Love Letter to my life #29: The Granary Tree

by Joyce Wycoff

(We know the day we were born, but most of us do not know the day we will die. This love letter to my life is written on the day I've designated as my death day, the 17th of every month, and reminds me to be grateful for my incredible life.)   

 

A project called me to move to the Cuyamaca Mountains in east San Diego County ... a vague, blobby kind of idea about creating something around wildflowers and nature, focused on California, all of California, all 800 miles north to south and 400 miles east to west. 

 

As I went about learning how to live in an RV and began exploring the land around me, I cycled through a lot of project possibilities. Most lasted no more than a day or two.

The work I did about this time last year … which at the time I called my 5-Year Plan (because the idea of a 74 year-old woman making a 5-year plan tickled me) … clarified my intention to live the rest of my life in Delight. Out of that thinking, came four action words that I wanted to be the bedrock of all my doings: Learn - Create - Connect - Share. They became the criteria for all project possibilities, with the overarching mission being to create delight for myself and others. Most projects quietly went away under that spotlight. 

I was beginning to wonder if any project would survive that scrutiny when a new book showed up on my Kindle. Since I'm living in the midst of an oak forest, it startled me with a sense that it was written just for me. The first chapter focused on acorns and woodpeckers. Shortly thereafter, I knew I had found my project.

The story that began to haunt me was about granary trees. Oaks are keystone plants supporting a diverse habitat by producing an abundance of acorns that feed the neighborhood. One of the main inhabitants of oak woodlands are woodpeckers whose main diet is acorns. To store their precious food supply, they create communal store houses … granary trees. These trees may hold 50,000 acorns and take eight years to drill the holes and store the acorns.

Woodpeckers don’t “own” their store houses. Other woodpeckers eat freely from them, and, because the acorns shrink as they dry, squirrels, blue jays and other forest dwellers help themselves to the bounty. However, to outwit the thieves, woodpeckers move as many as five hundred acorns every week!

Soon after I arrived, I started walking through the woods in the surrounding woodland and thought “wouldn’t it be nice if I could actually see a granary tree?”

I practically ran into it … a huge Ponderosa pine. Within a couple of weeks I had found three inside the park where I live and a few outside the park. I can touch the acorns packed into the holes: some are loose enough to pull out with my fingers; some so tight I would need pliers to remove them.

Granary trees are a wonder as baffling to me as the great pyramids. They are unique in the animal world and require an enormous amount of work … drilling the holes, gathering the acorns one acorn at a time from surrounding trees, and then pounding them into the holes. And they are made by generous beings who share the bounty with the neighborhood.

 

Detail of one of the granary trees.

What’s coming? … The Granary Tree ... on November 30, 2020, under the full Acorn Moon.

Here's a description of the new project ... a periodic, online “magazine” (or as they are sometimes called “flip books”), filled with acorns (or wonders) about what I learn and whatever captures my attention, focusing on beauty and nature, art and generosity, wandering and wondering along the way.

 

To be sure to receive your copy, simply add your email address in the Follow by Email box on the right side of this post and press submit.

To RV or not to RV ...

Some of you may be thinking about living in an RV or heading out for the open road. I highly endorse the idea, with a few caveats about the learning curve that, for me, is part of this adventure.

I lived for 7 months in what was an RV bubble and thought I had a sense of what I was doing when I decided to live full-time in an RV. Now I think of that decision as being somewhat like deciding to eat only what you can grow yourself. Sounds wholesome, self-reliant, and fun ... until hunger sets in.
 
Perhaps the best way to share my thoughts is to describe the past three days.
 
Weather will be a constant companion whether you’re on the road or parked. Several days ago, I noticed that we were in for a week of wind, rain, and freezing temperatures; so I started making plans.
Two days ago, I decided to stabilize the RV with a tripod stabilizer and to wrap my water hose to prevent freezing. Buying and installing the stabilizer was easy. Wrapping my 100’ of hose was simple but time consuming. Two jobs well done and satisfying.

