Teeming With Life

Having returned last night from a family visit to Phoenix, Arizona, I looked for quotes about the desert. Clever and witty observations abound, but this one, from Professor Ellsworth Huntington (a Yale geographer in the early 20th century) captures what I found most surprising: "As a matter of fact, an ordinary desert supports a much greater variety of plants than does either a forest or a prairie."

I’ve always loved the desert, despite having been told by friends over the years that it’s hostile and forbidding. Maybe, but its stark beauty bewitches me. The saguaros look almost human as they grow arms that reach for the sky, and the rock formations look like something from outer space.

Perhaps best of all, you can see forever—and in that endless view life keeps rolling on and on, despite the heat and the drought. Life in the most unlikely place under the sun.

Belize Part III: The Poverty

I don't have any pictures of the poverty we saw in Belize: the tiny shacks dotting the landscape as we drove to Mayan ruins or the pitted roads leading into Belize City. Nor do I have a recording of the voices of our tour guides, the desperation below the surface, pleading with us to return some day and to tell our friends of the "Unbelizable" time that we had in their country.

What I do have is a renewed sense of my place in the world. For while I simmer angrily with the rest of the 99% in my country, I realize--with a sense of deep unease--that I sit comfortably with the 1% that holds the world's wealth.

Belize Part II: The Colors

Though the animals in Belize were sometimes hard to spot, other life forms (both natural and otherwise) were not. We saw fronds dancing in the sand,



Holiday berries trimming a palm,



A broom sweeping jungle plants,



A beckoning pool,



Bags begging to be bought,



And a rainforest dressed in green.

Belize Part I: The Animals

A holiday cruise to ports of the western Caribbean landed our family for a day in Belize, where we toured the River Wallace (or Olde Belize River) by boat. Look closely to find the animals below:


Slicing the water with grace and ease, a dolphin swims beside us.


Along the trunk of this tree cling tiny bats, which devour mosquitoes in record numbers.


Black howler monkeys are found only in the rainforests of Belize, Guatemala, and southern Mexico. Their howls can be heard as far as three miles away, though they were silent when we saw them.


A study in gray, the heron--with its beautiful fringed feathers--glides over the water.


Green iguanas are not necessarily green. They are found everywhere in Belize--like squirrels at home--and are called "Bamboo Chickens."


The crocodile is as camouflaged as the others. You wouldn't think it necessary for such a fearsome creature to hide so well. Who is hiding from whom?

Flowers of a Bygone Era

To see the "Glass Flowers" exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History is to step back in time in more ways than one. Crafted by Rudolph and Leopold Blaschka in Germany in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these beautiful and scientifically accurate glass models are unlike anything you would see produced today. In addition to the 847 flowers created, the display also features some 3,000 pieces of specific plant parts--stems, seed pods, leaves, pistils, pollen--all startlingly lifelike. You can't believe they're made of glass.

The collection is one of those artistic feats rooted in a specific time and place. Beyond the marvel of the flowers themselves is the wonderment at this father and son duo who blended art and science in a whole new way.

If you find yourself in Boston, make the trip to Cambridge to see the flowers. You won't be sorry.

The Call of the Wild

To hear the mournful call of the loon on Lake Bellaire in Michigan makes 17 hours of travel worth every bit of it. Something about that haunting wail evokes the beauty of a wilderness I rarely encounter. It's a sound that seems to rise and fall out of mist, casting a spell on those who hear.

How lucky I am to have heard its call once again.

A Cape Cod Holiday

Cape Cod at Christmas was a blast of New England cold, a landscape both foreign and familiar, an oasis of water and stars, and a home with family and friends.

Impermanence

Other than my two hometowns of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and Durham, North Carolina, I have spent more time in Chincoteague, Virginia, than anywhere else on earth.



Every time I return, I look for signs that things are still the same. On this trip the ponies were still grazing on Assateague Island, the marsh mallows were bursting with color, the snowy egrets were hunched in the trees, and the seagulls--the seagulls--were still hoping for a free meal.


