Dried-out Bee Balm, Brown and tan woods of late fall, Garlic mustard

**Photo of bee balm dried seed pods, by John Lodder, Flickr Creative Commons. 

          Having just returned from the woods, I’m being still, letting the natural remain about my shoulders. I'm in a dim, November-dusk room--sitting near a clear bag of bright-green garlic mustard, an invasive plant that raises havoc nationwide, but tastes succulent. It has round, rippled leaves, a bit like those of an English violet. 

          Not having seen it before, I held onto the bag until I reached home, wondering if I had simply harvested violet leaves past flowering time. Even so, I was pretty sure it was the right thing, and I felt proud of my weighty zip-lock. 

**Photo of Garlic Mustard, by Jacob Enos, Flickr Creative Commons. 

          Now -- having checked several photos and descriptions online -- I'm sure it is garlic mustard, which is good news. It’s energy-full stuff, despite being bad for soil here in North America. But harvesting it (and not adding it to any compost or yard waste) is a good way to clear the woods, while gaining vitamins. Hurrah. That’ll help, because my energy is low. I'm congested, and have been for days. Dust and indoor allergens that flare once the heat is turned on each fall have caused the problem. Mold causes it, in particular. There are other indoor factors: In other apartments, I've noticed the effect of chemical fragrances in winter – laundry detergents, harsh cleansers. Pre-chemical use, we all cleaned with Bon Ami and maybe lye, or rosemary and other essential oils.

          That said, perhaps mold wouldn't trouble me if I lived in a yurt and moved it from place to place, or if I knew all the herbs to boost my immunity each winter. Meanwhile, I’m planning how to cook the garlic mustard--and having nettle tea, which contains Vitamin C. It seems to be helping.

   **Photo of a log in fall woods, by Yo La Tengo, Flickr Creative Commons. 

          The forest has leaf molds too, but I love walking its paths—and they don’t bother me because of the open air. Other than the green garlic mustard scattered in small patches, the woods were all shades of brown and tan. There were beds of brown leaves, bare branches, and many walnut-colored seed pods on long, bent stems.

          After seven years in the Northwest, seeing deciduous woods in winter -- not the damp, moss- and fern-thick woods of the Cascades -- is striking but invigorating. In the garden outside of my house are dark brown pods, a bit like I imagine dried husks of bees would look. These, the gardener told me, are what is left of our spring/summer bee balm—a pink and sprightly flower and herb that is used in teas and other concoctions. It’s exciting to see this cycle, to know that the bee balm isn’t gone, just different.

**Photo of seed pods by Lindy, Flickr Creative Commons.

          Walking along the rock wall that lifts the sidewalk on my street, one passes under trees, past rows of sere and brown varieties of seed pods. All of those are changed now from the bright young plants they were in late spring--but they're still beautiful, if a bit melancholy. It’s only melancholy, though, because I want them to last forever, in my human way. Eventually, hopefully, I’ll know how each pod appeared in its past, and be able to contrast that with its current look.

          Walking the brown paths was calming. I thought about my need for nature, and reflected that maybe we aren’t meant to see crowds of people, humans all the time, our faces rarely interrupted by tree branches, sedge seed pods, tall grasses, clear streams.  

          I thought about how to be in nature more often—it's an age-old question. How can we do that while still being among like-minded, like-aged people and well-employed? There’s a graduate program that focuses on nature and creativity. I wondered if that would be a good idea.

For now, I’ll give myself an assignment: Cover nature weekly.

Peace, happy late-November--it’s time to cook garlic mustard!

**Photo of garlic mustard and orange cup fungus, by Mightyjoepye, Flickr Creative Commons. 

Fall at Last, Austin, Book Festival

**photo of Barton Springs, Austin, Tex., by AnnainAustin, Flickr Creative Commons.

In Seattle, the desire for cold-water swimming was about seeking clarity and a bright sharpness in gray weather. It’s also about the feeling of sinking into cool water--even if that water turns out to be fiercely cold in lakes shaded by mountains, ha.

Here in the state where I was raised, Texas, it’s mid-October and the long, wild summer seems to have abated for now. Labor Day is a false "end' to the season--we maintained 90s temperatures until around Oct. 15. This weekend I head out for cool-water swimming at Barton Springs, in Austin. The water temperature will likely be around 66 degrees, which will be lovely and compares pretty favorably with the average Cascade lake.