 
Yesterday, since the night temps were touching freezing, I started thinking about my furnace and the propane tanks that keep the warm air flowing. A friend suggested they might need insulating. Sounded reasonable, so I was off to YouTube (the repository for multiple answers to all questions, some actually helpful.)
 
After several videos by guys who all want to be my new best friend, the answer to why you should NOT insulate propane tanks began to make sense … boils down to: they work better when full and insulation hinders the evaporation (you have to watch the videos yourself if you want to know why that’s important.) Anyway, scratch “insulate the propane tanks” off my growing to do list.
 
However, the idea that they work better when full was troublesome. Are my tanks full? Who knows? Back to YouTube. Apparently, “How full is my propane tank?” is one of the mysteries of the Universe. Some guys thump ‘em, some pour hot water down the side and wait for a frost line, some buy a profusion of gauges which half the reviewers swear didn’t work.
 
I’ve been here six weeks and had to assume that it was likely that my tank was empty. Well, that and the fact that my furnace didn’t seem to do much other than keep the frost out of the air. So I’m off to take my tank to the park office where they fill them … after watching several videos about just how to take them out of their compartments, of course.

I have a “split-bottle” system with an “automatic changeover.” That's good because the law of propane tanks is that they run out at 2 am. (Of course, none of that was spelled out in the large stack of manuals I inherited with this RV.)

As I looked into the cabinets that held the bottles, I saw more questions than answers. (Do remember that propane is dangerous … one wrong move and I could blow up half the county. My imagination painted graphic pictures.)  
 
Finally, in something of a state of panic, I took photos of both tanks and their respective valves, (this is not what I want to take pictures of), then photoshopped a page of appropriate photos and was headed out to the RV store 20 miles away, when a neighbor and his wife pulled into their space.

I almost gave him time to get out of his car before I was groveling at his feet, begging him to help me figure out what to do. Being a nice man, he gently took me over to my unit and revealed the mysterious workings of propane tanks. 
 
I felt saved until we took the first one out of its cabinet. Definitely empty, but the sucker was anything but light. My neighbor decided the other one was probably empty also and took it out. It still had some propane left, but I took both to the office to be filled.
 
My neighbor made me promise I’d let him help me reload them when I got back. I demurred for half a second; I am trying to be self-reliant.
 
It didn’t take long when I picked up the full-bottles to realize there was definitely an issue. Research has since revealed that a 30# tank weighs 55#. (It’s a little ridiculous to ask Google how much a 30# tank weighs. Like who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb? only in this case it would have been Grant and all the little Grants.)
 
However, with my neighbor doing all the heavy lifting, the full tanks were soon in place and the furnace ran at a near-toasty level. Another check mark on my to do list.
 
Today began well: nothing froze, water is still running. I knew I needed a system for loading and unloading the propane tanks and that made me wonder how long they would last. Google proceeded to tell me that a full 30# propane tank should keep a furnace running consistently for 25 hours. Since I have two tanks, I had 50 hours of furnace time … however, I had just used up 12 hours in one night! 
 
Drat! That’s not going to work for a 3-month winter. Small space heaters work well in small spaces though, so I was just getting ready to head to the city to buy another space heater when I decided to dump the tanks: black water and gray water.
 
Easy-peasy, just pull a knob and a valve opens and lets all the icky stuff from the black tank run into the septic tank. Close that valve and open the gray water valve and it further cleans the line. Close that valve and you’re basically done. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.
 
However, after dumping, the black water tank wouldn’t close all the way, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much WD-40 I sprayed on it, no matter how much I begged Ganesha. Back to YouTube and I now know more than I ever wanted to know about waste systems, paper clogs, and poop build-ups.
 
There’s more to the story, more Googling, more YouTubing, more crying on a friend’s shoulder, and one trip to the hardware store to buy tools that I don’t know how to use to try to fix something I can’t see.
 
