We focus a lot on choosing the path that takes us in the right direction.

What if direction was not the point?

What if your results were more determined by the character of your path? Whether it is your unique path, or a collective stampede?

I see more white-tailed deer passing by fields and lawns as I drive into town than I ever see out here.

But I can take you to the trail going up to the ridge across from Pond Brook. It’s growing up with yellow birch but the deer graze those saplings like they’re a privet hedge. In winter, this trail is packed down by hundreds of passing deer hooves. Their poop pellets pile up.

Grazing mammals like deer, goat, sheep, and rabbits poop in a round pellet shape.

Many good writers report having a specific person they are writing for. It can help a book find both its voice and its audience.

Who are you, dear reader?

Sometimes I like to think of you as space travelers from the future trying to comprehend first-hand accounts of life on Earth. Yep, I see all you friendly aliens.

To walk is to fall. In a controlled way.

You’re standing. Stable, so far. But then you put your right foot forward and lean so that you’re off-balance. You tip forward.

That is, you fall.

None of this would have happened this way if Adaire didn’t love that whole, non-homogenized milk sold in glass bottles at the Brattleboro Food Coop.

Now they probably won’t let me in there again.

See, I did a wrong thing.

Imagine yourself a white Union soldier from the Civil War. You just finished pursuing General Lee’s Confederate Army to Appomattox Court House in Virginia.

Your unit is white, but you’ve been fighting alongside men from the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment Company B. This company includes men like yourself, men like Andrew H. Mero, Charles W. Mero, Edward H. Mero and Sylvester Mero. Like yourself, native Vermonters. In the case of the Meros, these Vermonters happen to be Black.

You get to late November around here and if the ground hasn’t already frozen, it’s so lacking in heat that it’s ready to.

All it takes at that point is one night solidly in the teens or twenties, and a day no higher than the 40s, and our ground freezes.

Follow that up the next night with temperatures in the teens and a day in the twenties, and your ground is frozen for good, right through to mud season in March. (A few feet down it’s a constant 55°F, which is enough to extract heat for warmth via ground-source heat pumps.)

What would Earth be like without the Moon?

I went for a walk last night to a place in the forest. Halfway there I found I could turn my headlamp off. The moon’s reflections in freshly fallen oak leaves were just as bright.

Without a moon, there would be no moonlit walks.

Forces that act on us at a distance are the most mysterious.

Gravity. Electromagnetism. Radiation of heat.

Just try explaining any one of those three, using our latest and greatest understanding of physics, without sounding insane.

I’m afraid of talking about racism in public.

As a father and as a citizen, I need to do everything I can to understand racism. But I haven’t written about it. I’ve been afraid of having an incorrect opinion or unknowingly saying something insensitive.

I stopped myself just now.

I was about to write, “Please indulge me.”

Why do people say “indulge”?

Human beings are flawed.

Everyone would agree with that statement. None of us is perfect. At least, ever since we ate that apple in the Garden of Eden.

But if being “flawed” is part of who we are, then isn’t the appearance of a “flaw” in our selves or in our lives exactly what you would expect to see?

You’re not a science denier, are you? I trust you’re someone who “stands with science” and trusts scientists. #believethescience

Great. Then I have a pop quiz for you. What is the jumping-off point in the scientific method?

For scientists to reach a conclusion using this method, where do they start from?

Form your answer and hold that thought...

Rocks from space hit Earth all the time, all over. But to find one, there are better places to look. In the Mojave Desert, a dark meteorite can land and sit around to be discovered, without vegetation to grow over it. Space rocks can accumulate for decades on Antarctic ice sheets that hardly ever see snow.

By the same token, while helium-filled party balloons should have a fairly random distribution pattern, some places are better for spotting one.

Ever get an earworm? A song stuck in your head?

This is how I chose my college major. I wanted to know if cognitive science or philosophy could explain this incredibly annoying phenomenon. And would it be too much to ask for an antidote?

I ended up studying the philosophy of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Now, in 2021 we have an AI (Siri) that transcribes “yawl” (a two-masted fore-and-aft-rigged sailboat with the mizzenmast stepped far aft so that the mizzen boom overhangs the stern) when I clearly said “y’all.”

