End of Innocence: Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Rio Brown, age 13

Rio in the garden, age 6, picking the Forbidden Fruit

Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Innocence is an object of purity.  When life begins the human is pure and completely innocent. This can also be seen in some religions and governments, but as time goes on the item becomes corrupt.  I believe that Robert Frost is telling of this innocence that exists at first, but is almost impossible to stay for all of its existence.

The beginning of the poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay" says "Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold."  I find this to be saying that at the beginning of almost everything there is a purity.  That purity is the gold and it is an object, a trait that is the hardest thing to keep and it is "Her hardest hue to hold."  Corruption eventually reaches it and changes it to something no longer pure.

Secondly, Robert Frost keeps telling of this innocence and corruption that occurs over and over in different ways.  One of the ways that is most obvious is the reference to the Garden of Eden.  A perfect place in which Adam and Eve were placed to live.  At first Adam and Eve were perfect and incorrupt.  It was at this time that the serpent tempted Eve to partake of the forbidden fruit and of this item Adam and Eve did partake.  They were banished for disobeying a command and becoming corrupt.  "Then leaf subsides to leaf /  So Eden sank to grief, / So dawn goes down to day / Nothing gold can stay".

Levels of innocence can be possibly good and bad.  In the beginning of the American Government it was an almost pure thing and a very effective government.  As time went by more laws and changes in laws took place.  We are now drifting away from that one document that holds us together as an innocent government, the Constitution.  As we drift away from the Constitution, the government becomes corrupt and loses it's purity.  "Nothing gold can stay."

Robert Frost was one of the people that noticed the corruption that exists in our life and that we start out so pure and innocent but as we go through our life we lose that innocence and become corrupt and lose the "gold" that we have "Then leaf subsides to leaf."

Van Morrison, Bill Bryson, William Least Heat-Moon, Nostalgia & Finding My Way Home

For the first time since I started the blog, I have no idea what to write.  So, I’m putting on some Van Morrison and pulling out Bill Bryson.  Not knowing what to write never seems to stop Bill.  He dared write A Walk in the Woods about hiking the entire length of the Appalachian Trail after admitting he drove part of it and hiked the rest with his incredibly out-of-shape hiking companion, Stephen Kratz.  If Bryson can be a naturalist, then there’s no reason I can’t be a sustainable-living guru, gas-guzzling seven-passenger van and all.

No airs, nobody to knock you down.  Just doing.  Always putting one foot in front of the other.  I flip through The Lost Continent, looking for something funny, but instead, a quotation I find triggers what I really want to say.  The quotation goes like this:

On another continent, 4,000 miles away, I became quietly seized with a nostalgia that overcomes you when you have reached the middle of your life and your father has recently died and it dawns on you that when he went he took some of you with him (pg 12).

(Grandpa Joe on the ATV with Everest near the front gate to Dry Creek)

Foolish or not, that is why I’m returning home to our land at this time.  I lost both my dad and step-dad in less than the space of a year.  I’m not depressed, but I’m ultra aware something is gone that can never be replaced.  And yet somehow I also know something good is ready to grow in that space.  You shouldn't foolishly try to fill voids to dull the pain, but you shouldn't ignore strong impulses either.  A void is a fertile space for universes to unfold, but timing is everything.  With time the wound will close and there will be nothing to occupy that space.  William Least Heat-Moon wrote Blue Highways in such an empty space.  Had he waited, it simply would not be the same book.

I’ve learned that from poems.  What is a life, but a poem in progress?  If everything is planned, it grows stagnant.  Sometimes impulse is the best of who we are.

Anyway, my dream hobby farm was my step-dad’s dream towards then end of his life.  So, Grandpa Joe, this foolish act is for you.  I can never thank you enough for the life, love and example you’ve given me.

(Grandpa Joe, Rio & Everest near the front gate to Dry Creek)

Small Graces: Everyday Easter Moments

(Jack yawning outside the kitchen window)

My favorite William Carlos Williams poem, “Pastoral,” begins:

When I was younger

it was plain to me

I must make something of myself.

Older now

I walk the back streets

admiring the houses of the very poor:

roof out of line with sides

the yards cluttered

with old chicken wire, ashes,

furniture gone wrong…

He concludes,

                No one

will believe this

of vast import to the nation.

