Mary Janelle Corsaut Scarlott ~ born Hutchinson, KS, 7/30/28, died Riverside, CT, 4/17/92, sister of Aneta Corsaut and Jesse Corsaut, daughter of Opal Swarens and Jesse Corsaut, Sr., mother of Kerry, Kate, Jennifer, Ann, grandmother of Julia, Meghan, Mary Ann, Jonathan, wife of Charles.

(Highly) Recommended Reading

The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World

by David Abram (Vintage, 1997)

"We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth."

~ Henry Beston, from The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod, first published in 1928.

(Photo: Red knots feeding on horseshoe crab eggs, Mispillion Harbor, Delaware, May 20, 2009, Gregory Breese, USFWS)

peace on earth

(Photo: Olaf Dziallas)

As the crickets' soft autumn hum

Is to us

So are we to the trees

As are they

To the rocks and the hills


~ Gary Snyder

The birds have dissolved into the sky
And the last remaining clouds have faded away
We sit together the mountain and me
Until only the mountain remains

~ Li Po, Zazen on Ching-t'inig Mountain

What have you done with your own gift of life?





(Amos Oz, Black Box)

California was one sweet bee garden throughout its entire length, north to south, and all the way across the snowy Sierra to the ocean. Wherever a bee might fly within the bounds of this virgin wilderness—through the Redwood forests, along the banks of the rivers, along the bluffs and headlands fronting the sea, over valley and plain, park and grove, and deep, leafy glen, or far up the piney slopes of the mountains—bee flowers bloomed in lavish abundance… broad, flowing folds hundreds of miles in length—zones of polleny forests, zones of flowery chaparral, stream tangles of rubus and wild rose, sheets of golden compositae, beds of violets, beds of mint, beds of bryanthus and clover… During the months of March, April, and May, the great central plain was one smooth, continuous bed of honey bloom, so marvelously rich that, in walking from one end of it to the other, a distance of more than four hundred miles, your foot would press about a hundred flowers at every step. The radiant, honeyful corollas, touching and overlapping, and rising above one another, glowed in the living light like a sunset sky—one sheet of purple and gold.

~ John Muir's description of what California's great Central Valley used to be

(Photo: Larry Herzberg)

…no Scotch boy that I know of ever failed to listen with enthusiasm to the songs of skylarks. Oftentimes on a broad meadow near Dunbar we stood for hours enjoying their marvelous singing and soaring. From the grass where the nest was hidden the male would suddenly rise, as straight as if shot up, to a height of perhaps thirty or forty feet, and, sustaining himself with rapid wing-beats, pour down the most delicious melody, sweet and clear and strong, overflowing all bounds, then suddenly he would soar higher again and again, every higher and higher, soaring and singing until lost to sight even on perfectly clear days…

~ John Muir

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.

~ Epictetus

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

~ Wendell Berry

"Days need birds and so they come..."

~ James Schuyler

(Photo: Rosalie Winard, American avocets, Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, Box Elder County, Utah, 2003)

(Photo: Louise Docker)

Any fool...

"Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed--chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones."

John Muir, from "The American Forests," Atlantic Monthly, 1897.

"I will never forget the day. It was June 7, 1976. A tigress I had named Padmini, after my daughter, was seen by me with four cubs! I was wonderstruck and followed this family day and night. Initially, the tigress was unhappy with my presence, but eventually she began to trust me and seemed to treat me as a friend!"

~ Fateh Singh Rathore describing the first time that he saw tiger cubs in Ranthambhore.

(Photo: Ranthambhore tigress, Govind Sagar Bharadwaj)

Fateh's Ecstasy

~ August 10, 1938 - March 1, 2011


(Photo: Raghu Rai/Magnum Photos)

Earth, make me a channel of thy peace--that where there is hatred, I may bring love--that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness--that where there is discord, I may bring harmony--that where there is error, I may bring truth--that where there is doubt, I may bring faith--that where there is despair, I may bring hope--that where there are shadows, I may bring light--that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Earth, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted--to understand, than to be understood--to love, than to be loved. For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to life.

~ a (green and secular version of ) a prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi

(Photo: banyan tree, Ranthambhore National Park, Rajasthan)

Thoreau's Ecstasy

"Thoreau, it seems, was endowed with an almost preternaturally acute sense of hearing...