Now, I sit here writing in a frosty room because I’m not about to use that precious propane, hoping I never have to go to the bathroom again, and wondering if I will ever feel competent and truly self-reliant.
 
However, on the way to the hardware store, I saw buffalo and a barn quilt. That almost makes up for all of these challenges. Here are the buffalo. Quilt next time when I figure out how to pull off the narrow, two-lane road.

A gift that dispelled despair

 Today has been hard and I’m sure many of you understand. Seeing Washington, D.C. boarded up as if a category-5 hurricane were about to land, struck a blow. I was overwhelmed by what might happen if we lose tomorrow.

Then, a gift arrived … unexpectedly as most great gifts do. Looking for distraction, I stumbled on an hour-and-a-half video of a panel discussion. I’m a 3-minute attention span person, but it was with three of my favorite authors: Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, Terry Tempest Williams, “Refuge, Erosion and many others, and Richard Powers, Overstory, which I'm just now reading for the second time. 

click here to watch

Richard Powers, Terry Tempest Williams, and Robin Wall Kimmerer

Terry opened the discussion with a story. (Forgive the first-name familiarity with these respected people. I have cried with them for the past hour and a half and feel a level of connectedness with them.) 

The story was of the impending removal of the Divinity Tree, a hundred-year-old Red Oak on Harvard campus. The tree was failing … and also in the way of some planned renovations. Clearly, Terry, who is a professor in the Harvard Divinity School was feeling grief and anger and her emotion opened a vulnerable and sharing conversation. (The opening photo is of the stump of this storied tree.)

For some reason, as I watched these three wise and kind leaders talk about how they are navigating this world and how we are being helped by plant beings, the despair that I have been feeling began to heal. Tomorrow might not take us where we want to be ... nevertheless, we shall persist! 

In recent days and months, I've seen a lot of unimaginable hatred and violence from my fellow countrymen ... but I've also seen amazing generosity and engagement. Our democracy and our ideals may not survive this particular challenge, but we will continue to fight for what we know is right.

The presence of Robin Wall Kimmerer on this panel reminded me of the huge losses of the indigenous people, and yet they persist in relearning their languages, reconstructing their cultures, sharing the wisdom they’ve gathered over millennia, living in gratitude for the plant beings who make every breath we breathe.

We might lose tomorrow and life as we know it might change. But, life goes on, and changes, and so will we.

Love Letter to My Life #28: Something about picnic tables

by Joyce Wycoff

(We know the day we were born, but most of us do not know the day we will die. This love letter to my life is written on the day I've designated as my death day, the 17th of every month, and reminds me to be grateful for my incredible life.)  

There is something about a picnic table. It’s not particularly comfortable, or lovely even in its cross-legged simplicity. However, the sight of a picnic table prompts a happy reaction in me. Maybe it’s the picnic table from childhood under the shady shelter of a large pecan tree; maybe it’s the symbol of years of camping trips and excursions; maybe it’s an ancient memory of eating in community out doors around a fire. 

My reaction to picnic tables seems to be deeper than its form or function. Something happened yesterday that started me on this path of thinking about picnic tables and called to me at 3:30 this morning until I surrendered and began this letter. 

 

San Diego County ... ocean to desert

 

I’ve been here in the hill country of east San Diego County for a week and a half, long enough to settle in and begin the familiar routines of writing, photography and making art. Yesterday, as the shade laced the yard, I spread my laptop and notebooks across the picnic table and settled in to think about a new project.

It was a perfect fall day: the air fresh and that perfect temperature that feels neither cool nor warm.. And, even though I’m in a rather large RV park (250 spaces), my neighbors were gone and the only sounds were a rustle of leaves and an occasional birdcall in the distance. I drifted into the project, writing, revising the related art work, mapping the project which slowly emerged like a developing photo in a dark room. When the day softened into evening and turned cool, I picked up my work and went back inside.

