Bees, Knees, & Transitions

Colin Meloy is singing the soundtrack of my daughters’ childhoods this morning, much as John Denver sang mine.  It’s time to say goodbye to yet another summer.  This morning I return to work and on Thursday school begins.  It’s been a summer of transitions and reflection.

Last week we made a very difficult family decision to have our beloved pet cat put down due to increasing behavioral issues (the technical term is inappropriate elimination).  We have each made our peace with losing Lucie, but there are moments of acute loss that each suffer, often at unexpected times.  To walk into the space where her food dishes were causes my heart to drop, every time, and my heart seems to beat out, “she’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone.”  The evenings and mornings when she’d be especially cuddly and purry seem so empty to us now.  Every now and then, I think I see her out of the corner of my eye, curled up in one of her usual places.  Emptiness seems the primary description for losing a pet.  Lucie occupied such a presence in home and heart.  She was an exceedingly social cat, greeting visitors and needing to be wherever we were.  We miss her so.

As if called to fill this void, thousands of bees swarmed into my in-laws’ garage the day after we said goodbye to Lucie.  Dan contacted friends who are beekeepers to assess the situation.  They said the bees might leave on their own to find a more suitable home, but if not, they’d capture and relocate them on Sunday.  The bees were still there the next morning, a mass of solid bees the size of a basketball, clinging to one another and the ceiling of the garage.  Peggy and Dave arrived and suited up, explained the plan, and talked with such love about the bees.  Something clicked inside me and I was intrigued and fascinated and immediately wanted these bees placed on our property.  I asked impulsively if we could have the bees, and Peggy was delighted that I was a convert and explained what I’d need to do to prepare a space for the bees.

Sunday night, the bees were moved into a box on our property, under a juniper tree south of our house.  From our deck we check on them multiple times a day, using binoculars, observing patterns in their comings and goings.  We’ve ordered our own bee suits, have a pile of bee books from the local library, and have had conversations with our neighbors to make them aware.  We’ve spoken to several people who are or were beekeepers who have been so supportive and willing to share advice.  We definitely feel part of a community of environmental stewards – the beekeeping community is welcoming and eager.  There are moments when I am watching the bees when a paraphrase of Bogie’s line from Casablanca pops into my head:  Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, these bees buzzed into mine…  I’ve never felt quite so obsessed and concerned about anything like I do about these bees.  Truly, they are incredibly low maintenance, and in fact do their thing without human assistance and in spite of human interference, as they’ve done for millennia.  But to provide them a safe place to call home during this time of crisis for their species feels like very important work.  Beekeeping is a lot like parenting, teaching, or gardening, in that my first task is to create and maintain an ideal environment for them to thrive.  I’m learning all I can and hope that this colony will succeed.  If they make enough honey to share with us, that’s an added bonus, and I hope to have plenty for anyone who wants some.  They do appear to be a strong colony and my first glimpse into the bee box two days after their placement showed them to be busy building comb and setting up house, as perfectly as we could hope.

This summer we also replaced our flooring, which required us to move out of the upper floor of our house.  We slept in our camping trailer for a week, our garage and downstairs filled with furniture and boxes.  We spent many days this summer sorting through clothing, toys, and such, deciding what to keep, what to donate, what to pitch.  It was a cathartic process that involved many trips to Goodwill and the Humane Society Thrift Shop to drop off bags and boxes.  Madeleine and Arden said goodbye to numerous toys they’d outgrown.  We repainted their bedroom and still need to hang pictures back on the wall, but it’s mostly back together.  I had the realization that Madeleine has three more summers with us before she heads off to college, and my mind’s been frantic with planning those family vacations we’ve not yet done (Hawaii, Europe, Baja, Washington DC).  Of course, we don’t have to do these family trips before she goes off to college, but she’ll soon have other interests and a summer job.  She did have a small job this summer teaching music reading to a young violinist.  I’m definitely feeling the clock ticking in a way I haven’t before this summer.

