I am in France now with my eight-year-old grand-daughter Oona, visiting her Grandmother in the little town of Aoust Sur-Cie. I am staying at an inn in the nearby village of Saillans. This is mountainous country that rises a few miles to the east to the Alps. On the long trip from Seattle to Paris, I read to Oona from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s By the Shores of Silver Lake – a good American tale to carry with us to France.

In the book we encountered the first cup in my tale. Laura, her sisters, and her mother are on a train travelling west to join her father.  Everything about the trip is new and exciting, not the least the experience of travelling at the extraordinary speed of twenty miles-per-hour. A man walks past Laura to the end of the car. Because her sister Mary is blind, Laura describes for her what happens next:

“He’s turning a handle on the wall at the end of the car, and water’s coming out! The water’s pouring right into a tin cup. Now he’s drinking it. His Adam’s apple bobs. He’s filling he cup again. He just turns the handle, and the water comes right out…. He’s set the cup on a little shelf. Now he’s coming back.”

Fascinated, Laura asks her mother if she can get herself a drink of water. She takes the “bright tin cup,” holds it under the faucet, and turns the handle. Water comes out. She turns the handle back, and the water stops. “She had never seen anything so fascinating. It was all so neat and so marvelous that she wanted to fill the cup again and again.”

After reading this passage to Oona, I explained that our modern ideas of sanitation have developed to the point that we no longer share cups in public places. We don’t want to spread out germs.

(Come to think of it, “drinking fountains” are likely a product of these sensibilities.  Of course, we waste huge amounts of water by delivering it in a jet instead of into a cup since much of the water flows out the drain rather than down our throats, but we eliminated a possible source of contagion.)

But a couple of days ago, I was proven wrong, and I’m still grinning at the lovely way that I learned that even in the twenty-first century good folk sometimes share tin cups.

On the recommendation of my inn keeper, Frédéric, I set out on a steep, twisty road into the mountains looking for good hiking and sight-seeing.

And was that road very twisty:

Eventually the route took me high into the mountains to points like this where I could look far down to the valley below:

Coming around a turn in the road I entered the town of Rimon. In the picture below, that’s the Marie, or City Hall.

The town was one with the mountains, with buildings seemingly crafted by the same hand as the landscape itself.

On the outskirts of the village beside an open field I head the sound of running water and came upon this fountain.

It was called the “Fountaine Des Marrants,” and on the fountain beside the sign, what did I see?!

Coming closer I saw a bright tin cup, tied by a nylon line to the water spout.

I spent a few more minutes walking through the village, struck all the more by the beautiful ways that the hands of men and women had crafted the architecture and gardens of this place to be a part of nature.

Then I returned to the fountain and took another picture of the cup. I did not notice this until I began reviewing my pictures later: in the image above the cup was upside down, but in this picture it has been set down upright. Someone had taken a drink from the fountain.

….And so that is my tale of two bright tin cups, one described by Laura Ingalls Wilder on a train in the United States well over a century ago, the other tied by a nylon cord today to a fountain in Rimon, France. Could it be the very same cup?! That is of course unlikely, but the affinity of these objects – separated from each other in time and space, but so proximate in my encounters with them – fascinates me.  And why is that? I cannot say for certain, but this thought comes to mind:

Those two cups suggest this broader observation: we are bound to the past and to each other by objects such as these, objects which evoke our kinship as fellow travellers moving through time.

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I often think of Great Nature in terms of shapes of things: a towering mountain, a majestic canyon, a roaring ocean. Yesterday walking in nearby Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge I was struck by the colors of things, especially the grasses and flowers.  Every blade of grass said, "Look at me. Just look at me. Did you ever see anything so green before."

And the flowers chimed in, "Look at us. Just look at us. Have you ever seen a richer yellow."

I was reminded of Gerard Manley Hopkins  (1844-1889) his poem, "Pied Beauty," which I memorized long ago while jogging and recited often to my twins when they were about four-years-old.  Here is the poem:

GLORY be to God for dappled things—  
  For skies of couple-colour as a brindled cow;    
    For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;  
  Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;   
     And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim. 

All things counter, original, spare, strange;  
  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)    
    With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:      
                    Praise him.

Reciting the poem at home, I would pause at paired prompts, such as "sweet" and my neophyte poets would chime in "sour."
Of course I began this post on Turnbull with fewer colors than Hopkins celebrated in "Pied Beauty," but  I think the spirit is the same. 
View the slide show below, and judge for yoursel

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One of the central themes in my course, The History of the American Wilderness, is the question, how do you define wilderness? I took this picture last fall (2012) from a hotel room high high above Central Park. On the right is the city of New York, and on the left is -- the wilderness. Please bear with me as I make my case....

Looking down I could see a forest...

and a lake shore -- well, at least a pond shore.....

and "hikers" beside the pond....

One swallow doth not a summer make, nor a pond and a few trees, a wilderness. But bear with me as I take the elevator down 33 floors from my hotel room perch to Fifty-Ninth Street and Central Park. Here is a forest scene in the park redolent of the "great outdoors"...

And another....

To conclude my argument for Central Park as wilderness, I will invoke two themes from my wilderness class: (1) We should answer the "is it wilderness" question by utilizing a spectrum involving total wilderness ("way out there") on one side and total urbanization ("not out there") at the other side. Certainly Antarctica, say, is a lot farther toward the way out there side of the spectrum than any city park. But then a park has more of nature than, say, a shopping mall. By this measure, Central Park is abundant in natural flora and fauna, features of a wilderness. (2) Wilderness is in part a state of mind. We can be closer to wildness while contemplating fully a tiny forest, for example, than we are in wilderness when walking in Turnbull National Wildlife Reguge or beside Walden Pond if our minds are "sicklied o'er with a pale cast of thought" -- as in wondering how to pay the bills or repair the car. 

Before saying goodbye for the moment to Central Park, I'll post a slide show with more views of this wonderful place.

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One of the pleasures of life in Cheney, Washington, is taking a walk through the Eastern Washington University campus to a hilltop overlooking the rolling fields of wheat beyond. I have often thought that the university should create a trail through the fields -- what a superb hike that would allow, leading right  from campus into the open country beyond. So I was hopeful when I saw some earth moving equipment "staged" above the parking lot on the edge of the fields.

I was cautiously optimistic when I hiked up to the hilltop late this afternoon. Could it be that we were actually building just the kind of trail which I had envisioned?  There were no signs whatsoever at the construction site, indicating what was afoot. I walked down a path cleared by bull dozers through the fields, and here is what I saw. At first glance the trail seemed wider than needed for bicyclists, hikers, or joggers. But I walked on, hoping for the best.

I soon discovered, however, that the scale of this earth-scraping enterprise is far beyond anything needed for a simple trail, friendly to its natural setting. This work has more the feeling of a shopping mall parking lot or a freeway interchange.

And so I ask myself, what will we gain and what will we lose in this bold enterprise? And what is the meaning of all these machines in the garden of our lovely fields? Stay tuned....

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