That's when I noticed the quiet. Not just the quiet of outside, but the silence in my head. I could hear, or rather feel, the silence, like being wrapped in a blanket of calm and peace. I thought it would go away when I noticed it, but it didn’t. It seemed to be in my body as well as my mind. It was part of  my breath.

In the past six weeks, I’ve been called to make this change, not understanding why. Every time I would have a doubt, it would be whisked away by the ease with which everything was happening. It was like walking through a maze of blind corners with no clue of which way to go until suddenly a “this way” sign would appear. 

I still don’t know exactly why I’m here but it feels right and the peaceful silence is still with me even though it did wake me up in the middle of the night, demanding that I get up and write about this.

Take a Stand #3: Free, independent press is worth protecting

"Take a stand” is a on-going series articulating beliefs which deserve more of my action.

Taking a stand #3: We need a free, independent press. We need journalism we can trust to bring us facts and truth. We need net-neutrality to guarantee the free flow of information.

Action: Subscribe to Mother Jones; donate to Democracy Now!; pay attention to attempts to end net neutrality, and reduce time on Facebook and Twitter through a social media fast on Mondays and Thursdays.

***

This stand was prompted by a podcast from Bioneers.org:  When Truth Is Dangerous: The Power of Independent Media featuring the leaders of two of the most successful independent news agencies in the U.S.:

• Monika Bauerlein is the groundbreaking CEO and former Co-Editor of Mother Jones, which since 1976 has stood among the world’s premier progressive investigative journalism news organizations.
• Amy Goodman, host and Executive Producer of Democracy Now!, has won countless prestigious awards, including an I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence Lifetime Achievement Award and the Right Livelihood Award. She has co-authored six bestsellers, including Democracy Now!: Twenty Years Covering the Movements Changing America
• Neil Harvey, Host and Consulting Producer

Podcast Highlights:

MB: The only way we are going to have journalism that serves the democracy that it is a part of is for the public to take ownership of it.

MB: Speaking of the history of corporate journalism.“Like any profitable activity, the people who were doing it, the people who owned the profit-making, wanted to do more of it, so there was an incredible amount of corporatization and consolidation. 

NH: A handful of mammoth of media monopolies now dominate the mindscape with familiar names such as AT&T, Comcast, Viacom, CBS, and Disney. Not only does this media concentration stifle freedom of speech it also throttles a diversity of counterpoints.

NH: In 2017, under intense lobbying by media monopolies, the Federal Communications Commission overturned net neutrality. Although the Internet was created and paid for by US public tax dollars, it’s now controlled by giant corporations. The information highway will start to act more like a toll bridge.

(The FCC's Restoring Internet Freedom Order, which took effect on June 11, 2018, provides a framework for protecting an open Internet while paving the way for better, faster and cheaper Internet access for consumers. https://www.fcc.gov/restoring-internet-freedom)

NH: Amy Goodman and her team began broadcasting in 1996 as the only daily election show airing on public television and planned to wrap it up after the election was over. Instead, it was a free and open internet that allowed Democracy Now! to flourish. 

AG: But there was more demand for the show after than before. I mean, it was a way of getting grassroots, global voices out there.

NH: The early Internet mantra that “information wants to be free” gave way to web and social media platforms that are now some of the biggest corporate monopolies in history, such as Google and Facebook. The public town square is not in their business model, and they have siphoned away the majority of advertising money that funded traditional journalism. Nor do they pay to use the news gathered and produced by media outlets. 

These digital media platforms are also largely unregulated, and not subject to standards of journalism. In reality, their main profit center is your data, which are now the most valuable commodity in the world. 

MB: So the way Facebook makes a profit is the more people spend more time on the platform and share and like and engage, the more money they make by them being the people who do the bundling of eyeballs and selling them to advertisers.