And of course the crape myrtles were in bloom everywhere,



and vacationers were still hanging out on their decks overlooking the bay.


But on this trip the bridge had changed. I had known that a new bridge was in the works for years and under construction this year, but to see it and travel on it was altogether different. By entering the island onto Maddox Avenue, you no longer get the same feel of the old fishing village that Chincoteague once was; rather, you enter on the beach road, the kind of road you might find in any resort town in Virginia or North Carolina.

So it wasn't the same. Chincoteague had changed once again. And while we'd like some things in life to stay the same. . .



they don't.

The Kite Koop moves, Etta's Channel Side Restaurant is no longer run by Etta, and the condo next door is for sale. The trees die off, the dunes disappear, and the coastline shifts.

And the people we love come and go.

Cows Along the Blue Ridge

Hiking along a trail this weekend at the Moses Cone Manor, Milepost 294 on the Blue Ridge Parkway, we spotted cows facing in the same direction as they grazed. It turns out that cows all over the world graze in a north-south orientation, perhaps influenced by the earth's magnetic fields. Pictures from Google Earth confirmed this phenomenon in 2008.

Facts like this make me wonder. What would happen if we could amass the knowledge of all of the earth's creatures and make use of their wisdom? Unleash a new power perhaps? Render our weapons obsolete and sideline our technology?

The cows and the birds and the pesky mosquitoes could all teach us something, if only we could figure out how to listen.

Ellis Island Reflections

At the Michener Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, an exhibit by Stephen Wilkes captures the melancholy of Ellis Island. Wilkes spent 5 years photographing the south side of the island, the site of a once-sprawling hospital complex left in ruins.

In one scene of the tuberculosis ward, two sinks attached to a wall of peeling paint hang below a small mirror, which reflects an image of the Statue of Liberty: a reminder that most of the people in this hospital never made it to freedom. In the measles ward stacks of wooden filing cabinets perch erratically on top of one another, some with drawers still open, as if people left in a hurry. Snow has blown in through broken windows along one corridor of the hospital, and a series of 5 opened doors in the nurses' quarters invites us into the past.

I'm struck by these images. Life once flourished here, even in spaces that held sickness and death. Dreams grew and faded, buried now beneath the snow and behind the broken glass.

Immigrants. People coming from other countries always gets messy. Does it need to be so?

These photographs bursting with humanity remind me that it's all pretty basic: other people like us--some sick, some not--wanting to make a home for themselves and seeking life in a new land.

Do we, or do we not, welcome them?

Conflicted in Charleston, South Carolina

1. A city with patterned, outdoor flooring, like this tile in front of the Calhoun Mansion in Charleston, is a fun place to walk.

2. Speaking of the Calhoun Mansion: If you buy the largest house in Charleston of over 24,000 square feet, you’ll probably have to open it up to paying tourists—even allowing them to see your bedroom—to afford the upkeep.

3. You know you’re in a swanky town when the horses that draw tourist carriages wear leather diapers.

4. When a confectioner gives you a free, dark chocolate cashew cluster—and you buy nothing else—you’ve just been treated to true southern hospitality.

5. Dinner at Mercato’s with quiet, live jazz transports you to the other French Quarter.

6. With the likes of Ann Taylor, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Gucci, the shops along King Street must generate plenty of thrift shop deals.

7. Charleston understandably boasts of its origin as a haven for religious tolerance: both Unitarian and Jewish congregations are the oldest of their kind in the South—a region not historically open to either one.

8. Leading up to the Civil War, slaves constituted slightly over ½ of Charleston’s population.

9. That Charlestonians were the wealthiest colonists in British North America is not hard to imagine: the concentration of stunning homes and mansions—one after another—in the relatively small historic district is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

10. This kind of wealth requires cheap—or rather, free—labor. It’s the kind of wealth built on the backs of others.