And songs still get stuck in my head.

What will they remember you by?

Your soft parts, or your hard parts?

You have enough time.

At this very moment, you have all the time you need to do what you need to do.

***

I’m feeling anxious and overwhelmed today.

Do I believe those words I’ve just written?

No, I do not.

Abstraction increases velocity.

At the expense of felt meaning.

Years ago, an 8-year-old was visiting our farm with his family. It was July and blueberry season. We picked and ate fresh, plump berries off the bush.

“So this is where blueberry flavor comes from!” he said.

Around 9 a.m. on August 29, 2011 I suited up in rain gear to walk down the driveway here.

Since the previous evening, and all night, I’d heard heavy raindrops on the tin roof, often propelled by strong gusts of wind.

Pond Brook travels through our farm for about a mile. Then it ducks under a large culvert and meets up across the road with Green River.

I wanted to see what they looked like.

Plastic pollution is getting worse and I feel powerless to do anything about it.

I am grateful to have had the chance to visit Lambaye, Senegal, Africa in February 2020. It was a short but unforgettable trip.

Here’s one brief story.

I’m absolutely panicked that I won't get everything done today.

And I’m also 100% guaranteed to not get everything done today.

It would be more sustainable for me emotionally, and less panicked, to bring my expectations more in line with my reality.

The leaves are dying, people! And we are celebrating! Dying, I say!

While we’re pondering that, a question for you today, reader.

Do you think you are open-minded?

A) Yes, I seek out perspectives that challenge my beliefs

B) Depends on the topic

C) No, I’m set in my beliefs

My favorite garden flowers are lilies. The blossoms are gorgeous, but even more than that, I love the fragrance.

This April I went all-out and bought three potted Easter lilies for the house. After they were done blooming I planted them out in the garden, in early May.

Then we got our last hard frost of the season.

My body feels strange to me at times.

Does yours?

Recently it was reported that according to Facebook’s internal research, one in three teenage girls have worse body-image issues from using Instagram.

Are we supposed to believe that? Do two out of the three teens they polled live in Amish country?

Is this thing on?

Alright here we go… live blogging from Earth once again today.

Driving to the airport a week ago, we missed our exit from Route 2 East to I-95 South.

Fortunately our maps app rerouted us.

When it comes to how you feel, the direction you’re going in matters a lot more than where you are.

The things that have shaped me the most, I was too young to remember.

Is the world truly beautiful in and of itself?

Or is beauty only something we perceive?

I’ve been pondering this for a few days. I’d love to know what you think. (Comment below, or email me.)

I formed my answer last night

The truth needs no words. No defense.

But words need our investment of truth.

Do you ever have the thought, “Hopefully they won’t notice”?

I’ve been there. I want that last slice of pizza, or the last brownie on the tray, but I know I’m not the only one. Maybe if I take it, they won’t notice it was me who put himself first

It was getting dark at 7:30 p.m. last night. We were out-and-about yesterday. In the evening I was tired but wanted a little dose of earth before bed.

I wanted to work in the flower garden, and I knew just what I wanted to do.

Shortly after I began working with Tristan earlier this year, he emailed me his first blog post for the new farm website, which also contained the name of his new blog: This Spot On Earth.

Yesterday, as happens sometimes, someone asked me what I considered myself. Farmer? Homesteader?

I could fit under either term, depending on how you look at it. So I’ve developed some definitive guidance.

Here’s how to tell the difference.

Why do we celebrate things? Why do we get excited?

One reason is that life is so damn hard. When we can celebrate something now, I think it gives us energy for what’s next.

Have you ever seen someone in their personal life act irresponsibly to others? Check and see if the same thing happened to them before, but they weren’t able to get over it. You could call this being a “hypocrite.” But “hypocrite” is a word usually hurled at someone else. Find where this is true for yourself. We’ve all been there.

Nature bounces back from offenses so quickly. So easily sometimes it takes me by surprise.

We modern humans are fearful of aging.

Is that inherently human, or a choice of this culture?

Many previous human cultures who could have used written language to tell stories didn’t. Whether through evolutionary accident or choice, they found that oral history strengthened their culture.

Reader, individual beech trees and humans don’t decide when the competition begins and ends and judging begins.