Exactly a month before the first day of school, I tore the medial meniscus in my right knee while on a morning run.  I was laid up for about a week during which I had a lot of time to read and think.  I saw an orthopedic surgeon who indicated surgery is my only option for this injury, but that I would be the one to decide when that should occur.  A steroid shot into my knee has given me much mobility and I can do most any activity I want (except hiking and running).  It’s a waiting game at this point to see what I can tolerate.  Just this week I began taking slow walks around the neighborhood, managing to do two miles without much discomfort.  As always, though, an injury or illness makes us take stock since it slows us down to the essentials of life, temporarily, if we’re lucky.

In spite of not being very physically active, I haven’t been writing much this summer, or even this year if I’m honest.  I can’t really pinpoint why, although there is often a sense of overexposure of the self, or feeling as if I’ve revealed or might reveal more of my inner workings than I want.  So this season has been one of inward retreat and renewal.  It takes a lot of physical and emotional energy to exist in this world, even in my cushy, semi-rural existence here in America.  As I gear up for another year in the classroom, I am more grateful than ever that my profession offers this very important and very necessary perk of summers off.  I am refreshed and revived and very much looking forward to the new challenges the school year always brings.  I am grateful, too, for new professional opportunities like coaching Academic Decathlon, and new personal interests like beekeeping, that keep each day fresh.  Dan and I celebrated our 22^nd anniversary last month and some days I feel very old in my bones, very set in my ways as I go about my routines.  But these transitions to new stages, new interests, and new dreams will help to keep us young.  As Gabo said, “It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.” 

We’ve transitioned from a one-pet household to being stewards for thousands of creatures, from a household with two children to one with two young adults.  I’ve gone from being physically active to slowly working my way back to being able to walk a couple miles.  It’s an adventure, this life, filled at times with heartbreaking detours and unexpected curves, and always, always, always, with changes.  Wishing you some new dreams that will set your heart abuzz.

The Sanity Lap

I’m not sure when the building I teach in was built, but it was probably during the 1960’s.  It’s a depressing institutional structure, with almost no natural light, especially in the interior corridors where my classroom is located.  Students report feeling the presence of Dementors in the building, and I honestly am not surprised, as I’ve sensed them myself.  It’s not a beautiful place to be, but we teachers try to make the best of it by painting our classrooms with cheery colors.  Nothing quite makes up for dim fluorescent lighting and general lack of interesting architecture, though.

This summer, when my friend and colleague, Lauren, realized that we shared a common prep period, she suggested that we walk a lap each day at the beginning of that class period.  We’ve since dubbed this short walk the Sanity Lap.  It takes place daily, unless there’s a downpour (which is generally unlikely).  We make our way outside, descend the stadium steps to the track and walk one lap, climb the steps and re-enter the building.  The entire trip takes probably no more than five minutes, from classroom door to classroom door.  We are leaving the track just as Boys PE is coming outside for their warm-up lap. 

There are some days when I wonder if those five minutes could be better used if I were grading or planning or organizing or photocopying or contacting parents or the myriad other things we teachers try to accomplish during the fifty-five minutes we’re without students.  But after a semester’s worth of laps, I can definitively say that the time spent on the lap pays greater dividends than the time it takes.  I have a daily opportunity to talk with an adult (and one who is wise and witty to boot), which can be a rare occurrence during the school day.  I spend a few moments outdoors, which restores my soul, and I inhale clean mountain air, rather than the stuffy re-circulated air in the building.  Just before we descend the steps to the track, I breathe in the distinctive view of Thumb Butte and the Bradshaw Mountains south of town.  I can discern if the sky is clear or cloudy or somewhere in between, having arrived at school before the sun is fully up during most of the year.  I connect with a friend, if only for a few moments.

Some days one teacher or another joins us, but usually it’s just the two of us, ranting, venting and laughing.  It’s often the best five minutes in the workday, leaving me refreshed and ready to tackle the challenges of the rest of the day.  The Sanity Lap has made me more productive and gives me focus.  I look forward to it each day.  It costs me only a tiny investment in time, but the pay-off is huge.  I’ve been reflecting on the year, as most of us do in December, and taking stock of habits I want to continue and change.  This one is a definite keeper.  As you reflect on the opportunities a new year brings, and the practices and rituals you want to establish, I hope that you will find something both as cost-effective and priceless as the Sanity Lap. 