It’s going to be a great weekend, heading from green Houston to tawny Austin in the golden fall, in light that plays especially well on the bone-white Hill Country limestone surfaces.

**photo of Pedernales River, Texas Hill Country, by Jdeeringdavis on Flickr Creative Commons.

I'm going for the Texas Book Festival, where I hope to hear readings by Jonathan Lethem, Sherman Alexie, Geoff Dyer, and maybe Marion Winik, Meg Wolitzer, and Diana Kennedy. I also hope to see a few friends, and maybe attend a taping of the arts radio show Overheard with Evan Smith.

Re-charging myself is another purpose of the trip. Austin, like Seattle, has more 30s and 40s creative workers than Houston, and is a bit more densely populated as well. I’m hoping that Austin will be a nice trial run for deciding whether I should move to another city, like New York or somewhere else.

So, don’t I like Houston a lot? I do like Houston, and it has much that is not known elsewhere as Houston-defining. It has truly original food twists and developments, and an interesting art scene. It has many really great people. That said, it has the dichotomy of politics that we’ve recently seen in the U.S. House of Representatives. It has Maseratis and Porsche SUVs and people who seem not to care about the extreme social inequalities here. Its inner loop neighborhoods have many bike trails, which is great—but the city also has people who are afraid to bicycle because drivers are habitually unaware of anyone but themselves on the road. Its racial and social inequities are evident on its bus system.

So, yes, I don’t love everything here. And, you might say, does one ever? Here’s the thing—let's hope some things will change. Even in other Texas cities, there’s more driver respect for pedestrians and cyclists, from what I’ve seen. When I visited Fort Worth in May, I was struck by the non-flashy cars and the fact that cars didn’t pull up right next to pedestrians when they walked along a sidewalk and crossed a parking lot entrance. The so-called rolling stop is standard in Houston—drivers’ way of saying they’re more important and that you should just hurry up and get out of the way—and, we’ll skip the pun here, it has to stop.

All that said, here in Houston I’ve found that thinking in a Zen way has helped me. I recently was told by friends about the website ZenHabits.net, by Leo Babauta.

If you’ve seen Babauta’s website, you know it’s the tale of a mid-30s, married father of six who simplified his life and makes a living writing and talking about what he loves. He shows us how to live minimally, be at peace, and still travel. Behind it all, he demonstrates a healthy relationship and parenthood. It’s inspiring stuff, and the website is appealingly simple—generally without photos, featuring instead large-print text on white, working to avoid jarring us with more online images. It seems to work.

This kind of calmness is what I need. It’s maybe what we all need. A recent passage tells how to deal with people who annoy us:  people who behave badly in traffic, talk too loudly, are rude to us. One approach is to think that others are like twigs in a stream in which we all float. Each twig is doing its own thing, and isn’t trying to annoy us. We’ll peacefully interact with the other twigs, and won’t let them bother us. Another is to recognize that others act badly out of fear or discomfort. If we think about this, and maybe give them mental hugs, we’re better off, too.  

Learning to deal with things that annoy us has been useful in Houston, because there is so much here that I'd like to change. Treating these things as twigs in a stream is actually a bit better for my blood pressure. I’d like good transit again, and to see greater density on the streets. I’d like to be among more people in their 30s and 40s who are out doing things, rather than arriving by car and departing the same way.

Having said that, I’ve enjoyed living again in a garden-y city. Houston is green, it is lush, with bougainvilleas blooming and tangerines and limes starting--here in nearly-November. New York has parks and tree-lined streets in some neighborhoods, but I recall walking (when I lived there) and wishing for a bit of green to break up the wide sidewalks that extend to the curbs.

Here in Houston, the inner-loop streets are green, but I seldom see many pedestrians, and I miss that. Frequently I’m walking along a sidewalk and see another person, and my heart leaps: company in pedestrianism! Then they get into a car. This happens with sad frequency. At times I see someone else walking and, because I’m so unused to having others on the streets with me, I feel slightly antisocial. This is the feeling that isolation-by-car-culture builds, quite frankly. In September, a visitor from Cleveland talked about crowds on the street in Montreal, as he and I sat in a Houston café, and we looked out the windows onto a main thoroughfare and saw no crowds at all. I recall crowds, from Seattle and Chicago and New York and elsewhere. But I almost had to be reminded of their presence elsewhere.

