The Voyage Begun

 

               It is the end of Earth Week and the celebration has felt…underwhelming.  City and school events have been lackluster in engagement. One of my students observed “Well, people have lives to live and places to be” which is true, but makes me worry. How do we convey the urgency of this issue—and others—in a way that empowers people to take action, to take the power that we all hold, collectively, and turn it action at all levels of society? Because we are reading The Things They Carry, by Tim O’Brien, my mind turns to the idea of story.  Stories can save us, he says. Individually and, perhaps, collectively. So this is my Climate Change story for this year.

                The Voyage Begun, by Nancy Bond. Printed in 1981. I must have read it the winter it came out. I remember being chilly and I was often chilly in those years, living on my own, saving money by keeping the heat low. These were the years when the University of New Hampshire sent us home for an extra week of Winter Break because they would save so much money on heating fuel. That break, I spent several days spreading insulation in my mother’s attic. When we were done, the snow stayed on the roof rather than melting away.  One apartment I lived in had a base rate of heating paid by the landlord but we had to chip in if the costs went above a certain amount. I wore my great-grandmother’s shawl as I sat up in the kitchen, typing a paper for class, all winter. My roommate and I had an impressive collection of shared sweaters. Still, it was chilly.

                The novel is set on Cape Cod in the “near future”.  Having spent two winters on the Cape myself, I could relate to the landscape.  The energy crisis of the 1970’s has become permanent. Parts of the Cape are washing away—even though no one was talking about rising seas yet.  All of the summer homes have been abandoned and there are small gangs breaking in and robbing them. The local conservationist is considered a little crazy.   Only the permanent residents remain and they are struggling without the summer incomes. The setting is bleak.  A young man moves to Woods Hole where his father is climbing the administrative ladder; his mother is in deep denial about the level of the crisis and is not happy living so far away from the civilization that she remembers. The book comes together around the idea of community and working together in prickly partnerships that value some old skills, like wood boat building. The plot faded in my mind but the description of the world post energy crisis did not; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts was closed because they could not heat the space. I love the MFA.

                In 1981, we were not facing the climate crisis that we are today. Energy—yes. Jimmy Carter had put solar panels on the roof of the White House and was wearing a sweater, talking about turning down the thermostat. We knew, then, that there were limits on oil. And that, if we changed behavior, we would survive and even thrive.  If we did not, we were looking at a depleted world where more things were closed in winter than the UNH dorms for an extra week.  And this is where my mind returns when I think—when did I first become aware of the problem? This novel, set in a place that I knew and loved, washing into the sea because of our behavior. That is where the voyage began. And yours?

               

 

               

 

Staggered Germination

 

In January, I was reading the Fedco seed catalog—the best for seeds, prices, and entertainment. One of their informative paragraphs talked about the emergence of staggered germination. According to the catalog, plants that have been stressed during the summer months will produce seed that germinates over a longer period of time. Because of climate change, they are seeing this stress response  more often. It can be challenging, they observed, for commercial growers who depend upon consistent germination within a narrow timeframe in order to get their crops in the ground on time—which is also becoming more difficult with climate change. Interesting, I thought.

This April, I have seen this happening in my own greenhouse. I planted all of the tomato seed one afternoon and put both flats on the heating pads. For every variety of tomato, from several distributers, there has been staggered germination. A  little bit is normal; there are often two seedlings of slightly different sizes on one six pack cell. But this year, they were all different sizes. Some were almost trees while their neighbor was just breaking through with all heights in between. And a couple of varieties—the Evil Olive being one—took two weeks longer to germinate than any others. It makes it challenging to bump up the plants. Some pairs are deeply tangled in their roots but big enough for both to survive. Some are not. I popped three Long Keepers out of their six pack and left four behind to develop their roots a little more before the trauma of being repotted. I thought I would be able to consolidate the little ones into one or two six packs, but I couldn’t. They are just taking up precious space.

Even given the chaotic and packed nature of a greenhouse in April, I can’t complain. It will make the tomato give away a little trickier and maybe a week later—does anyone want to come back for the Evil Olive after they have their Sungolds? But my livelihood does not depend upon evenly timed germination.  By August, it won’t matter. I’ll be hauling in tomatoes every day for crockpot sauce. But it gave me something to consider while I worked this morning—both the thousands of way climate change is going to impact us that we do not even begin to understand and also the bit of hope lying within those seeds, as they adapt to a changing world.

April on The Road

 

April Fool’s Day was the day after Easter this year. I was walking to work, remembering the joy of Hot Cross buns and coconut cream pie, when the light hit me…its traveling time. The air was clear, and damp, and chilly, but I knew, in my bones, that if I just, as John Haitt suggests, Drove South with the one you love (or alone), I would hit the perfect traveling weather in one day’s drive.  I could sit in the doorway of the Ark and watch the light fade wearing just a sweatshirt. April is road trip time.  I almost turned around and headed home to pick up the Ark’s keys.

Long road trips are deeply embedded in my psyche. My parents embarked on one when I was eight; we were gone  from July until April because we had to stop for school and to make some money in Florida. When I was 29, I took three months off from work, bought my van, and drove south, via Cape Cod and Beaver Falls Pennsylvania, heading to New Orleans. The first day—which was April Fool’s Day,  a Monday and the day after Easter-- was eerie. I was exhausted from Easter week at the Bakery, there was no one else at the campground where I stayed the first night, and, despite packing maple syrup, tamari that spilled onto the shag carpet and gave the Ark a distinctive odor, and my wok, I neglected to bring along any food for an easy dinner OR the leftover coconut cream pie from the party the day before. I almost headed back to New Hampshire.

It took a week or so to find my rhythm, both for driving and meal planning, on my own which was the point of the entire adventure. As I observed in my journal of the trip—“it is a spirit journey to test myself and my ability to handle daily living and the occasional crisis on my own.”  I drove. I sang loudly. I read. I learned to cook beans on a propane stove and that mayo is far tougher than we think.  I hiked through our National Parks. I talked with strangers and made friends. I visited people along the way and had several riders, planned and unplanned, as well.  I was never afraid although I was occasionally lonely. A woman on her own, on The Road.

A few years later, living in Oregon, I needed to go home for a wedding. Once again, it was April. My roommate at the time thought I was crazy—why not just fly? No, I drove south, picked up my friend Sherrie, and we drove East together, taking the southern route.  She packed snacks and picked up local papers when we stopped for coffee in the mornings. We replaced the stove which had been stolen the year before in Seligman, Arizona on Route 66, which upped our cooking game from boiling water on a backpacking stove to being able to fry potatoes and toast bread. Everyone talked to us; the guy stopping traffic on the highway, people in diners, and baristas in college towns. We made it home just in time. The Ark swallowed the shoes I had packed for the wedding but that was ok. I wore my flowered sneakers instead. And then, we drove back—a month total—of two women On the Road.

And so, April is, for me, a time of migration, of long drives, of chilly mornings, and of talking with strangers.  When the light balances between chilly and warm, right around the equinox of the year, there is nothing I would rather be doing.