Suburban koan

Suburban Koan

            One of the changes that I’m most eagerly anticipating in my life in Norway is that I will have a chance to enjoy my time out in nature more instead of working on my yard in…um…nature.

            Any good environmental historian will tell you that nature is ever-present: in the coal that powers my computer as I type, in the cotton of the tablecloth under my arms, in the crickets I can hear outside the window, in the breeze from the open window.  But I find it hard to see every nature as equal or equally pleasant.  I believe that St. Louis’s nature would be a challenge to the most devoted outdoors-person, and I’m definitely not the most devoted.

            My husband finds me sweaty and bug-bitten while I google gardening approaches.  I’m looking for a different standard of gardening, one less standard, less rigid, looser and maybe, well, funkier than what seems to be the suburban American norm of square lawn with 3-5 ornamental plants.  I knew better than to try “organic gardening,” which I assume would only lead to organic farming certification sites.  “Heritage gardening” takes me to heirloom seed sites – cool, but not what I’m looking for.  “Surely, there are hipsters in Brooklyn developing, like, alternative lawns, right?” Then I realize that most folks in Brooklyn don’t have lawns.  “Do you think I need to try ‘lazy gardening’?” I ask.  “How about B+ gardening?” my husband proposes. 

            The yard troubles me in general, but nothing, nothing troubles me more than the leaves falling. Two falls ago, I watched the season begin.  Leaves fell from the three pin oaks in our front yard.  Leaves fell from the silver maple in our back yard.  Leaves fell from the neighbor’s trees.  Leaves fell from the park trees.  Leaves fell from my shoes when I walked in the house.  Leaves fell.  And fell. And fell. 

New Mexican girl that I am, the majestic and melancholy autumn was initially novel.  There is a hardly a tree within sight of my childhood home that exceeds a single story.  Pine and juniper predominate.  The very idea that leaves could fall challenged my imagination.  Combined with owning my first home, I couldn’t wait to greet the season.  “I will rake in the crisp evening air!” I declared.  “I will meditate on the passing of seasons.”  “I will assemble vast piles of leaves and my son and I will jump into them and laugh and gaze at the crystal blue sky.”

Such were my plans.  In reality, pin oaks drop their leaves for almost the entire year.  I’ve raked in June when it was 85 degrees Fahrenheit and I’ve raked in mid-February as my nose ran and the sun set.  I’m allergic to the silver maple, and even poking my head out the back door can initiate a bout of sneezing.  I’ve never tried jumping in a pile of its leaves.   But, no matter.  The leaves are going to keep falling.

I might have been able to get my head around the leaves, but then came the leaf blowers.  I hear them in June and October and March.  They whine and bellow and they seem never, ever to stop their relentless pursuit of the leaves.  I hear them as I pull on my mittens and slip off my flip-flops.  I hear them even when they’re not running: I hear an ear worm leaf blower in the shower and over the blender, and sometimes in the music of my son’s video games.  And I rake.  And the leaf blowers blow.  And the leaves are going to keep falling.

            What did people do before leaf blowers?  What do they do without leaf blowers?  I do some googling.  (I realize that my husband would call this B+ research.) I learn that as far away as New Zealand I have compatriots at their wits’ end over leaf blowers.  I find this awesome cartoon here.  

I learn that leaf blowers inspire obsession.   Standards wouldn’t be so high if it weren’t possible to get every speck of dirt, every leaf off of the lawn, off of the sidewalk, off of the ground. 

Of course, I also see the advantages.  The landscapers my neighbor’s employ can clear the front yard in the time it takes me to wipe the snot from my face.  They have work to do and doing work efficiently is satisfying.  Maybe as satisfying as raking in the crisp air of an autumn morning.  I wouldn’t know.

There are leaf blowers in Oslo, and I imagine snow blowers too.  But we’ll be living in an apartment, and I won’t be out in our yard raking and shoveling.  Maybe I’ll miss it.  One day last winter I was raking our driveway.  A leaf had lodged itself in a crack of the sidewalk.  I raked over it once, twice, maybe five times even.  The leaf rested.  I let it be.  I could get it next time.  The leaves are going to keep falling.    

  

            

Stuff

Packing up for a year’s adventure has elicited the following exclamations from me: “Why do we have so much %*&#^@ stuff?”  “Where did all this #$&% come from?” And, most frequently, “#$*%!  How did we get so many $%*# piles of %$*?  There aren’t that many of us in our household: me, my husband, my son, and our (albeit large) goldendoodle.  So how did we get so much stuff? 

More than one sweaty afternoon of collapsing cardboard boxes, piling seemingly useless electronics, and sorting clothes in a mammoth box labeled: “sentimental t-shirts” has sent me to the internet for the refreshing sight of tiny houses.  I linger over sleek modern Norwegian summer homes and Norwegian Koie, turf-roofed cabins that look to me like they house fairies and elves.  They are really tiny.  

My husband finds me eating an ice cream bar and scrolling through photographs of 400-square- foot rustic-modern cabins with secret compartments, spring-loaded Murphy beds, and swiveling walls.   “If we had a house like this, we would never have too much stuff.” I tell him.  He is unimpressed.  I explain to visitors looking at the explosion of books, cds, and rough drafts littering his study floor: “He needs space to be messy.”   At almost 1600 square feet, our house is not tiny, but neither is it the McMansion that I think occupy the nightmares of some tiny house dwellers.  There is just enough room to be messy in our house, just enough room to accumulate piles of stuff.

By the time I near the end of the basement-cleaning job, I am ecstatically embracing the hard-won space.  I tell neighbors they should come see it.  (It is unfinished, and, like all St. Louis basements, dank.)  One of the last objects to go is an old wardrobe box.  It has a door cut into one side, a window into another.  It has been adorned with stickers and drawings.  Inside, I find a cardboard tube covered in felt and ribbons:  a periscope, a magic wand, maybe a chimney.  It’s been hard to say good-bye to this box even though it’s been years since my son played in it regularly.  It reminds me of my childhood afternoons spent under desks and tables and in boxes of my own.  My stuffed animals gathered around me, a tea set, and, for reasons only my five-year-old self could explain, a bottle of my mother’s hair spray could make any space my own little home.  It’s hard to throw away my son’s tiny house.  I picture my husband walking a visitor through our basement in a few years.  He will explain: “She needs space to be sentimental.” 

Nature of Norway

Hei!  Hei!

My family and I are preparing to leave for a year in Norway where I will be working as a Fulbright Roving Scholar in Norway’s secondary schools.  My focus has been on the workshops in American culture that I will offer while I’m there, but I found that preparing to leave the U.S. for the year has also prompted me to reflect on one of my research and writing interests: the environment and its history.
 

To capture these thoughts, I’m dedicating this blog to my reflections on the nature of Norway, reflections that I’ve found begin with the nature of my own household here in the United States.