Pilgrimage

Granite Mountain Wilderness reopened this week, nearly three months after the Doce Fire ripped through it.  Saturday morning the four of us headed there to hike to the big alligator juniper tree; the intro bass line of REM’s Pilgrimage bumbled through my head, setting the pace.  The first two miles, out to Blair Pass, were as lovely as always.  The trail winds through a riparian area and is lush with vegetation, including a unique tree I christened the ponderoak. 

As we approached Blair Pass, though, evidence of the fire was all around us.  But perhaps even more evident was the regrowth.  Scrub oak sprung from its charred selves, like hundreds of phoenixes.  Smiling wildflowers of many colors were bending with the breeze.  Bear grass shoots reached tall.  Yucca splayed out around blackened stumps just inches high.  Industrious ants scurried, preparing for what will surely be a longer winter than usual for them.  And improbably, from what was surely a dead agave, a stunted flower stalk rose in testament to Mother Nature’s resiliency. 

At the pass, though, the fire had burned incredibly hot.  The manzanita thicket that adorns the wallpaper of this page has been replaced by burnt, black sticks less than a foot tall, jutting up from the damaged soil.  It was a moonscape.  The trail junction signs erected by the Forest Service had become charcoal, brittle, black, barely legible, propped against the remains of their posts.  The shadows of what remained standing on the blackened granite cast an eerie pall.  Madeleine and I rested there while Dan and Arden went in search of a small geocache he’d placed nearby in 2010.  They found it - the roll of paper within now a fragile, black cylinder of carbon.  I know the area will recover, but it will not return to the way it was during my lifetime.  This upsets me, in spite of my awareness that my emotions mean little to the wilderness.

The trail beyond the pass deteriorated significantly.  Due to the intensity of the fire and the prolonged monsoon, erosion and run-off have effectively destroyed the trail.  It was difficult picking our way through the rocky, narrowed channels, the charred underbrush whipping and scratching our legs.  At times we had to rely upon Dan’s excellent route-finding skills.  Eventually, after we’d wound our way down from the pass, we entered an area that hadn’t burned.  At one point, the trail was littered with pieces of white quartz.  Here we searched for and found the spur that led to the tree.

The tree stood as it always had:  massive and majestic.  The area to the west of it had burned, though, close enough to have singed parts of the tree’s canopy.  A small memorial made of white quartz at the base of the tree commemorated the Granite Mountain Hot Shots who’d created a fire break credited with saving the tree just over three months ago.  There’s a fantastic photo of most of the hot shots, in pyramid formation with sooty, smiling faces, dwarfed in front of the tree.

I thought of them as we climbed in the tree, but they didn’t dominate my thoughts.   Instead, as I watched my daughters climb and rest, cradled in its colossal arms, I thought of the comfort of permanence.  The tree was still there, as it had always been.  It would surely outlive me, just as it had outlived this fire and countless other hardships in the millennium since it had sprouted.  This tree, nearly geologic compared to all other life in the Granite Mountain Wilderness, was unchanged by the personal trials of our lives, unscarred by our small community’s national tragedy.  The tree was the same:  a symbol of stability and timelessness, its sacredness mere strength in the mundane monotony of life.  We scurry about our busy lives like ants, except when we make the time to pause, and breathe, and wonder. 

Click here for photos from our hike.

(If you go:  from Iron Springs Road, turn at Granite Basin Road.  Park at Playa ($5 or use your federal lands pass).  Take Trail 261 to Blair Pass, then continue due west from the junction.  Be prepared for hazardous conditions beyond Blair Pass; experienced route-finding skills are necessary as the trail is dismal at best.  Two miles to Blair Pass, plus approximately 1.75 to the tree, approximately 7.5 miles round-trip.  Have a map, GPS (and know how to use it), plenty of food and water, first aid kit, and a flashlight.  Be sure someone knows where you are going.  This trail is not recommended for inexperienced hikers.  Know your limits.  Do not add to or disturb the memorial at the tree. Please leave no trace.)