My Natural Birth

I am not a runner, but a walker. I walk to find things, to see things, to get the blood flowing—running is too hurried and jostling, plus it's hard. I find myself clutching my chest after about three minutes. So, I walk to get a lay of the land. In walking, I've realized there is a lot going on out there away from the buildings and bustle of people. And once I discovered what I'd been missing, I was transformed.

I walk to work off stress and get outside. I walk to see what's growing where and what is dead, what creatures are flying through the air, and what the density of clouds and amount of light has to tell me about my mood. I walk to feel the brush of warm June air on my neck, or the shock of deep January cold in my nostrils. I walk to pine after the moon as it rises away from me, and to feel the squeaky-crunch of fresh, lunar-white snow under my tread. I walk to work out the day—to finish conversations that never resolved just right. Then outside alone, with no roof and walls boxing me in, I straighten out those nagging loose ends, and tie them up, just so.

My compulsion to walk began when I was about 19 and attending college in Massachusetts. I would walk around Kenoza Lake on the outskirts of campus, and its narrow rolling path quickly became addictive for me. I loved the woods on my one side and the lake water on my other. Here is where I started noticing nature and wondering who and what was out there, in the woods, or by the water. I heard the high trills of birdsong and wished I knew the bird's name. I started mentally trying to sort out the different trees, the various maples and oaks and the evergreens--all of which I called “pine trees.”

Growing up, I climbed some tall pines, and apparently never learned the difference between a white, scrub or jack pine, a red or white spruce, a cedar, hemlock or larch. But as a girl, I was intimate with the eastern white pine, enough to have its sap covering my palms and skinny legs. Climbing its branches until I couldn't climb any higher, I'd clutch for dear life, swaying at the crown of the tree. Then, proudly call out to my mother, “Ma, look how high I am!” Yet, I think I only called out like this once, given her less than amused reaction to seeing me two stories up in the air. I quickly learned that climbing so high is best done on the sly.

There is something about being outside and observing both the minutiae and the grandiose of nature that puts me, with all my manufactured trappings and 21st century problems, in my place. Being out there reminds me that there is so much more going on than my issues with the oil company's customer service or the slow drain in the bathroom sink. That flock of Cedar Waxwings I saw down by the Kenduskeag stream a few winters ago took my breath away, transported me, and all mundane problems with it--if only for an afternoon. I eventually had to deal with the oil company again, and the clog in the sink, but my spirit was lighter in the process. My world was now larger than four walls and indoor plumbing and heating.

In Pennsylvania (college, part two), a grueling botany class and an eccentric, long-haired environmental sciences professor initiated me into the sect of bona fide, incurable nature lovers. I could hardly take a casual, impromptu walk anymore. Newcomb's Wildflower Guide had to be tucked in my backpack, along with a nature journal to record my keen and earnest observations of all flora and fauna. Scouring used book shops, I collected other identification guides—mushrooms, trees, birds. Gathering while on my walks was irresistible, but I learned what was acceptable to take and what wasn't. Rocks, interesting sticks on the ground, abundant wildflowers and fungi—all ok. I gathered flower specimens to identify and press between wax paper and heavy books: New England Asters, Joe Pye Weed, Queen Anne's Lace, Black-eyed Susans and Butter-and-Eggs. But the Gentian and Trillium flowers, and any delicate wetland species like Indian Pipe or Yellow Lady Slipper: I went on mini-expeditions with Audubon experts just to glimpse them. And when I learned about the reasons for their increasing demise, I became not only amateur naturalist, but a stereotypic hippie-esque environmentalist--a Birkenstock-wearing, tree-hugging, vegetarian anti-consumerist-culture bleeding heart for the Earth. This was my new religion. The outdoors was my sanctuary, Thoreau and Ginsberg my ministers. I yammered on a lot about reducing and reusing to my college roommates. But to make up for being an enviro-know-it-all, I acquired the Moosewood cookbook and regularly made them lentil and barley soup from scratch. Now, in my forties, environmentalism is simply a given, a mandatory responsibility especially for us highly-consuming Americans, and not a fringe movement of granola-eating, back-to-the-earth radicals.

That first time I identified a Red-Headed Woodpecker, I wanted to know all the birds' names; I wanted to know their calls without having to see them. When I started to find some more unusual wildflowers, like the puppet theater of a flower called Jack-in-the-Pulpit, or the quaint laundry line gem named Dutchman's Breeches, I was hooked. I was born again and started a long walking pilgrimage along woody paths and stream sides, looking at the ground and in the trees for the bits of life teeming all around.

I am still walking, setting out as often as I can down toward the Kenduskeag, first looking to the sky's hue and temperature for a gauge of my inner climate. My eyes rake and roam over the terrain, shapes of leaves and colors of petals giving way to names, and with each name I honor its owner. With each step of my walk, I slough off the burdens of house and home and take stock of life outside of walls.