spring – Page 25 – In the Woods

vegan ♥ paleo

4.6.12.1115 — 4.6.12 ~ Jekyll Island, Georgia

To look for a “healthy” diet can be as discouraging as a search for the “true” religion. I spent many years extricating myself from a belief system which had at one time seemed to have all the definitive answers my teenage self was yearning for. One would think I might have learned a lesson or two about words and ideas that sound too good to be true.

Some of my readers may remember a few passionate posts I wrote back in October of 2011, when after reading several convincing books by cardiologists I decided that Tim & I should become vegans to try to reverse his heart disease. In my mind it was a done deal, the final answer. But in the months following our change to a vegan diet, Tim wound up in the hospital twice, which left me feeling demoralized. It was as if eating plants was making things worse, not better.

One day last fall, I happened to catch another cardiologist being interviewed on TV, and he was talking about the evils of gluten and wheat, and how consumption of grains leads to obesity, heart disease and diabetes. And so began another round of research for me, more books, more websites, more theories to contemplate. To make a long story a bit shorter, we have switched to a paleo diet, or caveman diet. Wild game, grass-fed beef, pasture-raised poultry. Lots of vegetables. Nuts and berries. Hunting and gathering. No wheat or grains. Keeping our fingers crossed.

This time around I’m not looking at this change as The Answer carved in stone. It’s an Experiment to see if anything different will happen. I’m the daughter of a scientist after all. Maybe the food we choose to eat has nothing at all to do with heart disease, though somehow I still think it might. But cardiologists don’t seem to agree on the best diet for heart disease, so I won’t list all the authors of the books I consulted. Staying off of the bandwagon for the time being.

Last week we did have some encouraging news after Tim went in for a checkup. He lost some weight and his progress pleased his doctor for the first time since his original heart attack five years ago. Let’s hope we’re finally on the right track, although I am keeping myself carefully skeptical, just in case…

grackles by the sea

4.5.12.0913 — 4.5.12 ~ St. Marys, Georgia

Last April we took a trip to visit our son and daughter-in-law in Georgia. When we got home I started posting pictures on my blog of the places we visited, but never finished. Since I have a little time now I decided to post some more of our photos. (For anyone interested, the first batch of pictures started here.) The following pictures of boat-tailed grackles were captured at the Howard Gilman Memorial Park on the waterfront of St. Marys, Georgia. The park has a lovely large water fountain and on the day we visited it was doubling as a bird bath!

To claim, at a dead party, to have spotted a grackle,
When in fact you haven’t of late, can do no harm.
~ Richard Wilbur
(New & Collected Poems)

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can’t even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.
~ Barbara Kingsolver
(Animal Dreams)

Birds know themselves not to be at the center of anything, but at the margins of everything. The end of the map. We only live where someone’s horizon sweeps someone else’s. We are only noticed on the edge of things; but on the edge of things, we notice much.
~ Gregory Maguire
(Out of Oz: The Final Volume in the Wicked Years)

photos by Tim Rodgers

sunshine peculiarly genial

"Autumn Glory" by Willard Metcalf — “Autumn Glory” by Willard Metcalf

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October. The sunshine is peculiarly genial; and in sheltered places, as on the side of a bank, or of a barn or house, one becomes acquainted and friendly with the sunshine. It seems to be of a kindly and homely nature. And the green grass, strewn with a few withered leaves, looks the more green and beautiful for them. In summer or spring, Nature is farther from one’s sympathies.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
(The American Note-books)

walking is discovery

4.2.12 ~ New London, Connecticut — Janet (left) and Nancy (right)
4.2.12 ~ Alewife Cove, Ocean Beach, New London, Connecticut

Well, I finally figured out how to use the latest version of PhotoShop – I have no idea how many versions there were between my old one and this one, but I was totally lost… Now I can post some pictures of things from the last six months. In April Janet’s sister Nancy was visiting and the three of us spent a lovely afternoon on the reclaimed dune area at Ocean Beach. I love the shoreline in the off-season. Enjoy!

All walking is discovery. On foot we take the time to see things whole.
~ Hal Borland
(Stopping: How to Be Still When You Have to Keep Going)

in a swamp

4.6.12 ~ Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia

In a swamp, as in meditation, you begin to glimpse how elusive, how inherently insubstantial, how fleeting our thoughts are, our identities. There is magic in this moist world, in how the mind lets go, slips into sleepy water, circles and nuzzles the banks of palmetto and wild iris, how it seeps across dreams, smears them into the upright world, rots the wood of treasure chests, welcomes the body home.
~ Barbara Hurd
(Stirring the Mud: On Swamps, Bogs & Human Imagination)

As darkness fell we headed back through the swamp to the visitor center.

photos by Tim Rodgers

It was too cloudy to see the full moon, but as we learned on this trip, we often didn’t get to see what we expected see, but what we were granted to see was more than enough to fill us with gratitude.

old lace-pewter veils

Cypress knees (above) are woody projections sent above the normal water level in the root of a cypress tree, usually seen in swamps. They may help to provide oxygen to the trees and may help to support and stabilize the cypress trees in the soft, muddy soil.

Not the best photo of a dragonfly (below), but enough to make out how different it looks from most of the dragonflies I see up here in the north…

Spanish moss (below) is a bromeliad that hangs from oak or cypress trees. The plant has no roots and absorbs nutrients and water from the air and rainfall.

Spanish moss hangs from the cypress like old lace-pewter veils.
~ Barbara Hurd
(Stirring the Mud: On Swamps, Bogs & Human Imagination)

photos by Tim Rodgers

a very special place

If there were Druids whose temples were the oak groves, my temple is the swamp.
~ Henry David Thoreau
(Journal)

On the night of a full moon, April 6, we took an enchanting sunset cruise on a small skiff into the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. There had been a natural fire, started by lightning, about a year ago.

In southern Georgia and northern Florida there is a very special place, one of the oldest and best preserved freshwater systems in America. Native Americans called it Okefenoka, meaning “Land of the Trembling Earth.” Now this place, where earth, air, fire and water continuously reform the landscape, is preserved within the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, created in 1937 to protect wildlife and for you to explore.
~ Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge

Can you spot the alligator eyeing us in the next picture?

photos by Tim Rodgers

tortoise habitat

4.8.12 ~ Amelia Island, Georgia — Barbara and son Nate caught on film ~ 4.8.12 ~ Amelia Island, Florida

Another place we visited on vacation was Fernandina Beach, across the border in Florida, on Amelia Island. Shea had spotted some turtles here when she spent a day at the beach with friends. Because Tim is crazy about turtles we had to come see them! This place isn’t a nature sanctuary, and we found the close proximity of nature to civilization a little strange.