The fact is, July through September, and sometimes earlier or later, Houston is not a pleasant place to walk. The heat, sun, and humidity are everything. Throughout the summer, I rode my bike, and I saw others biking. But I had to be careful in the same ways that I did when walking on near-zero days in Chicago, when the wind whipped between buildings and I flexed my fingers in double-ply gloves. I had to carry water, keep to shade, and survive. In mid-June, a Boston visitor asked about my decision to be car-free here. Although he was moving to New York and looked forward to selling his car and taking the train, he was astounded that I would go without a car in Houston. I asked if he wondered because it was so hot, or because it was spread out. He said for both reasons.

Yes, getting through the summer in Houston without a car was not easy. At first, riding my bike in sunlight was fun. After seven years in Seattle, I am still glad for all sunlit days. Even when days were long and hot, as long as they were unhumid—and humidity is less frequent in the ongoing drought—I was in pretty good spirits. But oppressive heat causes cabin fever. There’s nowhere to go, unless we have swimming pools or get in cars and drive to large, air-conditioned spaces.

How I did it, car-free: I learned to live differently, to live simply. But I also felt oppressed by heat. I biked, but then I collapsed at home and rested, and I felt that the long hot day was eating up my life. I stayed indoors for much of the afternoon. The evenings were often nearly as hot.

It became clear to me: Although I am infinitely happier where there is sunlight, and I was never as bereft in Houston as in Seattle, I’d be better off spending summers in cooler climates. But in a place with light.

So, what is ideal in cities, in your opinion? It seems to me that escaping from crowds--as one can do in Chicago, Seattle, Philadelphia, and some other cities--can be nice. In New York, the fact that people are almost always everywhere that one is—that’s wearing to me. I grew up with vegetable farms and horses and raccoons and camping, and I love having those things as an option—not as a difficult mental transition to make from one's daily life.

Some European cities are good at balancing nature with urban: Copenhagen, and cities in Germany and the Netherlands, have large parks and trees that ring cities. Barcelona has promenades to the ocean.

Are the streets of very old cities sufficiently green? One friend in Scotland says they're too tightly set for her, and she misses the trees of Austin. Would I tire of cobbled streets, narrow lanes, houses everywhere? In some cities, I feel like Heidi, looking for a church tower to climb, trying to see the Alps.

At any rate, now the weather is gorgeous: Cool, sudsy, brisk in the mornings and calmly cloudless in the afternoons. Days begin and end with genial sun. We have earned it, and hope to continue it. I am happy that the outdoor weather matches my idea of fall: golden air. Here's to a trip to Austin, and to continuing to reevaulate our cities. 

**photo of foliage in Texas Hill Country by Gruenemann, Flickr Creative Commons.ere's to a trip to 

Wild Vitamin C, Feeling Brighter in Dark Weather

Photo of rose hips and water drop on fence, by Karl-Ludwig G. Poggeman, Flickr Creative Commons license. **

Yesterday was a dark, Northwest fall day. The sky and the air were the color of middle-grade slate.

To me, this weather is a bit like having hot weather all the time, or truly frigid weather all the time -- one gets tired of it. Also, cloudy weather lacks drama. Days like yesterday fail to provide the comfort of furrowed clouds before a snowstorm, or the excitement of racing clouds before a thunder-shower.

Here the entire day, morning to actual nightfall, has the light quality of 6:30 p.m. in winter. And it's considered very routine.

Thus, this afternoon I decided to do cheery things. I’d exercise and go to a busy, brightly lit space – a large library. I’d walk in the crowds, use the Internet, listen to indie power-pop bands on earphones. 

(If you’re wondering, I listened to The Bears, Mates of State, Two Door Cinema Club, Tennis, Matt & Kim, and some things that came up randomly on Pandora.)

These things helped enormously. I felt socialized, cheerful. However, I’d told myself that I’d also go to a park and do plant-ID-ing.

But the minute I set foot outside the bright library, I thought, “Oh, why leave the light?”

