to build a fire

On Thursday evening we built a fire in our backyard, our first fire of the season. We have piles of wood from pruning our trees this spring, and we'd just been waiting for the right day to have our first fire.  We haven’t yet dug a new fire pit since planting a cherry tree in the first fire pit, so we set a metal bucket atop a large concrete bird bath bowl (to keep from singeing the grass) and built a little fire in that. The bucket had a centimeter of water in the bottom, but we tossed in small sticks and newspaper anyway, figuring the water would steam off.

Though I'm a pyromaniac at heart (aren't we all?), I’ve never been the best fire builder. I can get them started, eventually, but I rarely take the time to set them up properly. If I have a book or box of matches, or a lighter, I know that I don’t have to get the sticks to catch on the first try. When I do take the time to create a nest of soft material and a small teepee of sticks, and getting the fire to catch takes only two or three matches, I feel a deep contentment. But that doesn’t happen very often.

Last Thursday, I crumpled up some newspaper to put in the bottom of the bucket, and layered small twigs on top of it. The newspaper burned quickly, of course, but the sticks refused to catch. And refused to catch. One match became two, and two became seven.  It didn’t help that the wood we were using wasn’t cured, that it is early spring and right now even small twigs still have moisture in them. After twenty minutes the fire still wasn’t going and Greg, Britta, and I were getting frustrated. Finally Greg tore up strips of newspaper and brown paper bag and just kept tossing them in, and the small sticks finally caught, and then larger sticks caught, and then our oak logs burned, too, and we sat around the flickering orange and yellow warmth, eating our soup and drinking beer, breathing in the comforting smell of wood smoke in the evening air.

The very next day, Friday, I spent at the Native Plant Garden at Fort Missoula participating in a full-day workshop for some of the MNHC staff and long-term volunteers. Brett Holmquist from Ravenwood Outdoor Learning Center was the facilitator, and we spent the day learning new ways to be teachers and mentors for children in the natural world.

After sharing each of our backgrounds, telling each other about where we came from and why we were participating in the workshop, we walked outside along the rock-lined path to the middle of a small field of native plants. A miniscule teepee of sticks and twigs was set up in a circle of bare ground, with a ball of bark and plant fibers resting in front of it. Brett knelt on the ground while we circled around and watched. He took a long, peeled stick, tapered at one end, and fit the tapered end into a small flat piece of wood with several holes drilled into it. Placing his hands near the top of the stick, he rolled it rapidly back and forth between his palms while moving his hands downward. He did this a second time, and a third. After the third time, a thin wisp of smoke rose up from the piece of wood and wafted away in the chill April breeze. Smoke rose up again the fourth time, and the fifth time, and the sixth time. I thought of Tom Hanks in Castaway, crying out triumphantly, “I have created FIRE!”

Brett then set the stick down, and lifted up the flat piece of wood. A tiny cone of ash lay on the rock below. Brett picked up the rock, and carefully tipped the ash into the ball of bark, then cupped the bark in his hands, brought it up to his mouth, and blew gently. A thin curl of smoke rose from the bark, then more. “Let us all add our breath to the fire,” Brett said, and walked around the circle, holding the bark bundle, while we each took a turn blowing our breath into the infant fire.

Sparks glowed, and a yellow tongue of flame flickered briefly. At last Brett set the bundle beneath the twig teepee, knelt down, and blew the sparks into flame, which eagerly consumed the bark, then ignited the twigs. The morning breeze rushed through in gusts, blowing the smoke in whirls and sending the flames to the top of the teepee. Heat radiated out, and we leaned in to feel the warmth on our hands and faces. All this had taken, perhaps, five minutes.

When most of the sticks had been consumed, Brett had us fan out to create our own fire nests—bundles of bark and twigs—so we could transfer the fire to the big fire pit. My friend Ann and I formed a handful of stringy bark into a ball, and she used a stick and a rock to transfer some hot coals into the bark while I held it. We both blew into it carefully, and watched the sparks glow and smoke. As I carried the bark to the fire pit, I felt the heat of the tiny fire warm my hands. I thought, “I am carrying fire.” The smoke rose into my face and disappeared into the air as I added my fire to the other fires in the pit, and they all burned together.

