Reflections on A Pool of Still Water

I doubt that there is anything in the environment that attracts me more quickly or engages my attention and fixes me so raptly, than a pool of still water. The context doesn’t even seem to matter much. A pool alongside a path through the woods or bubbling from sandy desert soil in the natural environment or a decorative water feature in the built environment, are like magnets pulling me to them and through them and into them.

I never even feel the water close over my head as my mind and spirit slip beneath the glassy, still surface. I never feel my mental gills begin to function as I slip deeper and deeper into the water. The objective pool may only be inches deep but subjectively I am rapidly and fully submerged and enveloped.  My eyes never blur or burn as my spirit opens to the shoals of tiny, darting silvery fish, the vegetation reaching for the surface and the sun, or the quietly resting frog.

It has been this way since I was a child, since my Grandmother took me to a ‘pet shop’ where I peered into my first aquarium or sat by the side of the first fish pond I had ever seen with orange-gold fish, their tails and fins moving in wavy streamers in the green algae stained water.

Over the decades I’ve looked into hundreds of aquariums and many fish ponds and my response never varies. Mind and spirit gently slip beneath the surface.

There is a debate in Environmental Aesthetics between cognitive and noncognitive theories…objective information based on science and more subjective, less fact-based approaches.  I have to wonder who I am. Where am I in this debate? It has been several undergraduate and graduate degrees since those early pet shop visits and I can explain in the most intimate detail what is happening chemically, physically and ecologically in this special wet world of mine...I know its secrets. I have physically slipped beneath the surface, breathing from a cylinder on my back, and hung mesmerized over the void 120 feet down on a Caribbean reef. I have snorkeled among an incredible plethora of life in shallow lagoons, and have dived deep into flooded desert caves and I have substantial scientific knowledge of those habitats and ecosystems. But those shallow pools, of which I also have great scientific knowledge, continue to call me, not so much as a scientist but in a spiritual sense. I’m not a religious person so perhaps all of this is what  E.O. Wilson refers to as ‘Bioiphilia,’ the human bond with other species. Perhaps I’ll never know the answer but I’m very comfortable with the question.

Several of us have formed a study group to address Environmental Aesthetics. For those who are interested, please  contact me at springmountain1@att.net.
 

On Aesthetics

Is it enough to say that a particular place is beautiful and that it projects (or we perceive) aesthetic appeal?  In my work as an ecologist, I analyze biodiversity, and the context in which it exists,  and describe how various aspects of an area function as a system. 

Simply saying of a place that “this is an ecosystem,” isn’t enough. Even qualifying that statement by claiming the place is a ‘wetland ecosystem’ isn’t enough.  Taking it down a step further and announcing that the place is a subset of a wetland ecosystem, for example a Southern Appalachian acidic fen or a desert wet meadow complex may work a bit better toward an acceptable description offering shared meaning.  But even to get this far I use a consensual methodology and terminology developed over decades by others who also call themselves ecologists.

The same need for system, method, and terminology appears to hold true for philosophical field of Aesthetics, including the sub-field of Environmental Aesthetics…the focus of our forum. A number of scholars have suggested an ‘aesthetics of nature’ through which that beautiful scene mentioned above can be placed in a context that allows us to describe it with some degree of consensus.

Over the years, I’ve looked at several proposed aesthetics of nature and  I wonder if any one system can adequately describe the range of beauty of those places in which I work and my response to those places, or the response you or others may have. For the past five years I have conducted fieldwork in the fens of the Blue Ridge Escarpment in the Southern Appalachian Mountains of Western North Carolina and in isolated wetlands in the desert lands of the Great Basin of the western United States.  These are two very different regions of the world, very different ecosystems, and very different wetland systems.  And yet, I find beauty in both systems including the pocket-sized patches of damp sand in the Great Basin and the densely vegetated mucky fens of the Escarpment, with their mosses and ferns.  I find beauty not only in their present but also in their past…in their evolutionary development. In fact, I find myself drawn more and more to considering the aesthetic beauty of the evolution of living system….like incredibly colorful and complex fractals evolving on a viewing screen. 

Several of us have formed a study group to address Environmental Aesthetics. For those who are interested, please  contact me at springmountain1@att.net.

