The Tenets of Rootedness

Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature and Spirit.  By Lyanda Lynn Haupt. Litte, Brown Spark, 2021, 229 pages.  FVRLibrary.

The Tenets of Rootedness

Ecology and Mysticism
Everyday Animism - Aliveness of Living Beings
Poetry and Science Intermingle
Truth and Fact are Not Synonyms
Mystery - Unknown Dimensions, Awe
Kindred, All
Kith - Your local environment, Place
Reciprocity - Interbeing, Interdependence
All is Sacred - Reverence, Awe, Respect
Enchantment and Wonder
Creativity and the Great Work - Drawing, Painting, Collecting
Eccentricity - Individuality, Unconventional

Try: Walking, Gardening, Reading, Nature Studies, Visiting Beautiful Places, Play, Listening, Seeing, Looking at Botany or Animal Books, Swimming, Going Barefoot on Grass or Sand, etc.

The Oldest Living Being

The Curse of the Methuselah Tree
The Oldest Tree on Earth, 4,800 Years Old
The Bristlecone Pines
White Mountains, 11,000 + Feet, California

Gardening and Environmental Awareness

 "Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening.  A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world.  He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.  The food he grows will be fresher, more nutritious, less contaminated by poisons and preservatives and dyes that what he can buy in a store.  He is reducing the trash problem; a garden is not a disposable container, and it will digest and reuse its own wastes.  If he enjoys working in his garden, then he is less dependent on an automobile or merchant for his pleasure.  He is involving himself directly in the work of feeding people. 

A person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has set his mind decisively against what is wrong with us.  He is helping himself in a way that dignifies him and that is rich in meaning and pleasure.  But he is doing something else that is more important: he is making vital contact with the soil and the weather on which his life depends.  He will no longer look upon rain as a traffic impediment, or upon the sun as a holiday decoration.  And his sense of humanity's dependence on the world will have grown precise enough, one would hope, to be politically clarifying and useful."
-  Wendell Berry, "The World-Ending Fire", p. 55

Films about Vegetarianism

Karen and I have recently watched a number of "documentary" films on Netflix dealing with the impact of excessive meat eating on individuals, communities, and our environment.  Also, we have read a number of books on the subject.  In addition, my cardiologist recommends a change in my own eating habits. 

Look Hard at What Pleases You

"I live so much in my habitual thoughts that I forget there is any outside to the globe, and am surprised when I behold it as now--yonder hills and river in the moonlight, the monsters. Yet it is salutary to deal with the surface of things. What are these rivers and hills, these hieroglyphics which my eyes behold? There is something invigorating in this air, which I am peculiarly sensible is a real wind, blowing from over the surface of a planet. I look out at my eyes. I come to my window, and I feel and breathe the fresh air. It is a fact equally glorious with the most inward experience. Why have we ever slandered the outward?"
-  Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), Journal Vol. 4, 1852

"Look hard at what pleases you and harder at what doesn't."-  Colette 

Pleasures   

"It is easy to suppose that few people realize on that occasion, which comes to all of us, when we look at the blue sky for the first time, that is to say: not merely see it, but look at it and experience it and for the first time have a sense that we live in the center of a physical poetry, a geography that would be intolerable except for the non-geography that exists there - few people realize that they are looking at the world of their own thoughts and the world of their own feelings."  -   Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel 

Spirituality and Nature

A scene along the Sacramento River near Red Bluff, California.  The Sacramento River is less than three miles due east of my home.  The smaller volcanic cones in the background are about 10 miles northeast of Red Bluff.  The area north of Red Bluff is forested with deciduous "blue" oaks (Quercus douglassii).  Our area is considered to be the beginning of the volcanic Cascade Mountain range, starting with Mt. Lassen.  Mt. Shasta is 100 miles north of Red Bluff.  Volcanic mountains and cones are essential to the "hieroglyphics" of our place on this earth. 

Seeing - Quotes and Poems

Mt. Shasta (14,179 feet high): Lore and Information

 

Not a Clean Glass of Water to Drink

I watched an interesting Netflix documentary about the inventor Dean Kamen called Slingshot.  Slingshot is a unique, relatively inexpensive, water purification system.  The lack of pure drinking water is the major worldwide issue of the 21st Century.

Governor Jerry Brown of California has issued a directive that home owners in California can only water their yards once a week in 2016.

"We're all downstream."
-  Jim and Margaret Drescher

"In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty."
-  Imbesi's Conservation of Filth Law

"By 2025, at least 3.5 billion people - about half the world's populations - will live in areas without enough water for agriculture, industry, and human needs...  Worldwide, water quality conditions appear to have degraded in almost all regions with intensive agriculture and in large urban and industrial areas."
-   World Resources Institute, October 2000

The Water Project

Water - Quotations 

Beholding Hieroglyphics

"I live so much in my habitual thoughts that I forget there is any outside to the globe, and am surprised when I behold it as now--yonder hills and river in the moonlight, the monsters. Yet it is salutary to deal with the surface of things. What are these rivers and hills, these hieroglyphics which my eyes behold? There is something invigorating in this air, which I am peculiarly sensible is a real wind, blowing from over the surface of a planet. I look out at my eyes. I come to my window, and I feel and breathe the fresh air. It is a fact equally glorious with the most inward experience. Why have we ever slandered the outward?"
-  Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), Journal Vol. 4, 1852

"Look hard at what pleases you and harder at what doesn't."
-  Colette    

"It is easy to suppose that few people realize on that occasion, which comes to all of us, when we look at the blue sky for the first time, that is to say: not merely see it, but look at it and experience it and for the first time have a sense that we live in the center of a physical poetry, a geography that would be intolerable except for the non-geography that exists there - few people realize that they are looking at the world of their own thoughts and the world of their own feelings." 
-   Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel 

 

Spirituality and Nature

 

A scene along the Sacramento River near Red Bluff, California.  The Sacramento River is less than three miles due east of my home.  The smaller volcanic cones in the background are about 10 miles northeast of Red Bluff.  The area north of Red Bluff is forested with deciduous "blue" oaks (Quercus douglassii).  Our area is considered to be the beginning of the volcanic Cascade Mountain range, starting with Mt. Lassen.  Mt. Shasta is 100 miles north of Red Bluff.  Volcanic mountains and cones are essential to the "hieroglyphics" of our place on this earth. 

Seeing - Quotes and Poems

Mt. Shasta (14,179 feet high): Lore and Information