Last June I was distracted by the joy of seeing my son, Luke, and my daughter-in-law, Genevieve, get married on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Oregon. That wedding was an immediate family affair, so this June our families gathered en masse — 60 of us! — to celebrate. Which means I’ve been a little distracted once again.
So I thought I’d create a garden of some of my favorite nature essays to mark the turn of the solstice into summer. My website is in its tenth year and contains well over 100 posts. All full of memories, wonder, things I’m passionate about, celebrations of the miraculous. Even some of the complications of pondering the natural world.
Hard to choose! It reminded me of going to a nursery to buy a couple of plants and coming home with ten — a situation I’m very familiar with. But I managed to choose several that called to me to be in this June garden.
Celebrating the miraculous
LIVING LIGHT: THE CRUCIAL MIRACLE OF PHOTOSYNTHESIS
To love plants is to be in awe of photosynthesis. Even when you know how it works, it’s still a miracle. And a crucial, we-wouldn’t-be-here-without-it miracle. Its ramifications are so vast that once it showed up, it dictated all of the evolution that followed.
It connects us to our deepest history, all the way back to the beginning of the universe, and impacts every single thing we do today. It’s the most important biochemical process on earth.
We in the animal kingdom live a life of supreme interdependence with seeds. Our presence on the planet depends on them; our intelligence has evolved with them. They are mighty packages of fierce and beautiful energy, full of deep wisdom that knows when, where, and how to spring fully to life, fueling most of the plant world, and all of us. And they are in danger.
Passionate concern
In 2007 the Oxford Junior Dictionary removed the word acorn from its print edition. Also the words blackberry, otter, willow, bluebell, and newt. Fifty such ‘nature words’ were eliminated and replaced by words like broadband, MP3 player, and chatroom.
The response in the UK involved some wonderful things, but the words are still missing, and the thinking behind their removal persists. We have a lot to grapple with if we live in a world where children are losing exposure not just to acorns or herons, but to the words that might lure their curiosity to discover more about them.
It can be complicated
CEZANNE, SHAMANS, AND THE INTELLIGENCE OF PLANTS
I think my title subjects warrant one of those old-fashioned “never appearing before on one stage” headlines. How do they mesh? It’s all about perception and vision, the ability to see beyond the surface of our knowledge and habits to the radiant possibilities and pathways beyond. And from there, to bring about the future we are longing for.
A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME IS COMPLICATED
Before 1735, a European botanist needed a string of nine Latin words to specify the tomato plant. In 1735 Carl Linnaeus published the first edition of his Systema Naturae, the birth of binomial nomenclature. His genius lay in identifying the living world with two words instead of a long string of them.
We’re still at it. If I want to communicate with a botanist in Shanghai, or Mongolia, or Zanzibar, we can be sure we are speaking of the same plant by using the scientific name rather than the local common name. Very handy. Since this spread was largely fostered by colonialism, it’s also very complicated, right down to today.
Wonder
STALKING THE ELUSIVE ADDER’S TONGUE
The first year, seeing the leaves sprinkled through the redwood forest, I suspected the plant would one day show me a flower. But it took a few years of looking before the delight of my first one. And then, as so often happens with quests, the end was only the beginning of the gifts.
It started with mysterious lines showing up on the desert floor and became a meditation on walking among the profound mysteries we find everywhere we go.
Because it’s June: roses
My brother died four years ago this month and the tender mercies of June’s beauty were deeply consoling. Perry, who started his landscaping business in college, told me while he was still able to contemplate such things that he was profoundly grateful that he could spend his life making the world more beautiful.
My days that month took me past a garden where the quintessential June flower — roses — were blooming in profusion. Their intricate, soft voluptuousness reminds me of some of the most luscious words ever strung together: Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem The Bowl of Roses. That June, I coupled them with photos of roses from the gorgeous Rose Hill in Spokane, Washington’s Manito Gardens.