It's a busy time of year, wouldn't you agree? You've got places to go, people to see. I've got stuff to do. So instead of burdening you with blather, I'm making my holiday gift to you a visual one. Today I'm sharing some favorite photos from our trip out West last fall. But before we head West, some photo-related news: Copies of my photo book, "Nature by Nan," are now available for purchase at Hit the Road Joe Coffee Cafe in Croton. The 8x8-inch hardcover book contains 20 of my photos of local flora and fauna. I hope to soon add copies of my second photo book, "Nature by Nan, Volume II," and to make both books available for order on this website. Stay tuned. Now, let's head out West! What are some of your standout memories from the past year?
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On the last Wednesday of every month, I serve up a potpourri of advice, inspiration and other tidbits I've come across in recent weeks. This month -- this week, in fact -- finds us commemorating both Earth Day and Arbor Day. In the spirit of those two observances, here's a collection of quotes about nature and the planet on which we live. As a bonus, I'm including at the end of this post, some of my favorite nature shots from our recent visit to the Southwest. Love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need -- if only we had the eyes to see. -- Edward Abbey Find your place on the planet, dig in, and take responsibility from there. -- Gary Snyder The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly alone, our home that must be defended like a holy relic. The Earth was absolutely round. I believe I never knew what the word round meant until I saw Earth from space. -- Alexey Leonov, Russian cosmonaut The universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not objects to be exploited. Everything has its own voice. Thunder and lightning and stars and planets, flowers, birds, animals, trees -- all of these have voices, and they constitute a community of existence that is profoundly related. -- Thomas Berry The earth is a living thing. Mountains speak, trees sing, lakes can think, pebbles have a soul, rocks have power. -- Henry Crow Dog When I get sick of what men do, I have only to walk a few steps in another direction to see what spiders do. Or what weather does. This sustains me very well indeed. -- E.B. White, One Man's Meat Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter. -- Rachel Carson Nature repairs her ravages -- but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair. -- George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? -- Henry David Thoreau Loyd: "It has to do with keeping things in balance . . . It's like the spirits have made a deal with us . . . The spirits have been good enough to let us live here and use the utilities, and we're saying: . . . We appreciate the rain, we appreciate the sun, we appreciate the deer we took . . . You've gone to a lot of trouble, and we'll try to be good guests." Codi: "Like a note you'd send somebody after you stayed in their house?" Loyd: "Exactly like that. 'Thanks for letting me sleep on your couch. I took some beer out of the refrigerator, and I broke a coffee cup. Sorry. I hope it wasn't your favorite one.' " -- Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams And now, for a little more nature appreciation . . . Sometimes the roads we travel take us back to crossroads that were pivotal in our past. Sometimes they show us the way forward. Both happened on our recent trip through the Southwest. Ray and I spent most of our time in the Tucson area, a place that has lingered, dreamlike, in a cranny of my memory for decades. Though I've made a couple of quick visits to Tucson in recent years, I hadn't spent any wandering-around time there since an unforgettable visit in my twenties. ![]() It was 1976, and I was on a meandering road trip with my boyfriend. We'd driven from northern California to Los Angeles to visit his parents, then struck out across Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas before heading north to Oklahoma to see my family, venturing on to Kansas, and returning to California by way of Colorado. The stated purpose of the trip was to check out graduate schools in Arizona, Texas, and Kansas, but we planned the route to take in as many national parks, monuments and other nature-y points of interest as possible: Joshua Tree National Park, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Saguaro National Park, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Mount Lemmon, Chiricahua National Monument, Cave Creek Canyon, White Sands National Monument, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, Big Bend National Park, Oklahoma's Great Salt Plains State Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Dinosaur National Monument. We spent our days hiking through cactus forests, bizarre rock formations, lush oases, meadows and more, stopping to raise binoculars or crawl on the ground in search of unusual insects. The assortment of critters boggled my mind—from the javelina that trotted across our campsite to the jewel-like cuckoo wasps and furry velvet ants that flitted and scurried around us. We slept out in the open—no tent—where we could watch the moon and stars and hear the night creatures. (Lucky for us, it wasn't the height of monsoon season.) Enthralled with the writings of Carlos Castaneda, I saw our surroundings as steeped in mystical power. As I contemplated the future I was heading into, I was sure it would include frequent visits to these enchanted places—as a scientist studying the flora and fauna, but also as a spiritual seeker. Somehow, life took me in other directions. Or I should say, I made decisions that took me in other directions. And though I often thought of those places and their hold on me, I never found my way back. Until last month. ![]() On this latest trip, Ray and I trekked through some of the places that had made such an impression on me more than forty years ago: Saguaro National Park, the Desert Museum, and Chiricahua National Monument, in addition to visiting sites where neither of us had been before--Sabino Canyon and Bisbee, to name a couple. I expected to be wowed again by the landscape, with its unique array of plants and animals, and I was. What I didn't expect was the flash flood of memories and emotions that swept through me. I remembered the connection I'd once felt to the desert and how firmly I'd believed it would be an ongoing part of my life. I thought about the decisions I'd made that took me away from that vision, the places I wound up instead, and how easy it is for years to slip by while you're thinking, "Someday, I'll . . . " My musings could have been an exercise in regret; instead I made a conscious decision to use those memories as a tool to explore my feelings about the paths I've traveled, where they've led me, and where I still want to go. (I'm not just talking about geography here, you understand.) Putting myself back in my twenty-seven-year-old mind, I asked myself what excited me about the prospects ahead. What did I value in my vision of the future? Returning to my sixty-nine-year-old mind, I asked myself how much of that excitement and those values I still possess—even though I took a different route to them—and what I might still make space for in my life. My conclusions: At twenty-six, I prized my freedom: freedom to explore whatever captured my interest, freedom to live where I wanted, freedom to spend my days doing something rewarding. I took it as a given that my explorations would keep me close to nature. That's the part I lost for a time, when I spent long days cooped up in an office, in a big city. Now I'm living a close-to-nature existence again—not in the desert, but in another place that teems with wildlife, wildflowers, and woods—and I have my freedom back. When I think about where I want to go next, it's out to discover more wondrous places, not just to see and photograph them (though you can bet I'll do that), but also to linger long enough to experience the mystery of these places and let my spirit connect with theirs. Photos: Nan Pokerwinski & friends
While I'm taking a break for relaxation and recreation, I've invited some of my fellow bloggers to fill in with guest posts. This week's is from scientist and author Mark L. Winston, who blogs at The Hive. Mark's story takes place in a scientific setting, but I think you'll agree that the underlying message applies to all sorts of situations in life. Everything I Know I Learned From Hermit Crabs |

