The other day as New Year’s Eve ground on to the inevitable television watching of the ball drop at Times Square and a champagne toast at midnight, I gave a bit of thought to a new year for the planet. More specifically, I gave some consideration to the ‘state of my life’ as it approached taking on yet another year.
It is hard to fathom that I have been retired from working secondary school for over ten years. I can remember when I approached that last year teaching history at Wayne High School, I wondered if the year would ever pass. I mean, one and done was something to look forward to at that stage in a career. And as much as I enjoyed teaching, I was ready to ponder what would keep me entertained for the second half of my life.
It was on a winter Sunday afternoon in 2001 when I sat at my computer contemplating my joining the internet world with the purchase of a domain name all my own. On that afternoon, a couple thoughts were stirring through my ‘mellowed’ brain (if you know what I mean), when the concept of earthspeaks popped through the options.
I’m sure like many of you, my home office space is the gathering place for all kinds of valuable stuff. My father’s collection of Tarzan books resides there, as does my modest collection of gifted Nancy Drew titles that have come with me since I was in the sixth grade. I still have some college texts stacked in one bookcase, with an extensive collection of poetry in another. Behind me is the prose collection of spiritual stuff, more contemporary history pieces, and Nature/environmental essays, all filed in alphabetical order by author.
So on that Sunday when I was searching for a catchy expression that I could morph into a domain name, my eyes fell upon a favorite collection of thoughts by Steve Van Matre and Bill Weiler titled The Earth Speaks: An Acclimatization Journal. Perhaps I was introduced to that book first on Hog Island, when just before dinner a short reading from it was shared with campers. What wasn’t to like, with thoughts by Henry David Thoreau, Joseph Wood Krutch, Wallace Stegner, and Rachel Carson, among so many others, punctuating the end of a day of boat trips and/or a workshop on mushrooms?
In any case, when my Sunday thoughts pondered the idea of the Earth speaking, I thought earthspeaks would be a fine domain name for a soon-to-be-retired educator who walked with high school kids into the Grand Canyon and sponsored Saturday hikes for junior high school kids. earthspeaks, it would be.
Problem was, earthspeaks.com and earthspeaks.net were not available for purchase then. (The .com site sold women’s linen clothing, if memory serves, while the .net site was the internet home of someone who made multi-media Nature shows. Both are currently out of business, it would appear.) All that was left was earthspeaks.org. I wasn’t sure if I qualified as an organization just yet, but I went ahead, bit the bullet, and bought the domain name. Besides, one friend observed, the .org sounded organic, and wasn’t that the point anyway?
Since that time I’ve taught a couple classes at Aullwood Audubon Center & Farm here in Dayton and a couple others at the Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine, all under the banner of earthspeaks. I tried to build a website, hoping it would house an e-magazine, but it never really worked. You could go find earthspeaks.org now, if motivated. All you’d find is the last update made in 2009 which includes a lovely picture of our front yard dogwood tree in its full May glory, a pic of yours truly, and links to this blog and another connecting the reader to an essay of mine on one of my favorite places on the planet, Crestone, Colorado.
Still, tom@earthspeaks.org provides my primary email address, and that is really enough. In a real way, if the gentle reader wanted to know what the proprietor of earthspeaks.org was thinking, all she/he would have to do is surf over here to The Back Porch for content. So in that regard, the website still does its job, though I always dream of updating it with photo slideshow links, more Nature poetry and essays, and room for reader comment. I’ve had a sign posted on my office closet door for years that reads: earthspeaks.org: A humanities-based web community. Didn’t happen, though it was a great idea.
So here I am at the beginning of 2014 writing my 188th blog entry, born of the concept of earthspeaks. And, I must say, I am pleased overall with how things have worked out. I still work at poetry writing when the muse permits, and I still very much enjoy taking walks in the woods watching birds. I still teach a bit of history (and poetry) at Hog Island, and am about to set off on a January/February sabbatical to make progress on my book about Mabel Loomis Todd there, The Dressy Adventuress. In August this year I’ll be writer-in-residence on Hog Island, to boot, doing my best to get Mrs. Todd’s story as a woman of Nature in print.
The book, of course, will require another website, too. I have purchased the rights to thedressyadventuress.com. Nothing there yet, but if 2014 works out like I hope it does, that site should help folks learn about my book and, perhaps, help me sell a few more copies.
So as 2014 opens, I am pleased to reflect that I am still wedded to the concepts behind the origins of earthspeaks. I love the sea, I love the mountains, I love the desert — all places where Nature’s people make their work of living on a planet circulating in a spiral arm of the Milky Way. It is my fervent hope this year that I can do justice to living mindfully and do what I can to be one with All that call this planet home.
***
As mentioned, tomorrow I head off to seclusion to work on my book. I’ve learned that if a body wants a different result, one has to try something new. I’m trying something new. Wish me well.
Do stop by here to see how things are going. I’ll be blogging as The Dressy Adventuress takes shape.
Today’s elder idea: One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourself out. Be as I am: a reluctant enthusiast, a part-time crusader. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here.
Edward Abbey
except from The Earth Speaks: An Acclimatization Journal
image: Front-yard goldenrod at Mrs. Todd’s Camp Mavooshen. (Hog Island, summer 2013)
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