We have an idea that presidential elections are separate events, but energies that are latent in one bloom in the next, while ideas critical to one race fade away in the next.

The environment around us communicates these wants to humans and other animals via affordances.

This term was coined by psychologist James J. Gibson in 1966 to describe “the complementarity of the animal and the environment.”

Can someone write a field guide to birds that shows birds the way they look to regular people?

Here are my suggestions.

Paint the pictures in the field guide the way an aging Claude Monet painted lily pads—big and fuzzy.

The ghost plant is comfortable in a deeply shaded environment because it doesn’t need sunlight.

And that is where I found it this morning.

I’ve felt pressure throughout my life to be right.

Have you felt this way?

When I was a kid my dad would remark that I was afraid to say, “I don’t know.”

If there was a question, I wanted to have the answer.

The cheese place was not welcoming so I skipped it. But just after that I saw this dam (horse mom) nursing her young colt in a little run-in.

I thought about how I would never see a baby animal nursing alongside the state highway. It’s too big, too noisy.

I’ve been working up to showing you this. I almost titled this piece “My ugly side” because of this photo. But that would be a disservice to Winnie, who found a cozy spot there.

If you visit here in person, this would be one of the first buildings you see. But I will never, never include this in a photo if I can help it.

Walk somewhere you’ve never walked before. Walk a little outside of your comfort zone, knowing that Gandhi and Dr. King and millions of pilgrims have done it before you.

Be safe! Bring a friend, bring someone in a car to drive with you. Listen to your body.

Mineral water today is still considered to offer health benefits, though the specifics depend on the mineral content and what health conditions you might need help with.

But in the 1800s mineral springs in the 1800s were a big deal for health nuts.

Who gets to decide how we are perceived? How we are remembered? Mushrooms are the “fruiting bodies” of mycelium, the “roots” of the fungus. Scientists have only scratched the surface of understanding them.

Standing on the balcony, raindrops hit my face. The palmettos are swaying. The gentle whitecaps on the beach we had played in all day are larger and relentless.

We are in Tropical Storm Elsa.

When I see someone going down a path that could harm them, I want to say something, but I don’t want to be nosy, and it’s their path.

But, reader, we all hold each other up on this thin veneer of a habitable planet. So I have taken to appreciating those moments of grace when someone who didn’t have to say something, says something. If I have to set my pride aside to hear it, I’ll do it, every time.

You can be like the tree that makes 10,000 micro-adjustments when the wind blows through, and builds a stronger, bigger body. The bones in your body develop the same way, with small bends to the bone fiber generating piezo-electricity, which tells the bone where to grow stronger.

My farm here in southern Vermont can be hard to get to. To name a few reasons:

We’re on a loop road, with both ends named the same.

The other end of the road has a farmhouse that looks abandoned, so people arriving here sometimes think they found us… except no one’s around.

I felt that the chicks were dying quickly due to internal injuries and that reaping their souls any more quickly would bring more stress to their short lives, not less. So I just kept holding them and admired their beauty.

I’m grateful to my body and all it does for me. Without our bodies we’d have nothing. Respect to all the bodies out there today that are working, eating, keeping us going, one foot in front of the other. The bodies that are seeking joy and movement. The bodies that are incarcerated, or know what it’s like to have been incarcerated. Respect to every one and its experience today.

At every level of its being, it’s almost as if you could say that trees want to be straight, upright, and tall.

Humans, too, tend to want to release tension in our bodies and to stand upright.

You thought you were okay with the status quo, but then a new possibility just appeared in your life that makes you aware of the pain of compromises you’ve made. It happens, unbidden, in this expanding universe of ours. You feel it’s right for you to pursue Option B but you also have a doubt. It feels like you’re lurching from one situation that defined you too narrowly to another situation that fell into your lap.

To this day I’ve attended very few church services, but I love me a beautiful church. Especially if they’re old, made of stone and wood, and dark inside with that cool, quiet air and peacefulness. Whatever my beliefs are about the religions involved, the world has made some beautiful cathedrals, synagogues, temples, and mosques.

If you’re unlucky enough to get a poison ivy rash out in the woods, look around for jewelweed and its delicate orange flowers.

