Laughter Dangles Above the Playgrounds ….
Have we ever greeted spring with such a feeling of relief? Laughter dangling above playgrounds. People wearing warm and friendly smiles.
Last week when the temperature reached into the sixties, I bicycled to Central Park to ride the 6.1- mile Central Park Circuit that loops and twists around the Park. It takes you through the Harlem Meer at the northern end where there is a steep hill that challenges even the most experienced cyclists. At the southern end there are usually lots of tourists and horse drawn carriages who have wandered in from Fifth Avenue and Sixtieth Street.
It was during lunch hour and I quickly realized I wasn’t the only person with this idea. The roads and paths were crowded with bicycles, unicycles, strollers, runners, race walkers, scooters and lots of older couples, arm in arm. What seemed to be universal was the feeling of lightness and the absence of fear. The resilience and beauty we find in nature provides a refuge from the myriad of problems and situations that define our lives on this small, revolving blue planet.
This is a year when I believe all of us have done more reading. Visiting friends, I have noticed the piles of books that seem to have accumulated in their homes. Much of my reading has involved nature and I thought I would share a few titles.
World of Wonders, In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments (Milkweed Publications, 2020) by poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil is both memoir and observations about the natural world. In one chapter, writing about being a young fifth grader she “imagines herself a narwhal, with one giant snaggletooth – a saber – to knock into people …” It’s an enchanting book that will engage adults at the same time it is being read to children. A book grandparent might want to keep on their bookshelf.
Vespers Flight (Grove Atlantic, 2020) by Helen Macdonald is a series of essays that, in her words, are about love. She connects the internal and psychological aspects of love with the external world usually defined by science. A link that poets have always used to connect emotions and the natural world.
Ali Smith has published a cycle of novels around the seasons: Summer Autumn, Winter and Spring (Anchor Books, 2020). Spring is on the top of my stack of books to read. As I haven’t read the other books in this seasonal quartet, Spring seems an appropriate entry point.
The Book of Spells (Anasi, 2020) by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris is a small book with stunning illustrations that I just couldn’t resist. Robert Macfarlane, a British nature writer, is one of my favorite authors. This book is described as a book of “spells, to be spoken aloud.”
Think, now, think!
If one-year
Swifts did not appear:
The sky unriven,
rooftops silent all
the watchers waiting,
hoping for a gift
that stays ungiven,
so –
Spin, world, spin and
send Swifts back
and back and back
to us again!
There are a number of books being written and published about climate change. David Attenborough’s A Life on Our Planet, My Witness Statement and A Vision for the Future (Grand Central Publishing, 2020) is challenging us to restore the biodiversity that has been lost on our planet. He writes through the lens of his career as a naturalist and broadcaster for almost seven decades and probably the most well-known British film maker.
J. Drew Lanham’s The Home Place, Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature (Milkweed Press, 2016), writes about race and the American landscape. The author grew up in Edgefield, South Carolina and is an Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology and a Master Teacher at Clemson University. “But in all my time wandering I’ve yet to have a wild creature question my identity. Not a single cardinal or overbird has ever paused in dawnsong declaration to ask the reason for my being.”
With a new appreciation of spring and the natural world, this is certainly the time to stop and reflect on what we must do to protect and care for everything on the earth.