I'd decided, though: I would see which plants were turning color. I’d take the bus to the East Side suburbs.

Nightfall approached as I reached Kirkland a half hour later.  The dark weather had brought it on earlier – and the days were getting shorter.   

In a park near the bus stop I found rows of salal plants and pulled off handy clusters of the round, dark berries. Some were dried but flavorful, like slightly grainy raisins. Round, fresh ones burst with flavor. I loved them. It was great to find them still around, late in the season, too.

Photo of salal leaves and blossoms by La.Catholique, Flickr Creative Commons license.

**

Pure usefulness must be why the Scottish horticulturist/explorer David Douglas took salal back to the UK for use in English gardens. He knew a good shrub when he saw it!

Around a corner, the bright orange and red urn shapes of rose-hips burst from dark shrubbery. Roses gone by! They were large, which is handy because it means more orange flesh for each mass of seeded insides.

Reaching for a large, dark-red one, I bit it and chewed its softness, feeling the immediate pop of Vitamin C and of consuming wild nature on a dark day. Everything seemed to brighten around me.

A man in his 30s passed and asked in surprise, “Is that a…tomato?” I told him what it was – he nodded, knowing what a rose hip was. “Vitamin C!” I said. He laughed and passed on toward the grocery store. 

Photo of rose hips in profile against white sky by Duncan Harris, Flickr Creative Commons license.

**

Now massed in a bag for making jelly are about a pound of rosehips, their flesh orange and red, their furled leaf ends curling friskily.

As full dark came on, the orange rose hips could just barely be made out, springing out from the abundant shrubs. Plenitude and brightness in the dark. 

##

So, that was Saturday. Sunday dawned much brighter, the sky white instead of dark-gray.  I’ve seen the contrast and observed enough to be glad for the light in the day.

It's also nice to have those pretty rose hips in the refrigerator. Now, to get some cheesecloth or a jelly
bag!

Photo of rose hips in a glass bowl by Wonderlane, Flickr Creative Commons license.
**

Rose hips and herb nerds with brown paper bags

Photo of rose hips by Audreyjm529, Flickr Creative Commons License.
**

Today I've been collecting sun-softened, ripe rose hips into a brown paper bag that I begged off a counter-person at Rainbow Naturals, an apothecary that mixes its own herbs on Capitol Hill in Seattle. When I asked her for somewhere to transfer my bristly handful of rose hips, each the beating color of internal organs, she rustled out the bag and said in an undertone, "We're all herb nerds here, so I understand."

It was good. I wonder what Rainbow Naturals does with their rose hips, and I'll have to ask.

Meanwhile, I have a brown lunch bag lined with their rosy rounded forms, each with its autumnal, prickly leaf-stem. Lovely, what a dying rose leaves behind. If this is recycling, then I like it.

I'd always seen the bright orange hips, seemingly in such abundance on bare fall shrubs. But I never knew that they were things that ripened, that grew soft and tore at the edge when unhinged from the stem, so that each tear resembles a gash in a tomato.

So far, I'm just peeping at them proprietarily every so often. Tonight I'll settle on whether to make jelly, puree, chutney -- or even rose hip and vegetable curry.

What do you think?

Cold air and snow brace us

Photo of lobster mushroom, by gabriel amadeus on Flickr Creative Commons license
**


Lately my mind has been consumed with foraging. I think of mushrooms and their fluted caps, rose hips swaggering on branches, bull-whip kelp in brash sections on the beach.

I know little about my topic, though. I look at many blogs, and I went chanterelle-hunting for the first time a few weeks ago. My knowledge is nascent, but I'm building on it.

The weather here in the lowlands of the Pacific Northwest is turning unpleasant for me, wet and full of leaf rot. The past few days have been dusk-dark at mid-day. They aren't just shorter since last week’s time change, but full of looming catastrophe in the hanging darkness and just-deferred downpour.

Walking in Seattle in the dim noonday, taking care not to slip on damp leaves piled along the sloping sidewalks, I think of Snoqualmie Pass and the Cascades. As of this morning, they have received fresh snow and an order to don tire chains.