Two days, two fires, two stories. Thursday night, I made sure to put a box of matches in my bag so that we’d be able to have a fire during the workshop the next day. Wouldn’t it be awful, I said to Greg and Britta, if I forgot the matches, and we had no way to start a fire? But they never made it out of my bag on Friday.  They were completely unnecessary.

How many things, I wonder, do we see as necessary because we have forgotten (or, perhaps, never learned) that there is a simpler way of doing things? How much does some of our modern technology, whether matches or hot water heaters or cell phones, keep us from being thoughtful and responsible with our resources? I lost track of how many matches we used trying to start our fire on Thursday evening. What if we’d only had one match? We would have dumped the water out of the bottom of the bucket. We would have made a nest of shredded paper, bark, and leaves for our fire. We would have found the smallest, driest twigs. We would have searched out dry wood chips and slivers of wood. We would have set up our fire bed completely differently if we had had but the one match.

I can’t even put words to all of the thoughts that come to mind when I ponder these two fire experiences of the past week. It’s not only about not needing technology to survive. When we can go to the grocery story and have five thousand food choices, what does it matter if an orange gets moldy or our children pull up their noses at some dish we prepare for them? We can just throw the food out and get more. What does it matter that we know that our oil and natural gas and coal resources are finite when we can still go to the gas station and fill up our cars, still turn up the thermostat and have instant heat? We have so much available at our fingertips—so much excess—that we have forgotten, if we even ever knew, what it is like to have no choices, what it is like to be in want, how little we actually need to survive.

How long will it be, I wonder, until we start feeling the tightness of resources that many people around the world already feel? How long until food and gas prices become prohibitive? How long until clean water is something we no longer have the luxury of taking for granted? How long until a 2,000-square-foot home for a family of four is seen as an unnecessary extravagance?

I want not only to learn to start a fire without matches or a lighter, but to stop buying garlic and potatoes and onions because Greg and I can grow all we need ourselves. I want to stop taking gasoline for granted, and clean water, and exotic foods like bananas and off-season tomatoes and avocados (whimper). I want to be content in our 1,180-square-foot home and know that we can raise a child or two, and various plants and kitties, in this space: it is ample. As G.K. Chesterton wrote, “There are two ways to get enough. One is to accumulate more. The other is to need less.” I want to learn to need less.

Needing less doesn’t mean we have to throw out the matches. We simply need to learn the proper way to build a fire.

Yard & Garden Updates . . . and Post #100!

Yes, this is my 100th post!  Woohoo!  Shouldn't there be some sort of celebration?  Such as eating one of the oatmeal-chocolate-chip-pecan cookies I made yesterday?

I say YES.  MMM.  (These may be some of the yummiest cookies I have ever had the pleasure of making.  And eating.  I'm just sayin'.)

I was importing some pictures from my camera, and, as often happens when I have to open iPhoto for an import, I started looking through pictures from the past several months.  I realized that there are some fun yard and garden updates that I'd like to share, so I thought I would do so while I'm feeling inspired.  Plus, it was just so nice to see pictures of green, lush growth, especially right now when it's rather drab yet (though the tulips are coming up, as are the garlic, spinach, chives, and even a rogue pea or two that must have fallen to the ground last year instead of ending up in our stomachs!).

So, a photo update, in case you need a break from philosophical ramblings.

Last May we decided to tear up some of our front lawn, since it doesn't really get used anyway, and we'd rather have native plants growing there that 1) are not lawn and 2) we don't have to water.  So on a fine day in late May, Greg and I got out our shovels and started digging up the grass.

Before (oh, how green it is!):

We dug up about a three-foot-wide strip to the south of the sidewalk along the whole front yard, and laid down some weedmat in an attempt to keep weeds and grass from coming up:

Next we bordered the strips of dirt with the rocks we've been collecting--ones we've dug up in our yard (ah, Montana glacial soil) or gathered from various roadsides and trailheads--and then layered cedar chips on top of the dirt.  Insta-landscaping!