Maybe everyone begins to feel this way as they age.  Maybe not.  But when I was younger I wanted to accomplish things.  Halfway through my undergraduate studies, I had an intellectual crisis because I realized chasing the American Dream was not for me.  Not because I doubted its plausibility, but rather because the quest felt hollow.  I became angry, depressed.  Later, after meeting Marci, I decided maybe that dream wasn’t so bad.  The chase puts food on the table and it’s nice to be able to pay the bills.  Older now, I still believe that dream to be good.  On one condition--becoming doesn’t overshadow being.  That’s what all the great spiritual leaders of time have attempted to teach us, from Buddha to Christ--that there is more to this temporal life than most are aware of, and if one can truly learn to enter each moment fully, the temporal world will take care of itself.

Jesus, for instance, tells the fishermen, Peter and Andrew to “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of Men and they straightway left their nets, and followed him” (Matthew 4: 19-20) without worrying about how much time and money they’d invested into their boats and nets, now all for nil; or what the neighbors and family would think; or even whether or not their retirement plans would suffice them in old age.  They were tuned enough into the moment to know what they should do, and were confident surving would take care of itself.   Jesus stresses this faith in life and the moment again when he says, “Follow me, and let the dead bury the dead” (Mathew 8:22).

The Buddha came to the same conclusion before Christ was born:  the physical world is both reality and an illusion simultaneously and we can glimpse the eternal reality in the ordinary if we will but slow down enough to see between the lines, the molecules, atoms, and the subatomic particles.

(The dishes I washed after Easter Dinner) 

In other words, if we will put our spiritual selves first, life will take care of itself.

This does not mean to tune in and drop out.  One way or the other crops have to be harvested if we wish to eat.  Work is a part of life.  But it shouldn’t consume lives.

One way to keep the spirit alive is to simultaneously live the sacred and profane by ritualizing the little moments.  Shabkar says in The Flight of the Garuda, “No matter what arises, when you perceive your original nature, the joy arises automatically--and what joy!”

(The Easter eggs Everest, Rio and I colored next to the bottle of vinegar)

Although, I have to work at it, I want to get to a place where I’m continually aware of my original nature--that I’m a son of God who has been placed on this earth for a very specific purpose--no matter what I’m doing, whether it be dishes, taking out the trash or, if necessary, shoveling bullcrap for a living.

Multicultural Jumble, an Evening among the Navajo, or Blogging Woes:

(Hogans at the Navajo Village Heritage Center)

I just wrote that title hoping it would help the site, drycreeksustainable.blogspot.com, get more hits.  I spend every evening among the Navajo.  Sometimes I wish I could get away from them, not because they’re Navajo, but because they’re family.  My wife, my kids: they’re family.  They’re also Navajos.   Therefore, that title is absurd.  I apologize.  The marketing gurus back at the office called me to the Conference Room, which is the cold dusty food storage room--influence of the Mormons, who I also want to get away from sometimes, not specifically because they’re Mormon, but because they’re family.  (Hell, I mean heck, I want to get away from the Mormons most of all--primarily, because I’m one of them, which in itself is irritating, not because I’m Mormon per say, but because I’m me). 

Anyway, the gurus are neither family nor Mormons.  (Marci didn’t get who these guys are; that’s because they’re a product of my imagination--I’m fiction writer too, although apparently not a very good one.)  Anyway, they’re mathematicians who sold out their dream of solving the meaning of existence through the perfect equation because they thought they’d make more money in the business world.  Most of their colleagues did do exactly that, including my friend Carl, who has been happy ever since.  The difference is that these guys never learned to lie well.   And you can’t succeed at anything you do half-heartedly.   Even a lie must be lived well.   As a result, they’re a mean, bitter group--all two of them.  And they’ve just informed me that my data doesn’t paint a pretty picture.

 (The Power Point Presentation from the Boys in the Backroom)

After doing some research, which they left up to me, because apparently writing isn’t a real profession unless you’re on the New York Times Best Seller List, and yes, they do have the graphs to show that indeed I’m not a writer.  Therefore, they said, I’d better learn math and marketing as well as metaphors and alliteration.  So, I did some research, and apparently, if that blogger is more knowledgeable than this one, blog entry titles are part of the key to success.  The right title will either make or break you on any given day.  The boys in the backroom said I should put it to the test, scientifically prove it, so to say.  Thus the title.