 

Hard Water

Hard water, rich in calcium and magnesium, is the kind of water you buy an expensive machine to chemically change so you can use the water in your home and not damage the pipes or the applicances.  But there is another kind of hard water and the hardness is not necessarily in its chemistry but rather in its physics. This kind of hard water comes in different forms from tiny stinging pellets that fall from the sky to clumps the size of baseballs that can injure and even destroy to sheets that coat other physical objects turning them into strange shapes.

In early January 2014 this kind of hard water covered much of the eastern and southeastern regions of the US, transforming extensive areas into slippery, dangerous places. The danger is the pragmatic aspect of this kind of hard water while the sculptures created by freezing are the aesthetic even artistic expression of the altered reality of water.  The forms that ice takes can be staggering in their strange and cold beauty.  The ice redefines reality turning it into something different but still reminiscent of other times, of warmer times.

Reality is not quite as fixed when things turn to ice. Water oozing from seeps and springs, that once dripped from rocky faces, becomes translucent steps of icy stalagmites. Waterfalls freeze in from the margins transformed into increasingly thin ribbons. And rivers, thousands of miles from the frozen Arctic and Antarctic host new islands of moving blocks…of ice. And reality is redefined.

Perhaps the most fascinating icy redefinition of reality occurs when the limbs and twigs of winter grey trees and shrubs become coated with sometimes shimmering and often translucent crystal coatings. Fascinating that is unless the coating becomes to thick and another kind of hard reality reveals itself.

Green Aesthetics II

Continued from the previous post.

Along with our human neighbors, on this often wind-swept ridge, we are frequently visited by deer, turkey, opossum and pesky raccoon (or two).  Bobcat, foxes, and coyote wander the streets and the bird population is colorful and varied.  The black bear moms bring their cubs to the spring-pool below the house and Bill, the six and half foot long black snake patrols the landscape and the hardscape for the frequent deer mice and the occasional copperhead. Red, a wood pecker, never fails to visit and greet me with a small screech when I sit in the alcove on the south-facing front of the house to read and soak in the sun.

I hope that my work over the past five decades of my 70 plus years, much of it mentioned in this blog, has contributed in some small way to help maintain the beauty of life on Earth and will continue to do so over whatever time I have left.  

Let me conclude these posts with the closing lines from the Navajo Night chant sometimes called House Made of Dawn.




In beauty it is finished
In beauty it is finished

Although I will post occasionally to this blog, this is the last of my regularly scheduled bimonthly posts.

Green Aesthetics I

In my posts of August 8 and 15 (Color it Green I & II) I mentioned green aesthetics and suggested that the term might describe not only architectural design but also life styles.  Beauty is the heart of aesthetics and living in beauty is at the heart of a green aesthetic.

In my posts Life on the Wild Edge I & II (January 1 and 15, 2012) I discussed what, for us at Hidden Springs (our home), were some of our attempts to live aesthetically green lives.  I’d like to use this posting and to touch on these efforts again. When I say ‘our’ I’m referring to me and my artist wife Penny (http://artjourney-penny.blogspot.com).

There is a spiritual beauty in living intentionally as lightly on Earth as one can and a special sense of peace in creating a habitat that has a light, even minimal impact on the environment.

Although I never thought I’d find much nice to say about energy providers I have to admit that routinely getting a comparative report of our electrical consumption from our power company telling us that were among the least consumptive of those on its roles with a home of our modest size here in the mountains of western North Carolina, made us feel good…peaceful, somehow.  Over the years, we had put some effort into creating a healthy energy-efficient, safe environment.   Special tubes carefully pierce the roof and bring sunlight into places that previously required energy to light. We have replaced a large number of exotic plants with native plants.  Hundreds of gallons of rainwater are captured each year and used during drier times. Water not captured is directed to places around our small patch most in need of irrigation. The bricks of the house are cleaned with biodegradable cleaner, much of the lawn has been removed and replanted with native shrubs and perennials and mulched leaves are a crop used as ground cover.

Continued in the next post.

Color it Green II

(Continued from the preceding post.)

While many of my neighbors apply pounds of chemistry to kill the moss in their lawns, I spend time on my knees (something my very religious Mother would have encouraged) pulling the grass from the moss one small clump at a time.  Moss grows quite well under the gnarly branches of the red maple that shelters the front of our home at Hidden Springs from the often hot Southern sun.