This not only gave us less lawn to mow and water, but set off the front flowerbed beautifully:

Note the mound of dirt behind the front strip--it has now been mounded up even higher, and we've added more stones to create some curved walls and a little more privacy for our side yard.

It looks so lovely!  A very satisfying day's work.

As the summer progressed, we built up the pile of dirt--adding all the sod we were digging up, etc., and added some curving rock walls, and then covered the newly-made mound with more weedmat and cedar chips.  Here's the view from the back:

And here's the view from the front/side.  Goal for this year:  plant some native plants!  We already have some bunchgrass and sage, but we want a shade-tolerant groundcover like kinnickinnick.  Someday this will be covered with native plants!

In June, Greg worked to create a rock path from the front yard to the back yard, mostly using stones that we had dug up from our yard.  (We've even found chunks of concrete in our lawn.  I have no idea what they are from!)

Greg also fixed up the path from the sidewalk to our front door, and extended it around the front of the house to our driveway:

Greg and I have constant conversations about how much lawn to leave and how much more we can dig up for garden space.  I find that I like a little bit of lawn, so I can sprawl on a blanket and read, or set up our lawn chairs when we have friends over for dinners in the summer.  But this may be a losing battle for me; I think Greg might be happy to turn every last inch of our lawn into garden.  At any rate, last summer Greg dug up a large patch of lawn between our current garden plot and our greenhouse.  It's a space that gets a lot of sun, and I'm happy to give up big sunny patches to our garden (I prefer sitting in shady areas myself, on hot sunny days).  We didn't plant anything in it last summer, but we dug in the usual load of cow manure last fall, so we'll see how things grow this year!

And then, last fall, I got motivated to do some painting at last!  I've been wanting to paint the greenhouse door red; I'd bought deep pink primer and bright red paint, and there came a sunny weekend in September and I accomplished my goal.  Doesn't it look lovely?

Greg and I had also been wanting to install a gate between the fence and our house.  The previous owners had left an old, far-too-small metal gate, which we would set on the ground sideways in an attempt to keep out deer--which it did, for the most part, except when we forgot to set it back up after we went through it.  Let's just say that we lost some tulips, had some carrot and beet greens munched on, and had most of the leaves stripped off our fruit trees by deer on the few occasions we didn't set up the gate.  One afternoon we stopped at Home Resource and lo and behold, there were several old wooden gates available.  We guessed on the size, and got lucky, because it turned out to be a perfect fit.  I scraped off the old yellow paint and painted the gate red, too.  (Next, I'm trying to work up the inspiration to paint all our window trim red . . . we'll see how I do on that one!)

One of the most fun additions to the yard last year was a SWING!  I LOVE our swing (which we made from a leftover bit of 2x4 and some hardy rope from Ace Hardware and hung from our oak tree).  This swing brings joy to my life.  I can go out to my backyard and swing higher than the swings on most swingsets, in my pajamas and slippers and rumpled hair, and see sky and trees and mountains and our lovely little neighborhood stretching out around me.  I usually sing, too, while I'm swinging, because it just makes me so HAPPY.  If you come and visit, you can swing, too.  Britta can attest to that:

Now that I'm writing this, I am realizing just how much we did last year!  Lists can be so satisfying.  My parents bought us a picnic table for an early anniversary present (and we enjoyed a very nice dinner on it, with both sets of parents).  In the early fall, we drilled a hole in one end and bought an umbrella so we could work/write/eat outside beneath its shade.  In the picture below, you may also note that Greg appears to be working on yet another project:  a moveable hoop house for the garden, so we can extend our growing season just a bit more.

Here is the finished product!  He built a frame large enough to fit over one of our garden sections, and used PVC pipe and, I believe, some plastic we had in our garage to do the rest.  However, we were able to get some actual greenhouse plastic from farmer friends who (unfortunately) had a strong storm demolish one of their greenhouses and tear the plastic to bits . . . but those bits were still big enough to cover half our lawn, much less our little hoop house.

A view from the inside, of happy warm fall peas and spinach!

Greg also built a mini hoop house last fall, one that was a little more easy to move and could help small patches of plants.  Isn't it cute?  This picture is from today--the grass has a hint of green, and we are preparing the garden for all the new little plantlings that are currently indoors or in our greenhouse!

