Natural Cycles

I went for a walk in Three Falls Woods today. It's a 175 acre wood that acts as a buffer between suburban subdivisions and a huge open-pit mine. My friend Z grew up on a house bordering the woods and took me around with M and H.

Now Z is one of the more amazing people I know. She is an environmentalist in a true sense of the word. Her job involves environmental activism. Her spirituality is both earth-based and rooted in political activism. Heck, she even lives cooperatively.

And driving into Manlius and looking around at the sub-division in which she grew up, I couldn't help but be surprised. In my experience, I've found that subdivisions created zombie people beholden to consumerism and cut off from the rhythms of the planet. How could my awesome activist friend be a subdivision monkey?

I found my answer at Three Falls Woods. Her property bordered onto the woods and she literally had a backyard of waterfalls and woods in which to grow up. The place was beautiful. The leaves were off the trees and there was a simple calm about the land. The air was fresh but not frozen. The geology was very... interactive. The path was uneven and people would stumble as a rock would jump out at them. Moss carpeted the exposed cool gray stones. And then we got to the waterfall basin. I could see where the ancient falls rushed into the hollow and smiled at the three little streams that remained, claiming the right of water to erode.

It was a great walk and it got me thinking about how our childhood homes shape us. I grew up on the tidal portion of the Hudson River near the ocean. I used to think all bodies of water had tides and that when my shore was at high tide, the opposite shore was at low tide! I would scamper among the exposed rocks looking for baby crabs or eels when the tide was out. I explored the wetlands and find forgotten trees and hidden streams. I wandered around neighboring woods and saw old stone farm walls, waterfalls and abandoned swiming basins. My brother and I both grew up in this environment. And while we turned out quite differently we both carry a strong environmental ethic. Z, growing up at the edge of Three Falls also grew up with a similar ethic.

This helps me understand why I find the whole Slow Food movement so important. Not everyone can have access to large amounts of greenspace in the way that Z and I did and see natural cycles unfold like that, but everyone can get involved with the natural cycles of food. If people have the space they can plant some edibles in their garden. At the very least one can still plant a fruit tree along the street, or have a window box of herbs. These cycles release anxiety in a stress-inducing modern world. (I know the studies are out there but I can't find a link - help, anyone?)

I was given a great gift by growing up with access to nature. My walk today remined me of it and helped me understand why Slow Food is so important to me.