The air at the Pass, I know, is brisk and cleansing to the lungs. Looming mountains lift the eyes into clear air or air hazed by snowfall. One feels the elevation of the barometric pressure, and steps with energy on snowshoes.

Sometimes the air and the snow are the cold water in which we can swim.

I look forward to diving into this land, to finding the rose hips and making a syrup to pour over cake -– to eating that cake and making other starches from chestnuts. 

To gathering. It is endless, the possibilities.

Apple-picking days alternating with dark

Photo by VIUDeepBay on Flickr Creative Commons license.
**

Days in fall in Seattle are like an Appaloosa horse’s hide: They can be light -- but often they occur in great muddy dapples that obscure the bright, making their own pattern.
 

That's putting a pretty reading on it, though. What often happens is that I wake either thrilled by sunlight or lulled by gray. And sometimes the gray just makes a day in which it’s hard to be alert or even to have bright and clear eyes.
 

Probably that’s why I like cold water: It jolts me. I rise from the waters bright-featured, clear-headed. Sunlight in a gray place does that, too.
 

When in southern California, I’ve often thought that sunlight was excessive. All Pacific Coast weather is moody in its way, utterly different from the East Coast weather -- which follows its course through various seasons. Colors in the East are often vivid and primary.
 

That said, winter in the Northeast isn’t really a primary color -– it can be midnight dark, or display the furrowed clouds of expected snow. But it’s very often sunny, bright days.
 

I think that’s it: I like the bright, earned days of apple-picking time. I like them sharp as a Honey Crisp apple, with the same tang.

We have had some of those days in Seattle lately. Like the Appaloosa’s hide, they are variegated. Several dark, slogging days in a row precede the bright jewels that seem to last long.

I am glad for the variety, so far.
 

It may be time to swim again. If last year I swam on January 1 – which I did -– it can be done again. We will see. It’s always time to push off into the challenge.

##

53F in the early fall darkness

Photo of Juanita Beach Park in Kirkland, WA, by heystax, Flickr Creative Commons license.

** 

 

One can only dive into cold water so many times and still find it surprising, right?

When nearly warm air was all around (this is Seattle, so I won’t say balmy), emptying myself into a cold body of water was no sweat, literally. It was also relatively pleasant.

Since the weather has turned chilly and dark, it’s no longer a snap.

As I had last immersed in Lake Washington 10 days prior, I was getting antsy.

And a friend had recently had acquired a wetsuit. The accompanying rubber gloves, he complained, didn’t keep his hands warm. Wow, I thought: If gloves don’t do the trick, am I really thinking of jumping?

I was.

Later, while standing on a Lake Washington dock, I was no longer certain.

I was standing on rough wood in 53 Fahrenheit weather in the early fall darkness.

In two weeks, the dock had changed from busy to empty. The yachts were gone, moved to some warmer or drier spot. From the beach came the wild shouts of a three-year-old boy as he ran sprints with his father. 

For a moment I thought, well, this is crazy. The night was clear and colder than usual. The darkness of the Northwest wet season had descended.

Even as I considered turning back, settling on the bench and fitting my feet back into my socks, I thought: No, I don’t want to sit at fireplaces all the time. I don’t want the warmth that seeps in and slows me from taking chances.

 

Tea and blankets can be pleasant in winter; don't get me wrong. But I knew it was necessary to take the change. 

So I pushed off from the dock, flailed in dark space for a second, felt myself plunge into the water.
 

On the dock, I had thought: It may be colder than you’re expecting.

The water was shockingly cold. I thrashed ten or eleven feet to the metal ladder, feeling that my arms were slower than usual to hit and sink into the water.

Hypothermia wasn't imminent -- but I was more than ready to get out quickly.

The air above the ladder felt almost tropical.

As I sat on the bench and flicked off moisture, I felt indomitable.

This was the me that jumps off docks into cold water.

##

Foreign country, foreign beach, in massively cold water

Photo of English Bay, Vancouver, off Stanley Park, by SqueakyMarmot on Flickr Creative Commons license.
**

 

Nearly brought to tears, I was, by the Strait of Georgia.

Shed my socks and sneakers on the gray-sand beach. It was the texture of flour with a bit of water and milk added, there at Stanley Park on Vancouver’s watery edge.

