Take some time today

What a different world it is when you slow down!

When I traverse the Greenway by bicycle, or on a run, it is simple a means of conveyance. I zip (or quickly lumber, if enjoying a run) past the familiar catalpas and sumacs, noting at a glance which flowers have stopped blooming and which leaves are beginning to turn. Without slowing down, I greet the cardinals chipping in the brush and the quiet tap-tap-tap of the little downy woodpecker foraging on stems down in the now-dry cells.

I will often bring the camera in my little bicycle basket and stop to take pictures if something catches my eye. But the threshold for eye-catching is so much higher on a bicycle, having to stop, dismount, prop up the vehicle, pick up the camera, remove the lens cap, and get the subject in focus! If it was a bird or butterfly, chances are it has already moved out of view by the time I get the camera to my eye.

So I find myself just passing the world by, and making excuses as I do. Oh, there's a monarch. Stop? Nah, I've got plenty of photos of them this month. The sun looks pretty glinting off those leaves...stop? No, a photo wouldn't do it justice.

And those are just the things I notice. How many more tiny lives escape our sight when we move quickly through our neighborhood? What appears to be an empty aster from a distance turns out to be hosting a little female Melissodes bee, with luxuriously lengthy leg hairs. On foot, she is the focus of intense scrutiny for a minute or more. By bicycle? Completely unseen.

Or the distant buckeye, backlit against the afternoon sun. At a walking pace, there is time to admire the way the light shines through the light spots on its wings as it balances briefly on a spent flower. On wheels--invisible.

Traveling by foot can be an exercise in mindfulness, an immersion into things normally unseen and an experience of all the life that surrounds us day by day.

Slow down. Look around. Experience the world, don't just pass it by.

The Unassuming Hazelnut

Ah, the hazelnut. My favorite of all nuts.


Its small, mostly-spherical shape is easy to overlook in a handful of mixed nuts, lacking the wrinkly texture of the pecan and walnut, the distinctive pointy shape of the almond, the meaty heft of the Brazil nut or the chunky curvature of the cashew. But its flavor and texture enhance fancy chocolates around the world.

The familiar edible hazelnut is native to Eurasia, usually some variety of Corylus avellana. My fellow hazelnut lovers/native plant aficionados will delighted to know we have our own native hazelnut here, Corylus americana...though its nuts are quite a bit smaller and less meaty than the commercial variety.

The American Hazelnut is a large shrub that is not terribly spectacular in appearance, though its nuts are enclosed in a pair of attractive, feathery-looking bracts. Many nut-loving birds and mammals enjoy hazelnuts: blue jays and woodpeckers, squirrels and mice...and the occasional human.

Seeing the smooth brown nuts peeking out from their protective bracts, I could not resist taking one to sample. It looked much like a standard hazelnut in the shell that can be found in bulk bins around the holidays, but much smaller in stature. Alas, the lack of a nutcracker in the house led to an ill-advised attempt using a tool not suited to the job, and as a result the little nut exploded spectacularly, shattering into fragments of shell and a tiny morsel of nut that was nearly too small to taste.

The victim, pre-smashing.

Although I can't be certain the bulk of the nut didn't fly off in the shattering and land unseen in a corner of the room, the meager reward has convinced me that these little nuts are best left to those creatures adapted to eat them. I shall continue to take my fancy hazelnuts comfortably ensconced in chocolate, and enjoy the American Hazelnut from afar for its value to our wild neighbors.



 

Look! Up in the Sky!

Most of the summer, my eyes are cast toward the earth, looking at all the new flowers that are blooming, noting which flowers seem to have finished blooming, inspecting the various bees, beetles, and other invertebrates hopping, buzzing, and crawling about. Watching my step to avoid basking snakes and briskly-trundling caterpillars crossing the trail.

But some days, when shapely clouds loom far overhead, my mind takes a maudlin turn and my gaze dims. I imagine people long ago looking up at the sky the same way, watching the clouds form and move and form again in different shapes, wondering where they came from and where they are going. Or the pale moon hanging in the sky, rising and setting day after day, month after month, as it is now and ever has been. Did those long-ago people think of me, hundreds of years later, looking at the same shapes in the sky?

I'd have to surmise probably not. I rarely spare a thought for the potential human hundreds of years from now, looking up at the moon, or whatever else may be up there by that time. They are too distant, too unimaginable. There are too many different paths the world can take to easily imagine if the clouds and constellations will be looked upon by the same sort of eyes, through the same atmosphere, with the same history and memory. The immeasurable set of options available to our species is no option at all to one small individual trying to guess what the future holds.

A hundred years ago, airplanes were just coming into their own as vehicles by which humans could conquer the air as we conquered land and sea. As were the mighty zeppelins, those temperamental and massive airships. Who would have predicted in those early years that the zeppelin would spectacularly fall out of favor after a few (dozen?) high-profile flaming tragedies, while the descendants of those early aeroplanes would grow faster, sleeker, and extraordinarily diverse in their design and use?

On days when the little airport a couple miles west of the Greenway hosts an event, sky-watchers are treated to a sample of the many ways humans have been able to co-opt the air. Is offers a glimpse of military history and aviation history, a world utterly alien to a person with feet firmly planted on the ground and eyes that prefer the perfectly adapted wings of birds and butterflies to the cold, brutish planes that force their way into the air. But these aircraft are not without charm and interest, and well worth a moment to ponder one of the myriad ways human ingenuity has expanded our place in the world beyond what our ancestors may have dreamed.

(I am not even going to attempt to identify these. Apologies to any enthusiasts for my utter ignorance! Except the one...I think that one's a cliff swallow that looked a lot like an airplane from the thumbnail!)