The holiday began with Ian cutting chard leaves and eating them cooked, then playing the letter game with me on the floor after supper.  A return to the rapport we used to share when he spent more time here, not just intervals between school and home.

I’ve anticipated this holiday for weeks, though  I wasnt sure I’d be able to get away.  I didnt pack my gear until just before leaving last night. I’ve been longing for a respite from the campaigns–Jan’s and Obama’s–and from my own compulsive clicking on  the news of world economic collapse.  I’ve found surcease only while working in the garden and on my upcoming talk on “God and Nature” for the Methodist Church in Morro Bay.

After Dennis took Ian home last night, I pedaled across campus toward Poly Canyon.  Car, bike and pedestrian traffic bustled on the approaches to the new residential complex at its mouth.  The parking structure, swimming pool and athletic field lights cast a garish glow on the huge eucalypti and the mountainsides, but halfway up the canyon it was replaced by moonlight and the hooting of owls. Beyond the Peterson Ranch buildings, I crossed paths with two other bicyclists wearing headlamps as bright as an automobile’s.

I parked the bike by the dirt road near the junction of the south and middle forks of the creek at the base of Cuesta Ridge, a spot insulated from noise and open to a broad sky.  The cricket sounds were overtaken by the rising and falling roar of a crowd way back on campus, probably a soccer game.  By the time I’d finished unpacking and fiddling with my camera, the roar disappeared, and the chorus of crickets returned, now with its own throbbing pulse, like the sound of the stars. Through my binoculars I saw black shadows of mountains on the bright side of the half moon’s dividing line and white summits peeking through the dark side.  As I settled into my sleeping bag, a family of coyotes yodeled to one another across the valley.  Overhead, a shooting star stitched in and out of existence.

I awoke at 2:30. The moon had set and Orion stared down at me. I rested my camera on my shoe and took a fifteen second exposure with manual focus at 1600 ISO.

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A Presentation to the UC/CSU/CCC Sustainability Conference
July 31-August 3 2008

Introduction

Ecocomposition is a new subfield in teaching English.*

I’m motivated to practise Ecocomposition by two principles, the first enunciated by David Orr in 1994: “All education is environmental education,” the second by George Orwell in 1946: “When I sit down to write …, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write … because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.”

An essential element of Ecocomposition is local knowledge–engagement with one’s own particular place and time. Preparation for Ecocomposition requires teachers to be interested in their surroundings—the academic institution as not an ivory tower, but rather a physical, economic and political entity in history, situated on the land and in the community.

In keeping with these principles I’ll talk about Ecocomposition locally rather than abstractly: my experience of teaching it during the last three years here at Cal Poly.

In 2005, as the environmental crisis deepened and the Sustainability movement grew, I thought I could make an impact by reaching first year students and by framing the subject matter in the context of rhetoric—that is, the power of persuasion. So I designed a section of our first quarter required English composition course and called it Writing About Place

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Processional—Guitar music by Elijah

• Groomsmen and Groom
• Bridesmaids
• Bride and father

Chant

Wedding is great Ischel’s crown:
O blessed bond of board and bed!
‘Tis marriage peoples every town;
High wedlock then be honoured!

(Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 5 with slight modifications)

Greeting

Welcome to you all and thank you for attending this marriage ceremony. I’m Emma’s Uncle Steven, and I’ve been honored to be invited by her and Travis to conduct it.

The act we are about to perform together is universal. The words we repeat—some from the Bible, some from Shakespeare—have been uttered over and over for thousands of years. They lift us out of the flow of past, present and future into an interval of sacred time.

The space where we’ve assembled is sacred as well. Thousands of miles from home, we’ve all flown here through the air and endured an arduous jungle voyage to the edge of a foreign land and an unfamiliar sea, where ancient people erected fantastic cities devoted to ceremony and ritual.

It is this presence that the bride and groom will revisit whenever they remember their wedding in later life.

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Hi Verandah

Thank you for the invitation to the fortieth anniversary celebration at Packers Corners and for your handwritten note. Jan and I would love to attend, but regrettably that date coincides with our yearly pilgrimage to Lund British Columbia where we established our own total loss farm thirty eight years ago.

Your invitation has spurred me to delve into the collection of relics of our days in Vermont I’ve stashed in a file cabinet, and has brought our stays there both in the period 1968-70 and our visit with you and Marty in 1993 vividly back to mind, accompanied by great gasps and sighs.

Forty years seems a particularly powerful interval. Perhaps the the rounder number of 50 will be as strong, but I suspect by that time many more of us will have dropped out of sight and those who remain will be pretty unsightly. We attended the 68-08 Columbia Strike Reunion in May, getting together for wonderful times with Peter Behr and Linda (Grace) Leclair.