I plunged in a foot and felt the grip -- the absolute seizure -- of skin, bones, and all, by the cold depths.

The truth is, the Strait was no colder than the Puget Sound. I simply didn’t have a friend to egg me on, as I do at home in Seattle, and I knew that I'd left my Vancouver hostel already: If I dove, I'd need to make the 4-hour train ride home to Seattle in damp duds.

I was tired from sleeping poorly at a couch-surf, and sad because a very dear friend had just returned to the airport and onward to New York. I was alone in a foreign country, on a foreign beach, standing in massively cold water.

I watched my ankles in the clear depths, and moved forward a bit in the sand. Unlike Seattle beaches, this one had no pebbles to cut into my feet, which should have helped -- but the water was cold and seemingly bent on murder. I felt mortality.

All of a sudden, I lost the drive. I had been walking in sunshine along Stanley Park’s seawall, looking at the funny folded-umbrella shape of black cormorants on cliffs and down on rocky points in the sea, nodding at passing walkers and cyclists, gazing across the silvery waters towards the mountains of the separate district of North Vancouver.

On this particular day, I wasn’t ready for the mortality. I wanted the sunshine.

Usually, I would have driven myself to dip fully, to feel that excitement of being entirely wet, and the warmth that comes from no longer being half in one state and half in another. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to submerge – knowing, as I did, that I’d end up chilly and remaining soggy.

Strangely, though, the feeling of dread passed quickly. If there’s one thing cold water does, it lends a feeling of resilience: “If I can withstand that, I can do anything!” At least, it does for me.

I liked being in Vancouver, looking at the cousin to my regular views in Seattle. It was as if I’d started out looking at water from Seattle, and suddenly the picture slid over a bit further – and I was looking from further north.

It was a bit eerie, but wonderful. I’ve never vacationed anywhere that was in some ways a continuation of my own region, like a chance to learn more about it. It was like meeting the cousin of a dear friend, and finding that they have the same laugh and give their hair the same part. I kept looking at pewter water extending to distant hills, and boats in the marinas, thinking to myself: “Hey, hey! More of that! More of that thing I like!”

So, no swimming this time in Vancouver. But next time, when I have shower access, and possibly a wet-suit like the resident I saw at the city's Jericho Beach -- I'm up for it.

The water was fiercely oceanic, bracingly cold

Photo of Seward Park Beach in Seattle by Chas Redmond, Flickr Creative Commons license.

Came here to the lake's east side cocky, post-Puget Sound popsicle toes of two days prior.

That earlier water had exhilarated me. It was so fiercely oceanic, so bracingly cold that we emerged with pinkish-red skin. Our epidermis needed to work -- skin's version of rubbing sticks together -- to re-kindle our body warmth. We were thrilled, and warmed happily in the sun. The outside temperature was mild in comparison.

After that, I figured Lake Washington would be relatively easy. Or at least, easier.

Today was sunny and sharp, but not chilly fall, yet.

Crossing the 520 bridge from the city, the sky and expanse of the lake were blue, the water a deep but limpid navy -- not somber as on some days. Bright motes bounced around the bus's vinyl interior.

In Kirkland, the lake-front is a narrow pebbled beach and a promenade where people walk wearing saris, head scarves, and the usual.

I was water-bound. Shucked shoes, stored other items near a friendly retiree from Cle Elum.

Walking to water, I realized that the pebbles at water's edge were different from other beaches' -- they were continuous, compact, and dug into my feet with insidious variety. 

Jumping from the dock it was, then. The quick plunge is actually my preferred method: into the sweet cool sluice of water, quickly. When it's not the Sound, or the lake in January, the water temperature isn't shocking, but nice, I feel.

I found a span of dock with a ladder on its side. Then I stood, jiggled my feet in nervous anticipation. Felt the audience of people sitting across the water, on benches under spruce trees in the park.

Then I jumped. Felt the water, delicious, cover my head. Felt that fall, the Jacques Cousteau-like propulsion. I felt unable to stop further immersion and unwilling to slow it. 

It was a wondrous human moment of letting go.

The water wasn't cold once I was in. I swam breast-stroke, against waves, and entered the marina. I passed docks, went toward the beach, and returned to my original dock. 

I felt like wondrous swim pioneer, like a Channel crosser.