Noon. I joined Mark on our shady, makeshift ground cover. We ate a snack and gulped down water. I tested out my safety glasses. The sun was a complete, round, orange ball. I ducked back in the shade. Twelve fifteen. A tiny Pac-Man bite showed in the top right section of the sphere. Someone shouted, "It’s starting!" Over the next half hour, we kept checking. The Pac-Man effect increased and the air began cooling, even though the sun cast shadows. By twelve-forty or so, standing in the sun no longer felt intolerable.

By one p.m., the sun appeared as a slivered, orange crescent. One-fifteen. Like sentries on cue, several hundred people wrapped their eyes in safety glasses, bent their heads back, and stared skyward.

One fine swath, only a 15-minute drive from our house, is the Michigan Nature Association's Newaygo Prairie Nature Sanctuary. I visited the site last Saturday with a group from the River City Wild Ones native plant organization. Led by Michigan Nature Association regional stewardship organizer John Bagley, we poked around the prairie for a couple of hours, admiring such late-summer bloomers as rough blazing star (Liatris aspera), gray goldenrod (Solidago nemoralis), fern-leaf false foxglove (Aureolaria pedicularia), prairie sunflower (Helianthus petiolaris) and cylindrical blazing star (Liatris cylindracea).


Before long, members realized they needed to do more, and the group began purchasing sensitive property to set aside as sanctuaries. Today, the organization maintains more than 170 sanctuaries throughout the state.

- Fern-leaf false foxglove, a bushy plant with bell-like, yellow flowers that are popular with pollinators, is semi-parasitic and needs oak trees to survive.
- Porcupine grass has a nifty way of getting its seeds into the ground. The long, bristle-like awn coils and uncoils in response to changes in moisture, drilling the seed into the ground.
- The small, white flowers of sweet everlasting (Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium), smell like maple syrup when crushed. Sweeeet, indeed!

from the heart of the woods
Author
Nan Sanders Pokerwinski, a former journalist, writes memoir and personal essays, makes collages and likes to play outside. She lives in West Michigan with her husband, Ray.
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