'... And now I see the beauty and full meaning of that word sound. Nature always possesses a certain sonorousness, as in the hum of insects, the booming of ice -- which indicates her sound state. God's voice is but a clear bell sound. I drink in a wonderful health -- a cordial -- in sound. The effect of the slightest tinkling in the horizon measures my own soundness... All sights and sounds are seen and heard both in time and eternity. And when the eternity of any sight or sound strikes the eye or ear -- they are intoxicated with delight.'

In such reflections on Thoreau's frequent experiences of acoustic rapture, we see manifestations of the doubleness characteristic of Thoreau's mature ecstatic vision. Ecstasy results when a single impression overflows its own natural borders and propagates itself through a wider arena of consciousness, beyond time, beyond location."

~ Alan D. Hodder, Thoreau's Ecstatic Witness

(Photo: Ivan Kruys)

I just heard the first red-winged blackbird, Agelaiu phoeniceus, of the year, down by the river. 8:42 a.m. Delicious, peaceful sound.

"For whatsoever from one place doth fall,
Is with the tide unto another brought:
For there is nothing lost, but may be found, if sought."

~ Edmund Spenser

treasure

Fateh Singh Rathore in Ranthambhore, his gift to tigers and the world. February 11, 2011.

(Photos: Belinda Wright)

Awareness is immanent and infinitely available, but it is camouflaged, like a shy forest animal.

~ Jon Kabat-Zinn, Arriving at Your Own Door

(Photo: Keith Slausen, U.S. Forest Service -- Sierra Nevada red fox Vulpes vulpes necator, thought to be extinct for 20 years until confirmed via camera trap and DNA testing in September 2010)

Amur tigers or oak toilet seats? (hint: we can't have both)

More highly recommended viewing

Please visit The Story of Stuff website for brilliant, brief, kid-friendly cartoon videos about our consumer culture. You'll also find terrific curriculum materials like "Buy, Use, Toss" for grades 9-12, which can be downloaded for free.

Next time you feel helpless to save... say, a tiger in the forests of the Russian Far East, refrain from making that trip to your local Bed, Bath and Beyond, Ikea, or Home Depot. Cheap consumer goods at big box stores = destruction of natural resources around the globe = climate change = species extinction rate 1,000 times the natural rate.

Does it ever strike you that in our (Homo sapiens') headlong drive for more and more growth, we are like "toons" bent on self-destruction?

I arise in the morning, torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it.

~ E.B.White

Not torn, George Schaller does both. Watching snow falling in an Afghan shepherd's yurt in 2004.

(Photo credit: Beth Wald)

Highly recommended viewing

... a remarkable, heartstoppingly beautiful film of planet earth... climate change, all incredible aerial footage. A must see and spread the word:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU

"Home" by Yann Arthus-Bertrand (2009) can be viewed in its entirety on Youtube, but should be seen on a big screen if possible. It can be purchased on Amazon.

Mindful Primates

"In myths from around the world, men and women have searched for an elixir that will bring protection from suffering. Buddhist psychology's answer is mindfulness. How does mindfulness work? Let me illustrate with a story.

If you've ever seen the film Gorillas in the Mist, you know about Dian Fossey, the courageous field biologist who befriended a tribe of gorillas. Fossey had gone to Africa to continue the work of her mentor George Schaller, a renowned primatologist who had collected more intimate information about gorilla life than any scientist before him. When his colleagues asked how he was able to learn so much about these shy and elusive creatures, he attributed it to one simple thing: he didn't carry a gun.

Previous generations of biologists had entered the territory of these huge animals with the assumption that they were dangerous. So the scientists came with an aggressive spirit, large rifles in hand. The gorillas could sense the danger around these rifle-bearing men and kept a far distance. By contrast, Schaller -- and later Fossey--entered their territory without weapons. They had to move slowly, gently, and above all respectfully toward these creatures. In time, sensing the benevolence of these humans, the gorillas allowed them to come among them and learn their ways. Sitting still, hour after hour, with careful, patient attention, Fossey finally understood what she saw: a whole new world of tribal and family relationships, unique personalities, habits, and communication. As the African American sage George Washington Carver explained, 'Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.'

Mindfulness is attention. It is a non-judging and respectful awareness... When people initially come to a meditation class to train in mindfulness, they hope to become calm and peaceful. Usually they are in for a big shock. The first hour of mindfulness meditation reveals its opposite, bringing an unseen stream of evaluation and judgment into stark relief...

But like George Schaller, we can put aside these weapons of judgment. We can become mindful. When we are mindful, it is as if we can bow to our experience without judgment or expectation."