Two autumns ago Greg built a leaf bin.  We keep all of our leaves--they work so wonderfully as mulch in our garden, or as carbon-rich material to add to our compost.  Last autumn, Greg also built a couple of soil bins, so that we aren't reusing the same soil for things like potted tomatoes, potatoes, etc.

This spring we have been most fortunate to finally get our trees pruned.  One of our neighbors, who has lived here for 20-some years, said that he's never seen anyone pruning our trees in the time he's been around, so our poor trees were definitely past due.  The good fortune comes in that Emily, one of our neighbors across the alley, has been working with an arborist the past few months, and she asked to "practice" on our trees.  Needless to say, we enthusiastically agreed.  So she spent several days at the beginning of March pruning our three Norway maples and our oak, and they look ever so much happier and healthier now.  We'll see how they look once they start leafing out!

Of course, all those dead branches in our yard took some effort to clean up . . . but at least we have lots of firewood for our firepit!

 Because it's nice to keep in mind what we have to look forward to, I'm putting up a few pictures of garden abundance from last summer.  Our amazing pea/bean/squash fence:

Cabbage!!

Our amazing array of dried beans.  We've been soaking and eating them recently, and they are delicious. And how satisfying to eat dried beans that you actually grew!  I love it.  Some red bush beans (well, that's what they were supposed to be.  Those beans vined their way up our fence like nobody's business. I'd call them pole beans, myself . . . ):

Some yellow Hungarian beans, a gift from our friend Tina, who brought them from the organic farm she worked at in Wisconsin:

Black beans!

What our yard looked like on St. Patrick's Day (all the snow melted off by the afternoon, but what a delight to wake up to!):

What our tulips look like today:

I wonder how much longer it will be until they bloom?  I can't wait.

And now, it begins all over again, and I am so very excited.  The list of projects keeps growing, but crossing things off that list is satisfying, and it's wonderful to see the changes in our yard and garden as the years pass (we've been here almost two years:  wow).  It's hard to believe we're coming up on our third summer/garden season in this house!  At this moment we have tomato and pepper seedlings upstairs on the heat mat; onions, cabbage, and broccoli seedlings in the greenhouse; and garlic, spinach, peas, and onion sets planted in the garden.  Come on, spring!

Waste = Opportunity

It's been a busy week.  From last weekend's Spring Party at Bill & Becky's to a work week filled with some contract work at UM and the Montana Environmental Education Association annual conference--well, I am most ready for the weekend.

At last year's MEEA conference,  I knew only a few people.  Maybe five, and most of them were my co-workers.  But this year--well!  It seemed as though I knew every second person there, and even those I didn't know by sight I knew by name from email exchanges or online collaboration.  Amazing what a difference a year makes.  I've got to say, environmental educators are a lovely group of people.

I attended several sessions today, and a couple of quotes from a couple of facilitators stuck out in my mind.

"Hard humble work + tangible results = a transformational experience."

This from Jason Mandela at Garden City Harvest, a fantastic Missoula organization that grows local organic food, provides education and training about sustainable agriculture to the community, and distributes healthy food to low-income people.  When Jason mentioned this little mantra, which is foundational to GCH's philosophy, I couldn't help but think of my Lenten practices.  They certainly have been challenging (some days more than others), but I am already seeing some tangible results, and am feeling that this will be a transformational experience for me--in ways that still remain to be seen.

The most fascinating session I attended was with Sam Stier from The Biomimicry Institute, which "promotes learning from and then emulating natural forms, processes and ecosystems to create more sustainable and healthier human technologies and designs."  For all you science nerds (and even non-science nerds), this is a website and a concept to check out.  Scientists who use biomimicry to create new technologies have done everything from creating solar panels that follow the sun (mimicking heliotropism, found in flowers such as buttercups), to redesigning a high-speed Japanese train by mimicking the shape of a kingfisher's bill, to developing carbon-neutral cement production by mimicking the chemistry of coral.  It seems obvious, but there are some seriously cool things that we can learn from nature.  As Sam said today, the natural ecosystem is our only (and incredibly amazing) example of a sustainable system, and the more that we can do to mimic natural processes, the closer we will come to sustainability.