According to the experts, another secret to blog-entries, is keeping them short and concise.  Obviously, I’ve already failed at that with this.  So I’ll save An Evening among the Navajo for next time.

Why Do I Journal My Reading? by Marci

I like to think I’ve grown into the reader I am today.  I don’t like reading the same types of books over and over again.  I like to challenge myself.  I try to get out of my reading comfort zone.

Maybe when I started keeping track of what I read is when I decided to challenge myself.  I wanted to have something to write about a book, something other than the plot.  When a book speaks to you, the plot becomes a little less important.

In 2003 I decided I wanted to keep a written record of the books I read.  I mainly did this because I couldn’t remember everything I wanted to-- about the books I had taken the time to read.  A few years later, Steve gave me a little journal called “Books to Check Out”.  There was a section called “favorite books/passages.” I had never thought about copying down my favorite passages.  I often underlined my favorite parts, but the books didn’t always belong to me so writing in them wouldn’t have done me any good.  Now I have a “review” journal and a few “quote” journals.  The quotes are almost always longer than my reviews.

Here’s my first review:

A Dry Spell by Susie Malony

Completed in the wee hours of June 23, 2003

A banker named Karen Grange writes to a rainmaker named Tom Keatley. 

The town of Goodlands, North Dakota has had a drought for four years.  Karen hates having to foreclose on the people of her community.  She has finally found a place where she fits.

Vida Whalley takes revenge and plants a seed of fear into the people by secretly causing bad things to happen.  She becomes possessed by a woman whom the author leaves us clueless about.  We only know her name and that she lived on the property about 100 years prior to Karen Grange.

The spirit is punishing the town and Tom must fight it in order to bring the rain.  The spirit kills Vida and tries to kill Karen.  After she nearly dies, and they are both struck by lightening, Karen and Tom fall in love.

I liked the book.  The author should have told us more about the spirit and why it is so angry.

Here’s the first book I copied quotations from and the book review that goes with it:

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (Vintage, 2004)

“His genius was betrayed by lofty and indomitable traits of character which could not yield or compromise.  And so his life was a tragedy of inconsequence” (pg. 174).

“Why should the wealth of the country be stored in the banks and elevators while the idle workman wanders homeless about the streets and the idle loafers who hoard the gold only to spend it in riotous living are rolling about in fine carriages from which they look out on peaceful meeting and call them riots?” (pg. 315)

“To me every trip to a library or archive is like a small detective story.  There are always little moments on such trips when the past flares to life, like a match in the darkness” (pg. 396)

The Review:

June 27, 2006

I don’t normally read nonfiction or historical fiction, but I enjoyed this book.  I agree with the reviews from Esquire because I am asking myself, “Why didn’t I already know this historical information?’

I learned quite a bit about architecture and the history of American Architecture.   I learned that Frederick Law Olmstead had some very strong views about landscape architecture and designed central park.

John Welborn Root and Danial Hudson Burnham started an architectural firm in Chicago and made some great changes.  Root came up with a way to solve the problem of Chicago’s lack of bedrock by inventing the floating foundation.

The White City sounds like it would have been awesome see.  I learned a lot about what was going on in 1893. 

The Murderer H.H. Holmes seems to be a pretty terrible guy, much like any serial killer.  The science of how he might be thinking, and how he plans and gets away with his crimes is interesting.

It would be cool to be a profiler and try to figure out how these people think.   

My Vision of Sustainable Living

I thought today that I better discuss my vision of our experiment in sustainable living.  I would say “our” vision, but while talking to Marci on the way to work today, she made it clear that, as of now, it's only my vision.  Referring to herself, she said, “I have no vision; that’s your thing.”  It’s not that she doesn’t support the move; she does.  But the blog, the hobby farm, the sustainable lifestyle--that’s my dream.

