dance du jour

After swim lessons, my daughter and I passed the windows of the adjoining indoor field house and witnessed an unusual synchronized affair. Seven people dressed in sport shorts and tees gracefully moving close together in an undulating wave through a miniature garden. Each had an arm outstretched, eyes half closed in meditation and concentration. It looked like a choreographed dance. I was baffled, because this was a…….dog show.

…with an obstacle course. Seconds later, I realized the dancers had two minutes to walk, or “wave” in this case, through the obstacle course before the competition started, dogs in tandem. As we stopped to watch the canines dance through the course, I wondered how I incorporate dance and grace in ordinary, daily activities. I tried to imagine grace at the office, picking up the phone with my feet perched on the windowsill, pulling a FAX off the machine. That was so wrong, wrong, wrong! So were the grocery shopping and laundry analogies.

Rather, the kitchen is my swan lake. On balanced tiptoes with hair swept up, I can stir the batter, roll the dough, press the garlic, peel the apples, braise colorful vegetables, grill savory meats, et al, and get a three-to-four course meal on the table nearly every night. I can practically do it with my eyes closed. My dance du jour. My forte. Truthfully, meditation and relaxation for me often involve reading cookbooks.

Dancing through life is something I aspire towards, to live with as much grace as possible, despite the obstacles. Dancing is how I got to know my husband. A friend snapped the photo above of us on one of our very first dates, contra dancing. You can see us spinning in the lower left corner. It was twenty years ago that we met. Happy Anniversary, sweetheart. I’m so glad that our daily life dances have lasted for twenty beautiful years. Keep on spinning all you dancers.

lost treasure

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about treasured daily moments. Today, the focus drifts towards other treasures. We have a barn full of mechanical treasures. A family of tractors and their kin. 1948 Ford 8N. 1957 John Deere 420C Crawler. 1989 John Deere 1070 4WD with a quick release bucket loader. 2000 New Holland LS160 skidsteer. 2002 Hitachi Zaxis 80 excavator.

All this equipment gets used regularly, and we often wonder aloud what we did without our mechanical friends. Imagine pruning apple trees without the bucket loader. Putting in asparagus without the excavator.

Still our tractor family was incomplete. For about ten years now, my husband has searched for a Massey Ferguson 135. Live hydraulics. Wet brakes. Hard to find. Early this summer, the search was over. He found one through an estate sale in Vermont. Bought new in about 1970 by an orchardist who recently passed away. It had a German-made Perkins diesel engine. Rare. Good price. A dream tractor.

He could barely wait for the day to go pick it up. With the trailer hitched to his truck, off he charged to get it. When he got there, he found that the tractor had been stolen. Broken lock on the barn. Tell-tale tire tracks across the grass where the tractor had been dragged away. Shock. Lost treasure. He left dejected as the police arrived to meet with the estate executors. Apparently, the estate would still like to sell him the tractor, however the police have yet to figure out where it is.....

Evenings have resumed endless web searches for other tractor treasures. Still, honing tractor knowledge is a respectable pursuit. Of course, there is this postscript perspective on the situation.

A man and his tractors. Inveterate.
A man who knows tractors. Erudite.
A man whose wife knows tractors. Truly sublime.

reunion yearbook page

Last weekend was my big college reunion weekend. Here's what I submitted as a reunion yearbook page, except you get the color version! What I've been up to....

1980s

▪ After graduating as an English major, worked as an aquatic biologist for the US Forest Service for five years in Idaho’s Selway-Bitterroot wilderness. Surveyed 200 alpine wilderness lakes and fought forest fires.

▪ When those lakes were frozen six months of the year, worked in Alaska for the Department of Natural Resources, or for US Fish and Wildlife Service as an animal tracker using snow tracking, radio telemetry and live trapping methods to collect data on lynx, wolves and marten.

1990s

▪ Worked as an aquatic biologist for the Agency of Natural Resources. Spent summers underwater diving in Lake Champlain or boating on the surface.
▪ Traded in my wetsuit for a business suit in Eastern Europe with the Sustainable Communities Program, started by former Governor Madeleine Kunin.
▪ Coordinated the Sister Lakes partnership between Lake Ohrid, shared by Macedonia and Albania, and Lake Champlain, shared by Vermont, New York and Quebec.
▪ Wrote a feasibility study for the Central Balkans National Park in Bulgaria.
▪ Managed the Center for Environmental Training in Volgograd which created an EPA-certified Smoke School to detect illicit air emissions. Ate caviar often. Had regular jet lag.
▪ Worked on forest biodiversity issues in Bolivia, where they amazingly translated my graduate thesis on land evaluation methodologies into Spanish.
▪ Bought an old hilltop farm at the end of a dead-end road in the mountains. Cleared brush and trees for years. Now make hay instead.