*** Previous Stands:

Taka stand #1: I believe that we white people created Black Lives Matter out of over 400 hundred years of treating people of color as if they didn’t matter.

We did it to black people, native Americans, Chinese, Muslims, Jews, Indians, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and others that don’t fall into the white, supposedly-Christian, used-to-be majority.

Action: Apology and resolution to be more outspoken

As a white person, I sincerely apologize to all people of color for not working harder to end the injustice that has gone on for far too long.

Take a stand #2: I believe all consenting humans have the right to love whom they love and their private relationships should not be restricted by laws or religious pressures.

Action: Apology and resolution to be more outspoken

As a heterosexual person, I sincerely apologize to all non-heterosexual people for not working harder to end the injustice that has gone on for far too long. 

 

Bioneers Podcast #2 - Interviewing the Vegetable Mind

Fire and Ice

About five years ago, I felt a small shift in my being when I was honored to have a piece of art selected for the Bioneers, San Luis Obispo conference. My compensation was a complimentary registration which I appreciated as I thought it might be an interesting experience. I expected an academic meeting of environmentalists. What I experienced were amazing, uplifting stories about love ... love of our planet, love for every living being on our planet. 

 I wound up volunteering to be part of the organization which turned into a seed that continued to grow even after I moved away from the Central Coast. 

Last year I attended the national Bioneers Conference last year and recently began to listen obsessively to their amazing podcasts, looking forward to the many different approaches to stories from the ..."revolution from the heart of nature."

https://soundcloud.com/bioneers/natures-intelligence

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a favorite author: Braiding Sweetgrass and Gathering Moss, and Monica Gagliano tells amazing stories of developing creative ways to test plant intelligence.

This is such a delightful, inspiring podcast. About 30 minutes.

“It’s a sign of respect and connection to learn the name of someone else and a sign of disrespect to ignore it. And yet, the average American can name over a hundred corporate logos … and ten plants. Learning the names of plants and animals is a powerful act of support for them,” — Robin Wall Kimmerer

Precepts of the Honorable Harvest … it’s just good manners.

“Every breath that you take was made for you by plants.” — Robin Wall Kimmerer

Trust the Journey

Embracing Uncertainty

A half-century or so ago, a kid-from-Kansas washed up on the shores of California. It was like rain falling on a desert seed which then blossomed into a love affair.

A bit more than fifty years later, wearied after so many moves, that same not-such-a-kid turned up in a not-California place, determined to grow where she had been planted. After all, it was the beginning of the year of perfect vision and a bright new decade stretched before her. 

So, she began to spin a dream, a dream of delight, a dream of living from her true center … learning, creating, connecting, and sharing. Soon, change came, saying, “Ok, you want a ride? Let’s go!”

All around her, storms began to tear at the old foundations. While the winds of politics howled, an unseen enemy locked down the customary paths of everyday life, and hatred, hurricanes, floods, and fires raged across the land, making life seem less predictable, each day a precious gift.

In the midst of the cacophony of tribulations, our weary traveler heard a tinkling bell and followed it, step-by-step, to a blue lake … in California … where a new adventure was waiting.

---

I sit here in the still-dark morning, the stuff of my life melting away, my new turtle shell home looming on the empty lot just outside my door, waiting for the rest of my basic necessities to be stuffed into its nooks and crannies.

Five days from now, a man with a truck will shepherd my tiny home toward a new life, a new project, a return to California. I have moved for jobs, for a partner, for reasons not quite understood. 

 

This time, I’m moving to follow a still-undefined project that calls me. Bits and pieces of the project are clear: California - wildflowers - nature - indigenous wisdom … but the details are still a swirling fog and it’s easy to fall into doubt: Who am I to attempt something which feels so enormous?

Every once in a while I just breathe deeply and try to remember to trust the journey. This morning I woke to my mostly empty house, words demanding space on the page, and a thousand questions rattling through my brain, wondering if I'm on the right path.

Breathe. Trust the journey. Breathe.