Category: Nature

Some might call it freedom

As our car inched along by the Hudson River on Manhattan’s far western edge, a trapeze school came into view, way up high, silhouetted against the sunset. Gridlocked, we watched student after student climb the ladder, grab the swing and … go! Every student took flight, guaranteed. With this kind of exposure, above their gigantic sign, it wasn’t know-how the school was selling. They were selling a feeling, one that all of us with our bumpers up against each other wanted. Some might call it freedom; others happiness or courage. People buy based on feelings. What feeling does the best use of your abilities offer your employer, client, or community? That feeling is the particular value you bring. If you imagine it’s your swing and grab on, there’s no telling where it will take you.

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Where the runaway imagination goes

Last summer, my vegetable garden ran away and inspired me to do the same thing.

The garden ran away with weeds, no see ‘ums, and platter-sized squash leaves. In consideration of this and of the previous years’ invasions of cabbage moths, ground hog and poison ivy, I’ve given up. The plot is ready for something new and so am I — an all new plot.

For inspiration, I consulted Thomas Marent’s “Butterfly” and other such books and discovered the milkweed plant. Perhaps I should say re-discovered because I distinctly remember gluing the seeds with their gossamer threads onto blue paper in first grade. The milkweed plant, say the books, attracts and provides habitat for butterflies.

It turns out that milkweed grows thick on the hills of the Trexler Nature Preserve above the Lehigh Valley Zoo. They stand in willowy patches and fields, in amongst the coneflowers and black-eyed susans. I found them, you see, because I’d run away, but only for the day.

On returning, I brought with me all kinds of ideas for how the future could look and so this blog was born.

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