Skiing the Bridger-Tetons (2003).

Biking and hiking coastal Maine (2003).

2000s

▪ After 12 years of unwedded bliss, eloped to Japan, and spoke at the 9th World Lakes Conference.
▪ Three years later birthed a beautiful baby girl!
▪ Was a guest of the Mexican Ministry of Environment to speak at the Fourth World Water Forum.
▪ Represented North America at a UNESCO conference in South Africa for the southern hemisphere. My specialty—alternatives to legislation and regulation for watershed protection.
▪ Still working as the state coordinator for the Lake Champlain Program, a partnership among Vermont, New York and Quebec.
▪ Still in touch with Northern Studies friends: Gloria M., Marcy M., Ibit W., Peter B., Marjorie U., Molly M., Dan K.
▪ Wondering if I have the youngest child in my class and whether anyone else owns an orange excavator. Speak up please!

backyard rainbow

No words necessary.

today's treasure

It's June 1st tomorrow, and I've missed my chance to share signs of spring with my readers. As I view blogging more as an opportunity to trade comments than a diary, I like to post something that inspires people to write back. So, how about sharing some life treasures instead? Our treasure this week involved two baby mice.

My four-year-old and I discovered them in the grass near the porch, so tiny they lacked hair and open eyes. No doubt, one of our felines dispatched with their mother. My daughter carefully collected them in her octogonal box and began mothering them. She fed them for two days with an eye dropper and kept warming them in her hands. Snowflake and Geranium. Her instincts were very sweet. She drew a wardrobe of little pink dresses on paper and cut them out. She drew baby blankets decorated with little flowers and taped them to the box. At the library, she selected Margaret Wise Brown's collection of stories entitled Mouse of My Heart. I read aloud the stories she selected for the mice. Two days later, she buried them in her flower box underneath some pansies so she would know where they were. These were all her ideas, I just sat back and smiled.

I am very awed by these simple expressions of love. My way of saving this treasure is to write this vignette, keeping it in my octagonal box of memories. That and this photo of little pink paper dresses.

urban dialogue

We just returned from our annual pilgrimage to NYC. The yearly checklist includes Japanese takeout with a small mountain of tuna and yellowtail sashimi, watching the seals feed and the animal chimes ring at the Central Park Zoo, and Novalox from Zabar's on a poppyseed bagel from H&H. New this year was the Cosmic Collisions imax film at the Rose Planetarium (mamela, are we really on that planet right now), finding the legendary curving granite slide in Central Park, and Mary Poppins on Broadway--a very special birthday present from one of my daughter's god mothers. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

Pure serendipidity also played a role in defining a fabulous weekend getaway. My three twenty-something cousins, one of whom lives in Manhattan, were also planning a weekend get together. I consider their parents my older siblings. We rendezvoused over indian cuisine. It was delight to hear what inspires twenty-somethings these days. I noted that when dating entered the discussion, I got a big zero for content. As the youngest sibling was describing her course of study and summer research, the following memorable short dialogue about careers and choices ensued.

Oldest sibling: So, you're becoming dad.

Youngest sibling: Well, you became mom.

Middle sibling: I'm neither, so I'm truly independent.

I've thought about this exchange quite a bit, wondering how I might respond in kind. There's serious parental blending in my case. I've got dad's negotiating abilities and a calm demeanor under pressure (thank goodness). I've got mom's creativity genes and a flair for planning large gatherings with mountains of good food (thank goodness). Of course, there are many other good things. I'd just like to take this opportunity to say thanks mom and dad! It was fun thinking about you two being young twenty- and thirty-somethings on your first date in NYC, and wondering what sort of urban dialogue inspired you at the time. xox.

spring awakening

A couple weeks ago, a blogging friend recounted a sweet conversation about tulips with her five-year-old son. I was moved by the double entendre to compose a haiku entitled spring awakening.

Tulips are tender flowers caressed by the sun, or

two lips kissing.

Last Sunday, another spring awakening occurred which shifted the sensation from the sublime to the brisk. The 11th Annual Pond Plunge Classic! On the first sunday in May, a group of hearty friends and neighbors gathers on our porch to ponder the annual questions. Who's jumping, who's cheering? This annual rite of spring usually occurs one to four weeks after ice out on our swim pond. Icy plunging and shrieking is followed by maypole dancing, a toenail painting soiree, and divine picnicking.

Compliments of my four-year-old, I earned my glitter painted toenails after immersing myself, twice. A spring awakening indeed. You're all invited next year. Happy Mother's Day!