News from Abroad

"There is something you can tell people over and over, and with feeling and eloquence, and still never say it well enough for it to be more than news from abroad--people have no readiness for it, no empathy. It is the news of personal aging--of climbing, and knowing it, to some unrepeatable pitch and coming forth on the other side, which is pleasant still but which is, unarguably, different--which is the beginning of descent....I don't think I am old yet, or done with growing. But my perspective has altered--I am less hungry for the busyness of the body, more interested in the tricks of the mind. I am gaining also, a new affection for wood that is useless, that has been tossed out, that merely exists, quietly, wherever it has ended up."
Mary Oliver from Winter Hours

In the early years on the lake, there wasn't any garbage collection. Since both my parents were from rural backgrounds, this was nothing new to them. They simply sorted the trash, packed it up and took to a place on their property inelegantly but appropriately referred to as 'the dump'. It only took one trip by any of the grand kids to land this activity at the top of the adventure chart. It's allure was only heightened by the thrill of riding there in my Dad's dwarf Cushman truck with a flatbed that would raise and dump its contents. You can imagine the excitement that stirred up. The mere mention of possibly needing to crank up the 'truckster' as we called it, with a flatbed full of trash would have any of them ready to tag along. The only bigger thrill was to be lifted up in the scoop of the front end loader Dad used to maintain the road. (Note: this is very stressful for young mothers.)

Most everyone has heard that old adage 'one person's trash is another person's treasure'. Remembering what got hauled to the dump, I cannot imagine any of that stuff every being valuable to anyone. To the grand kids, though, the discarded was mighty impressive: old tires, dead batteries, busted fishing poles, banged up file cabinets, broken shelving, defunct dock floatation. It was JUNQUE in their eyes. It was quickly established 'what goes to the dump stays at the dump', which only made the whole experience all the more irresistible.

When you live close to the rhythms of the natural world, you soon notice Nature dumps everything, everywhere. Instead of stockpiling it slowly breaks down and gets used for other purposes. Some becomes nesting material, some food, some eventually turns into soil. Over time, much of what was carried off to our dump slowly dissolved as well. What remained became bizarre skeletons of their former selves.

Midlife offers something akin to a trip to the dump. After years of work and family and careers , we arrive rather unexpectedly, at a turn in the road. Suddenly a lot of the accouterments of the first half of life no longer seem as necessary. We begin downsizing, shedding not only the things in our lives, but also pieces of ourselves that for all kinds of reasons, no longer reflect who we are or want to be. It is as if we have outgrown our earlier selves and are now beginning the process of outfitting physically and emotionally for the journey ahead.

In listening to friends talk about this part of life, I have come to believe what is happening in us is similar to the grand kid's appraisal of the contents of our dump. All the things, experiences, bits of self, that are being shed are still considered very valuable for the purpose s they served. That all of this is no longer needed, doesn't lessen at all the significance or worthiness of it. But unlike these small children we seem to recognize as the natural world does, that to keep hanging on to the parts that are used up, broken, outdated or worn out, requires an energy we no longer want to provide. Maybe because we are at the top of the hill in life, our perspective is clearer now and we see that what we carried up there simply isn't what we want or need, to carry down the other side. Could it be that all this lightening up is getting us ready for something else? What if the outward castoffs are a physical mirror of what is happening in our inner landscapes? What if the journey down is not about decline but more about becoming?

Here in late winter, the woods are at their barest. The trillions of leaves that were huge piles under the hardwoods have shrunk into the ground, already far along to becoming soil. The trees have a lean, lean look; their fingertips not yet swollen with Spring. Their debris is scattered everywhere on the forest floor: limbs, bark, seed pods, cones. They have tossed out everything they no longer need and are waiting quietly for what comes next. Each year just at this time when the woods appear the most forlorn and gray and lifeless, a day arrives when out of the woodland floor young green shoots rise up overnight, the tree tips burst out in a green haze from the tiny leaf buds opening and the dogwoods open their flower petals to become tiny white stars. In the early morning light you can feel the sigh of pleasure everywhere at the sheer joy of starting over.

We have garbage service now. It's not near as much fun.

"For myself...[I] have gone into the woods. Near the path, one of the tall maples has fallen. It is early spring, so the crimped maroon flowers are just emerging. Here and there slabs of the bark have exploded away in the impact of its landing. But mostly, it lies as it stood, though not such a net for the wind as it was. What is it now? What does it signify? Not indolence, surely, but something, all the same, that balances with Ambition."

Mary Oliver, from Winter Hours