Quote of the Day:  "For ecosystems, waste is an opportunity."

Let me write that again:
FOR ECOSYSTEMS, WASTE IS AN OPPORTUNITY.

I can't get this idea out of my head.  Think about it.  Truly think about what it means.  There is no "waste" in ecosystems.  There are no landfills where precious resources are trapped, buried, and completely shut away from the rest of the world.  There are no islands of non-biodegradable plastic swirling around in the Pacific Ocean.  There is no imbalance that is not, quite quickly, re-balanced.

When a tree dies, tiny organisms use it as their home or their food.  It breaks down, the very bark and leaves and wood becoming humus, becoming earth, the nutrients going back into the ecosystem.  During my summer at the Au Sable Institute, at the Pacific Rim campus on Whidbey Island, WA, I learned about nurse logs for the first time.  I am sure it was not the first time I had seen them, but it was the first time I saw them and knew what they were.  A tree had died and fallen, and on its trunk grew thick carpets of moss and several new trees, their roots curving over and around the dead trunk below them, pulling nourishment--nursing--from the decaying wood.  The tree wasn't pumped full of nasty chemicals and stuck in a box.  No, when it died, it fell, and gave itself back to the ecosystem from which it had come, earth to earth.

I also wonder about this idea on a philosophical level.  What difference might it make in our lives if we viewed situations that we are used to describing as "wasteful" as opportunities, instead?  Whether we feel that we wasted a year or five of our lives in a dead-end relationship, or an unfulfilling job, or in a city that we never felt at home in, or if we see sadness or depression as wasteful emotions, or even current politicians and short-sighted legislation as wasteful--no matter what it is we view as waste, what might happen if we can see those things as opportunities?  I wonder if we might feel more encouraged, empowered, and creative, as we wait to see what will rise from the ashes, as we remember that death and life are intricately intertwined, as we remember that some things must die so that other things may live.  We have the opportunity to learn so much about ourselves after a relationship ends.  We learn--and come into--our own strength.  Through loneliness and sadness can come creativity--dark-edged, perhaps, but brilliant, like onyx or hematite.  When we are frustrated with poor legislative decisions (and poor legislators), we may be inspired to take action, to make ourselves more a part of the political process than we have cared or dared to be before.

My challenge to myself--and to you, as well--is to look at our lives and shift our thinking, to look at things we are tempted to label as "waste" and call them "opportunity" instead.  Whether it's literal "waste" (do I need to throw away that Kleenex?  Maybe I should start using cloth hankies instead! Maybe that cracker box can become the cover for a journal! etc.) or metaphorical "waste," let's look for the opportunities hidden inside.  Here's to creativity and opportunity and sustainability!

Up next:  observations from 2.5 weeks of Lenten practices.

Living Intentionally

I am inspired by Andrea and Philip's new blog, particularly with their focus on living intentionally.  Since I like making lists, I thought I would make a list of the things that Greg and I do in an effort to leave a smaller carbon footprint, use fewer resources, and live sustainably.  Making lists is also a good way of seeing what may be left out, so perhaps we'll figure out a few more changes we can make.  Please let us know what you do to live simply and sustainably--we are always looking for new ideas!

Here we go (in no particular order)!

1.  Eat a minimum of meat.  We are not vegetarians, but we limit our meat intake to a minimum.  We cook with it perhaps once-ish per week.

2.  Walk or bike to work 99% of the time.  Every once in awhile I need to drive for a work meeting or errand, but that is very rare.  Greg always walks to work or takes the bus between campuses.

3.  Dry our laundry on racks in the winter and outside on a line in the summer.  (Dryers use an incredible amount of electricity.  The difference not using a dryer makes on our electric bill is significant.)

4.  Shower only every other day.

5.  Take relatively short showers (it helps that our hot water runs out after about 11 minutes!).

6.  Recycle everything we possibly can--paper, aluminum, tin, newsprint, cardboard, plastic, glass.

7.  Use canvas bags when we go shopping (grocery store, Ace Hardware, Goodwill, etc.).

8.  Keep the thermostat at 56 at night and 62 during the day in the winter.  (Let's just say we have a good supply of fleeces, pajama pants, slippers, warm robes, and blankets!  Though we do turn the heat up to a balmy 65 when we have guests.)