Reading and writing book reviews, that’s her thing.  She’s been doing it religiously for several years.  Some of her avid reading history is recorded at goodreads.com.  You can find her reading history there.  Since 2004, she has read, quoted and commented on at least 262 books.    Soon, she’ll also be posting here.

(Oregon--If the weather is cold enough,

the beach nice enough, Marci might leave her book at the house)

Back to sustainable living:  According to Wikipedia, it is “a lifestyle that attempts to reduce an individual's or society's use of the Earth's natural resources and his/her own resources.^[1] “  (Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_living)

This brings me to my first confession.  We own a full-size seven passenger Chevy Van, clearly not something an environmentalist should be driving around.  That is unless you take into consideration the lifestyle we were living at the time we purchased it.  We were both teachers on the Navajo Nation in a very rural community.   The nearest full grocery store was thirty miles away; anything beyond that (clothing, auto-care, doctors, vets, etc.) was close to ninety miles away.  We also are a family of six.  We tried very hard  not to go to town more than twice a month.  In our Mini-van that was pretty difficult because every inch of space was occupied by flesh.  Or at least that was my justification, and while we lived on the Rez, the van did seem to make perfect sense.  As soon as we moved to Page, it didn’t.  But once you have a car, the most environmentally conscious thing to do is to drive it until it won’t drive anymore.   And if it makes you feel any better, I’ve told my boys, who all have their greedy eyes on it, that I’m going to be buried in it.  That will save the materials needed for a casket and recycle a van in the process.



(Crystal Blue Persuasion stuck at the entrance of our property)

 Anyway, I see our sustainable lifestyle being implemented in phases.  Phase one involves gardening and canning.  That will begin this summer.   I’ve already created three 8 X 8 garden beds, or 192 square feet of garden space.  Not enough, but a good start.  Tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, carrots, onions and a variety of peppers are the planned crops for this year.  We already have mature apricot, peach and plum trees on the property and for the past couple of years have canned a little bit of jam.

(Rio, July 2005, in one of our three apricot trees)

Next year, we’ll purchase chickens for eggs and plant a large-scale root garden--potatoes, yams, carrots, beets and radishes.

Although, I have no intellectual or spiritual problem raising animals for food, for I eat meat, I’d never be able to raise an animal and butcher it.  Therefore, any small farm animals will be pets only.     

We already gather all of our own wood for heating on the property, and always have.  I know that fireplace emissions are not great, but it saves money.  And as we only burn wood that naturally falls from our own forest, no deforestation occurs.

(Grandpa and Mitchell cleaning up part of our wood lot, September 23, 2006)

("The Sacred Grove"-- our biggest mapples on the property)

The reason I want to design Italian and native Great Basin Gardens is because they require less water than most other types of gardens.  The idea is to create a huge aesthetic on as little water as possible.

This project is even more about family than it is the environment.  My brother, Lloyd is an artist, who sells primarily out of Valley House Gallery in Dallas, Texas.  He lives just up the road, as does my mother.  My sister and her husband live thirty minutes away.  I want to build something that will last for generations--where family and land are one.  Not that everyone will live on the property.  At some point that will become impossible if the property is to retain its natural beauty.  However, there will be a central location that is unequivocally considered home.

At least that’s my vision.  Follow along and see how we do.

  

Individual Worth

Last night, while watching On Sacred Ground (Part IV) by Truman G. Madsen, I was struck by a Jewish saying and the context in which it was presented.  Paraphrased, it goes like this:

If you save an individual, you save a race; if you destroy an individual you destroy a race.

Madsen explains that when Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Isaac he knew of the plan of salvation, the way families are linked forever, and that in sacrificing his son, he would not only be ending his son’s life on this earth, but that he’d be breaking the family chain forever, for to sacrifice his son would be an act of murder, which would make him unworthy of the Celestial Kingdom.   And yet his faith was so strong he was willing to do it, for he knew that through obedience he is promised an eternal family.  Through faith then, he assumed that somehow Isaac will be made whole again, and his family will continue.

What struck me so strongly is the worth of the individual--not only because of himself or herself--but how essential the he or she is to the integrity of the whole.  I had to ask myself, do I treat everyone I come in contact with, with the respect they deserve, knowing generations are counting on them to be the best person they can be?  Am I there to help others in the way others have helped me?