed. So, Reed sought the opinion of friends and strangers, including “the lady at the cash register” at his local grocery store, who loved the design. So did many others. Kaboom! Mr. Reed built the chapel as Jones had designed it.

Seven million visitors have been inspired since. 

Throughout history, nature always seems to be the setting for great revelations. A mountain top, a banyan tree, a burning bush. Sitting beside my daughter that January afternoon, we were bathed in sunlight inside a chapel made of 2x6s that anybody can buy from Lowe’s. But here they were put together with a tenderness akin to love. Suddenly I remembered that we are partly made from the residue of stars.

An Epiphany at the Loading Dock

The buildings on the campus where I teach stand in a picturesque setting of stately trees and lawns. But in my student days I thought this landscape was so staid that at night I planted moon vines among the hedges. 

Recently I’ve enjoyed walking through the jumble of service yards, emergency generators, and loading docks that serve the main campus. 

One afternoon, I noticed a vigorous clump of holly trees growing beside a concrete loading dock. Such a lusty patch of green seemed out of place in a gritty service yard. I speculated that many years ago someone planted and then abandoned four small holly bushes. Eventually the bushes grew into small trees, until one day a contractor ringed them with a collar of asphalt. They simply grew taller and shaded the loading dock. 

Then an architect designed a building that blocked the sun. Still, the holly trees grew, reaching upwards to catch the morning sun.

Neglect was a sturdy shelter. No one came to prune or spread fertilizer or spray pesticides on the hollies, who looked after themselves.

If the ancient trees and lawns of main campus shape a setting of academic splendor, these forgotten trees in a leftover space are probably closer to real life. A mixture of divine and ugly, host to flocks of birds at night, vulnerable and resilient, bookended by pickup trucks, strange and beautiful and wild. 

I didn’t see any need for moon vines.

Folding Napkins

I wash and fold about 12 napkins a week. Some of them are batik from Indonesia. My friends and I use them every Saturday when we get together for coffee and conversations. Folding these little scarlet and mocha-colored napkins lets me reminisce about my companions and look forward to next Saturday’s gathering. 

The other napkins I fold are faded and a little frayed, like me. I don’t mind. Over decades these soft squares of cotton have witnessed contentment, anxiety, fear, irritation, and love as they’ve pressed against our lips. 

So much in our world view demands excellence. One can be the best architect, the fastest swimmer, the most renowned surgeon. But folding linen is not on anyone’s 10 best list.

Anne Lamott writes, “Mother Teresa said no one can do great things, but we can all do small things with great love, and that is all we can do.”

One napkin at a time.

Fried Chicken Backs

When my mom fried a chicken, she and her four children took most of the pieces as the platter went around the dinner table. My father served himself last. And he always chose the back, the piece with hardly any meat on it. He insisted that it was the “best part of the chicken.”

My father left his family’s farm to go to college in 1924.

Five years later, The Great Depression would prove ruinous for his father – our grandfather — who committed suicide and left his family to carry on without him.

I believe our father vowed to himself that his children and their needs would always come first.

I can see my father clearly now. I can see him sitting at the maple wood table picking at his miserable piece of chicken and smiling. I can glimpse behind that smile and see the farm he never missed. 

Most of all, I can see his love for us.

Mrs. Garringer’s Field

I woke from a nightmare at 3 a.m. recently, and to calm myself, I went to Mrs. Garringer’s field.

When I’m tired or depressed or anxious, I sometimes go to Mrs. Garringer‘s field and sit in the shade of tall sweet gum trees with five-pointed leaves that turn bright purple in the fall. 

I’ve played ball with my friends in Mrs. Garringer’s field, built forts, and scoured the tall grass with a butterfly net. The Plybons lived on one side of the field. Mr. Plybon gave me a quart of Texaco red enamel once to paint my race car. Mr. Wilson lived on the other side. He repaired lawnmowers and shared his arrowhead collection with me. 

Mrs. Garringer’s field was plowed under 50 years ago and replaced by a red brick house, so now I go there in my imagination. But as Elizabeth Barks Cox wrote in Reading Van Gogh, “The place where we grew up works on us even if we never see it again.” 

Eudora Welty called such a place “the heart’s field.” 

Leaving the Porch Light On

A neighbor across the street sometimes leaves the light on in his second story window. I saw its glow one morning at 4 a.m. as I left for the airport. Why did I find a light in his window so moving? Am I as a moth who sees hope in the dark? 

Other people in my neighborhood leave their porch lights on at night. Each house is a different style and color, and no two families are the same. But almost everyone keeps a porch light glowing in the dark. At a time when the mosaic of the country may be shattering, is it possible to imagine that porch lights suggest E Pluribus Unum? 

No matter how grand a building is, a small light may be more memorable. At Chartres Cathedral, sunlight passes through stained glass windows and splashes color on bare stone walls. What I remember most vividly, though, are the votive candles flickering in the alcoves. 