I’ve scanned and uploaded a few pictures from 1968 and 1993 on my Flickr site.

I imagine you’re overwhelmed with archived documents, but let me know if you’re lacking The Occasional Drop of 4 October 1968, 19 December 1968 and 21 December 1969. They are here in good condition.

Love,

May 27

Chute Lake’s placid surface mirrored clear skies on Tuesday morning. Behr and Robert drove off and the five men remaining headed down the trail whose surface was hard packed after days of rain. For the whole of the 30 km descent the slope remained steeper than anywhere on the ascent, increasing speed and ease of pedaling. Bleak burnt and logged-over landscape gave way to mature second growth forest carpeted with grass and wildflowers. A rushing stream crisscrossed the trail.

We stopped to explore Rock Ovens in the woods built to bake bread for the railroad work crews. The nurses whizzed past shouting instructions for us to bake bread for them. Lionel replied that their place was in the kitchen. Flush with downhill speed, we overtook the women slowed by their bike trailers, and stopped at an opening in the forest cover to take pictures of the sand cliffs, endlessly stretching lake, orchards, vineyards and small settlements in the Okanagon valley below. As soon as Andy broke out three beers remaining from yesterday, the nurses came barreling down behind us and screetched to a halt when we held out the bottles. After a shared toast, they passed around a mickey of powerful cinnamon liqueur, and we agreed to meet for lunch at a vineyard once we reached Naramata.

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May 26

The morning remained rainy and foggy, the prospect of more pie and pool playing and of getting a tour of Doreen’s husband Gary’s museum made most of us want to lay over for a day, but Behr was eager to return to Vancouver and look after his mother. After extensive discussion a vote was taken and Behr decided to head back on his own. Murray didnt like the idea.

The remaining crew of five agreed to rent one of Doreen’s cabins, a log house fitted out with beds, kitchen, bathroom, and red curtains, none of which was unappealing after four nights in tents. Steven and Murray dove into the cold lake. Doreen joined us for Murray’s morning Pome reading.

Gary reminisced about his history as a lineman and union official during the violent conflicts with BC Hydro in the ‘50’s and then led us through his extensive museum of local antiquities, including his locked collection of electric line insulators, one of which he had sold for $11,000. Among thousands of intriguing items was a portent of the future: an electric lamp whose current flowed through a meter informing the user of real time energy cost.

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May 25

John left on his mission early.

The diminished band of six packed leisurely and pedaled through the parking lot at the approach to Myra Canyon. At the end of curved cut in the rock a vast panorama unfolded. A huge gulf dropping to Lake level was scooped out of the high plateau to which we’d ascended for three days. A dozen or so side canyons covered with the charred remains of a burnt forest and numberless rockslides, opened into it. At the top of the canyon rose a single, wide, snow-covered peak. Volcanic eruption, landslide, holocaust: a display of nature’s power, demonic and sublime.

Next into view came a fine level line threading its way from where we stood, in and out of the side canyons, heading off towards the snowy summit and then back toward us on the other side of the abyss, supported across gaps narrow and wide by a delicate latticework of trestles.

After a lengthy stop to gaze, we crossed the first trestle on a surface of new planking that produced a clean hum from the tires.

It was a smooth thrill of a ride, created by a double human triumph over nature. The first was the original construction of the railroad, motivated by the desire to extract her wealth. The second was the recent reconstruction of the trail and trestles after decay and fire, motivated by the desire to provide pleasure to visitors. As we stopped again at the end of the first trestle, two kids and their parents on bikes came up behind us. “It’s just like Disneyland,” said one.

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May 24

After two days of rain and overcast, the morning broke with sun over the lake. Steven went for a cold water swim and shave. Ian received a phone message that Rob was feeling better and would spend time touring the Kootenays by car before rejoining us back in Princeton.

Puddles on the trail deepened, but after Murray endured one wet spill we learned that in low gear bikes are navigable in water. At Summit Lake the uphill grade (never more than 1.9% on the long ascent) levels and we looked forward to the predicted grand scenery of Myra Canyon. Steven was pedaling as happily as a five year old on his first bike, when suddenly his left pedal and crank fell off and landed in the sand. He yelled in protest at this new reverse. The crew gathered round, and Ian, our official bike mechanic—he’d been a fisherman for 7 years—looked for the correct Allen wrench in the kit provided with the bike to tighten the bolt that had fallen out and released the crank. It was missing. The pliers of a Leatherman served as a provisional substitute to tighten the dropped bolt and those on Peter’s bike which had also loosened.

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