There is something about the repetitive task sometimes associated with caring for the moss that is very meditative.  Our moss garden responds best to sweeping rather than raking. I use a broom with soft bristle to brush away the acorns and leaves that, at various times of the year, coat the surface of the moss.  Each sweep of the broom not only moves the leaves and nuts along but also restores the unity of the green velvety surface.   The rhythmic whisper as the bristles move back and forth across the surface of the moss is the background to a profound meditation…one whispered sweep of the broom at a time.

Perhaps someday Aesthetics will turn its attention to other natural beauties.  For example, the beauty of evolutionary biology as a species comes into being or the beauty of a natural system feeding the cycle of life and death…that would indeed be a substantial transdisciplinary leap into the connections that bind and liberate us all.

Connections.

Shallow depressions in the sandy mud alongside woodland pond. 

Depressions made by a wandering raccoon, an animal so well adapted to feed on the clams buried beneath the surface of the sand that they fish by touch alone.

Connections.

The clams strain minute plankton, clarifying the water, cleaning it until it sparkles--growing inside their shells until a passing raccoon senses their presence beneath the sand, and....

Connections.

Plankton--tiny children of the sun using the basic elements of nature to create the stuff of life, to build their own living plant-selves from the sun and minerals that surround them in the water.

Connections.

Standing -- on the verge of the glassy waters watching the connections unfold, watching the interconnectedness take place. 

Stepping -- carefully least I erase the trace of what has passed here...of the connections that have taken place here.

Wondering -- where I and mine belong in this web of life. 

Sensing -- in those shallow wanderings the elements of nature flowing through me.   

Knowing -- that someway, somehow I and mine have become separate from the primal patterns shifting and blending in the waters of the woodland pond. 

Understanding-- that the separation is only temporary, can only be temporary, is only illusion. 

Standing -- again-- in the shadows at the edge of the pond.

Watching--in my delight and in my fear.

Color it Green I

The Aesthetics of Environment

Things change and old words take on new meanings.  Green for example has come to mean many things other than a color…nature, environment, products, politics, and many more.  Here in the mountains of western North Carolina we have a lot of green.  The mountains are clothed in a cloak of green, the meadows, fields, and lawns are green and gold, and it is beautiful. We are told by philosophers that Aesthetics is the study of beauty.  Apparently, the root of the word is derived from the Greek terms for sensing or feeling or perceiving.  I sense and perceive that a healthy world is a green, fecund, and growing world...a beautiful world.  These mountains are beautiful but my professional work has taken me from the deserts of the American West and Southwest to the Gulf Coast and Caribbean and, now, to the Southern Appalachian Mountains and I have seen a great deal of beauty in all of these places.

In recent decades Aesthetics has expanded its scope to investigate the questions of beauty in nature.  We now talk about environmental aesthetics. What is it that we sense when we look at a beautiful river valley or the winding rows of corn stubble cut for silage in the fall, or a small park in a concrete and steel city?  Something happens. We can feel it, we can sense it.  Sometimes that feeling is very powerful and often it is shared. A lot of work is being done on what it is that we feel by neurophysiologists, psychologists, biochemists, and other specialized fields such as cognitive studies.  Perhaps, one day they will tell us all about it in the often sterile, reductionist words of science.  But there is nothing sterile about our individual or, very often, our collective response to these things. 

We are moved by nature to paint it, write poetry about it, to emulate it in our gardens. In terms of the issues addressed by conservation biology, why is it important what we find beautiful?  A number of observers have made the point that the kinds of natural settings we find beautiful often make a substantial difference when it comes to reaching that collective decision of what places we wish to set aside, to save, to restore or enhance and which to surrender to other, perhaps more consumptive uses.

We most often perceive of transformation to a green world in a mega-sense…for example the greening of government programs…corporate greening…and organizational transformation. But, in fact, critical transformation can only take place one person or even one action…one blade of grass, if you will, at a time.

(Continued in the next post.) 

(The literature on the aesthetics of environment and nature pertaining to the world  environmental crisis has grown considerably over the past several decades with numerous journal articles and books.  Over the years, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism and Contemporary Aesthetics have published a number of articles on the subject. Arnold Berleant, Allen Carlson, John Fisher and others have contributed significantly.  Books addressing this subject include those by  J.B. Callicott, T. Morton, and others. I also suggest Lance Hosey's The Shape of Green: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Design)