~ from Jack Kornfield's, The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology (Chapt. 7), Bantam, 2008.

No one who looks into a gorilla's eyes - intelligent, gentle, vulnerable - can remain unchanged, for the gap between ape and human vanishes; we know that the gorilla still lives within us.
~ George Schaller

I have taught myself joy, over and over again.

~ Barbara Kingsolver (from High Tide in Tucson)

... on being here, now

... Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e'e.
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

~ Robert Burns, 1785 (from To a Mouse)

Recommended reading

John Vaillant's 2010 masterpiece, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

from my Amazon review (January 2011):

~ This book hits that unusual mark of being essential reading for BOTH the layperson interested in tigers, AND the most knowledgeable tiger scientist/conservationist. It is an absolutely gripping read that does a beautiful job of recounting not just a suspenseful central narrative, but of weaving the narrative with fascinating cultural, historical, economic, geographic strands situating the Amur tiger deeply in place in the Russian Far East. I have read other books that are sympathetic to the tiger, but Vaillant goes farther, making a fascinating attempt to understand the internal thought and emotive processes of this highly intelligent, hard-living animal.

The Tiger brilliantly explains the end-game that this species is facing not just in the Russian Far East, but everywhere it still roams in Asia. The future of Homo sapiens is intimately tied up with the tiger's fate. Please read this important book, and then fight like hell to ensure the survival of a species that is not just beautiful, iconic, and charismatic, but critical to our own survival. The most valuable thing most readers can do to help these animals is to donate funds to the organizations working most effectively for their protection: Panthera, Wildlife Conservation Society, the Phoenix Fund. Without overwhelming, global support for systematic efforts on the ground in the next five to ten years, many of us will witness the extinction of the tiger in the wild in our lifetimes. That will be a tragedy and a human failure beyond measuring.

An additional suggestion for those feeling at a loss as to how to help tigers in the Russian Far East: the author (John Vaillant) points out that the tiger's habitat, the stunning forests of Primorye, are being logged to the last tree to supply cheap consumer goods to big-box stores in every American neighborhood. Think before buying that solid oak toilet seat for $20.00. Its true price is much higher, in terms of tiger lives, and all the other species, flora and fauna, in this magnificent part of the world. There will be no going back.

George Schaller on The Tiger: "An absolutely superb book. There have been many tiger books, but none which so deeply try to probe the mind of tigers and the mind and habits of humans living in the same forest."

Photo credit: my friend Aditya Singh, Ranthambhore. Amazing every time.

Courtesy of Panthera (www.panthera.org). Please make a holiday donation to aid cat conservation efforts.

And now the lowland grove is down, the trees
Fallen that had unearthly power to please
The earthly eye, and gave unearthly solace
To minds grown quiet in that quiet place.
To see them standing was to know a prayer
Prayed to the Holly Spirit in the air
By that same Spirit dwelling in the ground.
The wind in their high branches gave the sound
Of air replying to that prayer. The rayed
Imperial light sang in the leaves it made.

To live as mourner of a human friend
Is but to understand the common end
Told by the steady counting in the wrist.
For though the absent friend is mourned and missed
As every pulse, it is a human loss
In human time made well; our grief will bless
At last the dear lost flesh and breath; it will
Grow quiet as the body in the hill.

To live to mourn an ancient woodland, known
Always, loved with an old love handed down,
That is a grief that will outlast the griever,
Grief as landmark, grief as a wearing river
That in its passing stays, biding in rhyme
Of year with year, time with returning time,
As though beyond the grave the soul will wait
In long unrest the shaping of the light
In branch and bole through centuries that prepare
This ground to pray again its finest prayer.

~ Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir, (The Sabbath Poems, 1979-1997, 1987-III)

Coming to the woods' edge
on my Sunday morning walk,
I stand resting a moment beside
a ragged half-dead wild plum
in bloom, its perfume
a moment enclosing me,
and standing side by side
with the old broken blooming tree,
I almost understand,
I almost recognize as a friend
the great impertinence of beauty
that comes even to the dying,
even to the fallen, without reason
sweetening the air.

I walk on,
distracted by a letter accusing me
of distraction, which distracts me
only from the hundred things
that would otherwise distract me
from this whiteness, lightness,
sweetness in the air. The mind
is broken by the thousand
calling voices it is always too late
to answer, and that is why it yearns
for some hard task, life-long, longer
than life, to concentrate it
and make it whole.