Eudora Welty wrote, “The difficulty that accompanies you is less like the dark than a trusted lantern to see your way by.”

I’ll remember that tonight. 

Sailing Alone Around the World 

Captain Joshua Slocum (1844 - 1909) was the first person to sail single-handedly around the globe. In August 1895 he left Boston harbor in the gaff rigged wooden sailboat Spray and returned three years later. 

Slocum navigated without a chronometer and used dead reckoning – also known as guessing – to sail the high seas. Spray was 36 feet 9 inches long and carried him 46,000 miles. He devised a self-steering apparatus that allowed him to rest. He never learned to swim. 

In Sailing Alone Around the World, Slocum described his voyage:

“The sea was confused and treacherous. In such a time as this the old fisherman prayed, ‘Remember Lord, my ship is small and thy sea is so wide.’"

During Slocum’s three-year voyage, the Spanish American War began, America was gripped by an economic depression, famines and disease stalked the world, Jim Crow laws were passed, and the first Olympic Games were held. 

One hundred and thirty years later, we’ve got our hands full with war, climate change, famine, racism, and threats to democracy. As they sometimes do in these anxious times, my thoughts revert to Captain Slocum sailing alone at night in the middle of an ocean, his boat on auto-tiller, reading by the light of an oil lamp.

A Very Large Array

The road to the Very Large Array goes past the Ponderosa restaurant in Magdalena (population 808) then out into the flat grasslands of New Mexico. Suddenly you see the first of 28 white-painted radio dishes pointing to the heavens, each taller than a 10-story building. You have arrived at the world’s largest radio telescope.

My friends and I visited the VLA on a sunny April afternoon in 2003. It was quiet as we stepped onto an orange shag carpet inside the nondescript control center building. Frank Sinatra sang in the distance. 

We climbed the stairs, entered a windowless control room, and discovered that this massive scientific instrument, the largest in the world, was staffed only by one man: a technician wearing jeans, a plaid shirt, and sporting a grey ponytail. 

His boombox played “Fly Me to the Moon” as the technician fiddled with the controls of the mighty array. Then I noticed that this master of the universe was eating an Arby’s “Baked Potato with Everything.” He had carefully placed little cups of sour cream and bacon bits like moons around the asteroid-shaped potato. 

At 3 p.m., the man tapped a keyboard, took a bite of potato, and caused the giant radio dishes to scan the universe. Frank Sinatra took a breath. 

A sixth grader with an iPhone has greater access to the world now than anyone in history. But the internet creates sameness. A mongoose and a galaxy are equal in size and importance on the digital screen. 

Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. 

But that afternoon, I felt both awe and reverence. To go from a bacon bit to black holes in a single breath – now that was cause for wonder.

A Fire on the Hearth

We had extremely cold weather here recently. Alligators froze in an icy swamp east of Raleigh. Children ice skated on a rarely frozen creek nearby. And at 7 a.m. this morning, my birdbath was a rock-solid disc of ice. 

On my way to the birdbath, hot water kettle in hand, I noticed that someone had raked the leaves on the edges of our garden.

I soon spotted the obliging gardener. He weighs about two ounces and sports orange, black, and white feathers. He’s an Eastern Towhee. In the process of looking around for insects, he turned those leaves back as neatly as the sheets in a Marriott hotel. 

Something truly is happening to the weather. Earlier this week, PhD economists meeting in a windowless room in a Grand Hyatt in San Antonio declared that climate change may overturn everything. 

When the conversation is about the climate, I find it hard to satisfy every expert. Some say the wood burning in my fireplace is a good thing because it’s a renewable resource. Others say I’m polluting the atmosphere. 

Either way, a fire flickering on my hearth on such a cold winter morning does wonders for my spirit. 

Big Bin

Show me how you throw away your trash and I will describe your civilization. 

In Switzerland it’s really hard to find trash anywhere except in a trash can. But leave a receptacle of any kind uncovered on a street in New York City and New Yorkers will put trash in it. This includes a window box, a bicycle basket, or the bed of a pickup truck. 

The Swiss are a law-abiding people. New Yorkers are quick to take advantage of any situation, including throwing away their sandwich wrappers on windowsills. In Switzerland the trains run on time. In New York we throw trash on the train tracks. 

The Vessel is another kind of receptacle in New York City. Built in 2019, the Vessel is an intertwined set of stairs rising 16 stories into the air. Intended to be a viewing platform and a centerpiece of Hudson Yards, the Vessel became a jumping-off place for four suicides. It’s been closed since 2021. 

Because of the Vessel’s resemblance to a trash can, my daughter renamed it “Big Bin.” Another popular nickname is “the Great Shawarma.” When I recently stopped by “the Great Shawarma,” I noticed a litter of empty coffee cups and plastic bags around its base.

Meanwhile, the City of New York is replacing 23,000 wire street-corner trash cans with a sleek new design. If only New Yorkers will use them. 

Ah, civilization.