9.  No air conditioning, though we do use fans in the summer.  We are fortunate to have three mature maple trees in the yard just west of our house, which does wonders to keep our home cool in the summer months.  It rarely gets above 70 degrees on the main floor.

10.  Compost everything we possibly can--egg shells, vegetable matter, tea bags, even some paper products.  We also get compost from Greg's parents (who live in bear country) and several friends (who live in apartments).  Composting has multiple advantages--not only do we keep organic nutrients from being stuck uselessly in a landfill, we gain rich soil for our yard and garden AND the trash is much less smelly, so we don't have to take it out until it's completely full.

11.  Garden, garden, garden.  We have converted about a third of our yard into garden space, so instead of wasting water on grass, we are nourishing plants that will provide us with healthy, organic, and VERY local food.  Greg is amazingly motivated, and our garden space keeps expanding every year.

12.  Walk to the grocery store, hardware store, post office, etc.  We are fortunate enough to live in a neighborhood that's only a few blocks away from a commercial area and also within walking distance of downtown.  We have even been able to choose a dentist and optometrist within walking distance.

13.  Running multiple errands when we do drive.  When we drop off our recycling, we may also go grocery shopping or run other errands that are easier with a car.

14.  Purchasing products for our construction/home/yard projects from Home Resource, a local business that sells an amazing variety of used materials, from doors to windows to light fixtures to bricks.  (See here for a blog post about how we built our greenhouse almost completely out of recycled materials.)

15.  When we do buy meat, we try to make sure it is local, organic, and free-range, if possible.  (We purchase chicken from a farmer friend, beef and sausage from a local meat and dairy farm, and bison from Montana, and we occasionally get a gift of venison from hunting friends:  yum.)

16.  Purchasing used rather than new items of all kinds--from furniture to dishware to clothing.  Missoula has a good number of thrift stores, and we've gotten good at making the rounds when we are thinking of making a purchase.  $50 couch from Goodwill?  Yes, please!  Craigslist and the "free" section in the paper have also been useful.  The prices are MUCH better, and we're not supporting unsustainable practices (child labor, poor environmental practices, etc.).

17.  I finally purchased a good supply of cloth menstrual pads from Glad Rags, which are not only better for the environment (I'm no longer filling landfills with disposable pads), but are better for my health as well (no nasty bleached cotton and other chemicals near sensitive parts of my body).  To any wonderful women reading this, just check out the link above (there are other companies, too, of course--Lunapads is another good one.)  There are an amazing array of earth-friendly, women-friendly products from cloth pads to Diva cups to sponge tampons, and this is definitely worth looking into.

18.  We save hundreds of gallons of water per year by not flushing the toilet each time we use it.  "If it's yellow, let it mellow . . . "

19.  Reuse everything we possibly can.  We save egg cartons and certain plastic containers (from spinach, fruit, etc.) to use as seed-starting containers and mini greenhouses.  We reuse ziplock bags--it's been probably about two years since we've bought new ziplocks--and we also keep the ziplock bags that various foods come in (tortillas, nuts, etc.).

20.  Collect water off the one section of our roof that has a gutter to put on the garden, trees, etc.  We hope someday to install gutters on the rest of the roof and purchase a 500-gallon tank so we can collect ALL the water that comes off our roof.

21.  Use soaker hoses instead of a sprinkler on our garden beds.

22.  Plant water-wise native plants in our front landscaping.

23.  Keep all of our leaves in the fall to use as mulch over the winter and in the spring.

24.  One thing I've particularly enjoyed since moving to Missoula is having clothing exchanges (or "naked lady parties") with friends every few months.  It's a great way to clean my closet of things I don't wear anymore, and get a few new outfits for free!  All the leftover clothing we then take to the thrift store (usually Secret Seconds, as 100% profits go to the YWCA).

All this is a start, anyway.  How about you?  What do you do to live sustainably and intentionally?