But where is the all-welcoming,
all-consecrating Sabbath
that would do the same? Where
the quietness of the heart
and the eyes' clarity
that would be a friend's reply
to the white-blossoming plum tree?


~ Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir

What They Know

White like snow,
Yet they don’t know
We can still see where they hide
And although that may be a fact,
There is no justification
for carrying an innocent seal in a sack
Those seals may only have cries, not voices
However, we all make choices
So why must we kill pups,
And let their blood spread across the ice,
For a coat sold for a large price?
Those pups should be playing, developing bonds,
Discovering the world around them, and learning
For they are unsure of many things,
But if there is one thing they know,
It is fear


~ Gabriella Singh (age 12)

My friend Gabriella attended this year's Humane Society of the United States "Taking Action for Animals" conference in Washington D.C., and with Mikhaela Singh and Julia Worcester, participated in the first HSUS Student Summit. To help Gabriella help the fur seals, please go to the website of Humane Society International.

Photo: Nigel Barker

Estranged by distance, he relearns
The way to quiet not his own,
The light at rest on tree and stone,
The high leaves falling in their turns,

Spiraling through the air made gold
By their slow fall. Bright on the ground
They wait their darkening, commend
To coming light the light they hold.

His own long comedown from the air
Complete, safe home again, absence
Withdrawing from him tense by tense
In presence of the resting year,

Blessing and blessed in this result
Of times not blessed, now he has risen.
He walks in quiet beyond division
In surcease of his own tumult.

~ Wendell Berry, Sabbath Poems

Photo: Larry Gizinski

In memoriam, and in praise of "common" things ~ Sara Stein

A woman with a vision, into the past...

Noah's Garden, Restoring the Ecology of Our Own Backyards

Planting Noah's Garden, Further Adventures in Backyard Ecology

Noah's Children, Restoring the Ecology of Childhood

Conservation and restoration

Now though the season warms
The woods inherits harms
Of human enterprise.
Our making shakes the skies
And taints the atmosphere.
We have ourselves to fear.
We burn the world to live;
Our living blights the leaf.

A clamor high above
Entered the shadowed grove,
Withdrew, was still, and then
The water thrush began
The song that is a prayer,
A form made in the air,
That all who live here pray,
The Sabbath of our day.

May our kind live to breathe
Air worthy of the breath
Of all singers that sing
In joy of their making,
Light of the risen year,
Songs worthy of the ear
Of breathers worth their air,
Of workers worth their hire.

~ Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir

Photo: Chuck Tague

These photos, taken by Cathy Milani of the HSUS, show a flock of Canada geese, unable to fly because they are molting, being rounded up on the lawn of a condo, and then taken to a gas chamber in the back of a van.

Photos: Cathy Milani, The Humane Society of the United States

New York City Massacres Canada Geese... Who will Weep?

In what Quakers would surely call wrong relationship with the earth and fellow species, the city of New York, with the active involvement and assistance of the federal government including the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, plans to round up and kill every Canada goose living within seven miles of New York City's JFK and LaGuardia airports. See recent New York Times article about the disappearance of beloved geese from Brooklyn's Prospect Park.

Every morning and evening this summer, geese flew low over the Hudson river outside my windows to and from their favorite watery locations in the neighborhood. I haven't heard their quiet honkings and murmurings in weeks now, nor seen their little family groups, with goslings, along the riverbank below.

The capture of the geese in Prospect Park was timed to their molting, when they cannot fly.

The assault on tens of thousands of geese in the region began after a few Canadas were sucked into the engines of US Airways Flight 1549 in January 2009, forcing the plane to land on the Hudson River, fortunately with no loss of (human) life. The geese that collided with the airliner were migrating geese, not resident geese who remain in the city year-round.

Did you know that the now-prolific Canada goose was nearly extinct in the 1900s? They were brought to New York from the midwest in an effort to rebuild the population.

The NY Audubon Society has appalled supporters in its tepid endorsement of the "euthanasia" program. Wayne Pacelle of the Humane Society of the United States has been an outspoken critic.

For further HSUS information about the killing of Canada geese, and suggestions for making your voice heard, please see:

http://www.humanesociety.org/news/press_releases/2010/hsus_urges_halt_to_goose_killing_071410.html

http://www.humanesociety.org/animals/geese/qa/goose_roundup_faq.html

For a sense of what is lost, read Bernd Heinrich's The Geese of Beaver Bog... "Heinrich's lyric writing and attentive observations make the goose world come alive... A pure joy." Los Angeles Times

Photo: Mark Moran