Nature abhors boxes. The tidy answer is never the complete answer.

On an individual basis, ticks probably don’t make us healthier, although it’s quite possible they do and scientists simply haven’t discovered how yet. After all, it wasn’t until recently that intestinal worms were found to benefit our immune systems, and invasive plant species like knotweed were used as medicine for Lyme disease.

Noticing things accurately and then making accurate decisions using that information is an essential human skill. It should feel good when we’re right and bad when we’re wrong.

Thus it is helpful to separate out the validating feeling of being right from the schadenfreude of that person being wrong.

When I see a porcupine roadkill on the road, I pull my car over. I put on a pair of gloves I keep in the car just in case, or grab a plastic bag if I don’t have gloves, and I pull the porcupine off the asphalt and into the grass.

Walk around any forest and you’ll see countless trees that have been wounded. The cause could have been anything including a chainsaw, an insect, a windstorm, or a hard freeze. They are healing those wounds out in the open.

When I see or experience something beautiful I sometimes think, “You know, it didn’t have to be this beautiful. It could have been ugly but it came out like this.” That makes me think, “Wow, life is magic.”

Have you had a rift in your relationships over President Trump?

Here’s a story on that. It starts 10,000 years before Trump took office.

Why do you think humans have inherent empathy with rocks? I’ll call it lithophilia, to complement the popular term biophilia, love of nature.

Is it because our bodies are made of the same matter that rocks are made of?

The main benefit of having a garden is not to passively take in the beauty. It’s the active stewarding of these plants and what one can feel about nature and oneself as a result.

I had my first Selectboard meeting last week and I noticed something about patience, and true listening.

Reader, I would like you to meet my friend the pink lady’s slipper:

A month ago my son and I noticed a clutch of eggs (what a wonderful phrase!) in a ruffed grouse nest along one of our regular trails. And how the hen sitting on the eggs responded with calm intention to our presence. (At least that’s what I read into it.)

We all have inherent tools and resources to determine our own self-worth, no matter what we were taught.

Look at asparagus.

To free yourself from the mental prison of seeing food as something that comes in a package, or at least, in a store, I suggest eating spruce or fir tips. (For foraging how-to, refer to an article like this one.)

They’re in season, and can be found on trees all over.

Last year I cut a lot of trees in that area, taking down dead or unhealthy trees and opening up some views. But I left that birch. I thought the kids would love to climb on it.

Today, I ask myself and you, in what ways are you like the trees that offer gifts, even in the ways they were shaped by trauma? And in what ways might you be holding onto blame and lashing out?

We went for a spring walk yesterday. Now that all of the trees in the forest have leafed out (including both earlier maples and later oaks), newly dead trees stand out to me. Some trees didn't make it through the winter into spring.

I need to stress here, please don’t eat poison ivy. I’m simply sharing my experience, for what it’s worth on the emotional plane.

According to the Internet, about 85% of people are allergic to urushiol, the irritating chemical in poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac.

However, it’s hard to know for sure if you’re in the 85% or the 15%.

Experts advise people like me who are building an email list to offer a free giveaway as an incentive to join.

In that spirit, I’d like to give you half of this boulder just for being subscribed to my email list.

“What if the opposite were true?” is a question that author Tim Ferriss is famous for asking to question his assumptions.

Let’s play...

We were told that protein bars are healthy and bracken fern is poisonous.

What if the opposite were true?

If you visit us here (and I hope you will!), just a quick heads up…

You may see spontaneous family dance parties on the farmhouse deck on weekend mornings. Or at any other time.

I feel grateful every day to wake up on this spot on Earth. I’m going to dance like I mean it.

Sometimes it feels like I was not made for this world. What about you?

Yesterday I wrote that the forest species here today are a transient community.

But even so, the mix of key tree species is relatively stable and they leave room for each other.

It’s mid-May and the forest is leafing out. It’s called budburst or bud break.

I remember as a kid being transfixed with the specific shade of green on the leaves now. I felt it was different in some important way from the darker green leaves of summer. I wanted to capture it somehow. Could I press those leaves and keep it? Could I draw it?

Today I’m going to propose that “survival of the fittest” is only a paradigm, not an objective fact. Then we’ll ask who this paradigm serves and whether it may be helpful to set it aside at times.

And we will lay on our backs and look at trees.

Straight-line predictions don’t work out.

In other words, how you feel now is not how you’ll feel forever. I sincerely hope you’ll take this to heart… read on.

I’m genuinely asking. Is it okay if I hate hostas?

It feels wrong to hate a plant that has done me no harm.

Hostas are as inoffensive as they get. They’re not poisonous or harmful in any obvious way like poison ivy or the stinging nettle, which I’ve professed my affection for.

The large clutch of leaves emerging from the middle of the foreground is the pink lady’s slipper. The Latin acaule means “lacking an obvious stem.” This describes the short underground stem of the flower, which gives it a stemless above-ground appearance.

It so happens that I have a piece of bedrock that sticks above-ground in our parking area. While I haven’t yet lost an oil pan to it, I’ve come close. I’ve hammered on it with the backhoe and daydreamed about hammering on it with a bigger backhoe. Dynamite, anyone?

When I was a kid, we had stinging nettle all over the farm. I’d often walk through it inadvertently and get red welts on my calves or arms… ouch!

A couple years ago I learned that stinging nettle (Urtica dioica here) can relieve inflammatory conditions such as arthritis.

Yes, persistence is everything, and everything persists.

Yesterday I wrote that persistence is futile. Like Walt Whitman, another close observer of nature, I contain multitudes. (See Song of Myself, 51—a short read.)

This is not an inspirational post about when to keep going.
This is an inspirational post about when to give up.
You’ve heard “Time heals all wounds.”
That’s nice but there’s a lesser-known second half:

Time heals all wounds, and wounds all heels.

“I didn’t get enough done today.”

This thought stresses me out regularly. And I’ve noticed I’m not alone in this.

What’s up with that? Am I biologically capable of getting a steady amount of stuff done, day in and day out?

For reasons of family history, I’m sometimes weirdly caught off guard when friends, neighbors, or relative strangers are open-hearted with their love.

Since last fall, I’ve adopted the goal of fostering a calm mind. For this website, my intention is to foster calmness for you.

There are plenty of news sources out there that will tell you what you should be concerned about. Click on this, watch this video… so much you need to know about and fear!

Here, I’d rather share “news” about 100-year-old trees like below…

Did you know that the Earth comes with a no-charge question asking feature? Some people call it mindfulness in nature, or nature therapy. I just call it a weird trick you can do with your planet. ;-)

I hiked in the Adirondack Mountains of New York a lot when I was a kid.

It’s widely reported that “Adirondac” was, basically, an ethnic slur. The word translates as “barkeater” and was allegedly used by the Mohawk Indians to describe the Algonquins. Apparently the Algonquins who lived in the mountains had little else to eat in some winters than tree bark.

How do small animals like moles, voles, and chipmunks survive the winter under deep snowpack?

They don’t hibernate, yet they survive months-long freezes here in the northern woodlands. And we barely see them above the surface!

I’m fascinated by situations where it appears that barely anything is happening…

…still nothing is happening…

…and then everything happens all at once.

Yesterday I wrote about laughter emerging from underground. Now, I want to expand your notion of underground versus aboveground.

Since the loss of snowcover, I visit the following piece of ground every day. The leaves themselves I find beautiful in their own way. The right-angled muscle of the yellow birch roots I find sensuous. But I am really in love with what’s underground…

The ice has left the frog ponds. With no delay, the wood frogs are up out of the mud and getting to business. Males call out with a sound that is more quack than ribbit, then swim to seek out females for mating.

Boxes. Your loved ones want to put you into them. Nature wants to bust you out.

Nature always wins in the end, but she can leave a lot of wreckage.

“Sea” is a box. “Land” is another box. Humans carefully delineate the two with a seawall. Then this happens:

Have you ever seen “needle ice”? Perfect conditions last night here.

Wet soil. Check—lots of that from snowmelt.

The soil needs to be above freezing temperature, while the air temperature is freezing. Check—nights in Vermont in late March.

Today there has appeared a gap between the south bank of the frog pond and the ice covering the rest of it.

All of a sudden (or that’s how it feels) there is no snow cover remaining except on the north side of buildings and in heavy shade.