Environment Matters

Karen Odden - every other Thursday 

I’ve just returned from hiking the Grand Canyon with my daughter, Julia, and her new fiancé, Braden. It’s probably the twentieth time I’ve hiked it since moving to Arizona in 2003. Usually, we go down Kaibab Trail to the Colorado River and back up Bright Angel Trail in a day (16 miles, 5,000 feet elevation change), but sometimes we take one of the other trails. Last year I hiked North Rim to South Rim (25 miles), which was our plan this time, but the lodge at North Rim burned down this past summer – truly a tragedy; it was a treasured landmark – so we rejiggered our route to the South Rim trails. Thunderstorms were predicted, but they held off, and we had dreamy, drifty clouds all day instead. 

When I say, "environment matters," I mean that the geography of a place can affect every aspect of a dweller’s life. When I moved to Arizona, I had no idea how profoundly my life and my body, my daily practices, and my ways of thinking about everything from water to distances would be changed. 

I still remember the first morning I woke up in Arizona. We’d bought a house in the foothills of the McDowell Mountains, with a patio out back. I came out with my coffee and sat, mesmerized by the enormous inverted blue bowl of sky, and I swear something in my chest cracked open. (This photo is from Sunrise Trail, about twenty minutes from my house, taken one afternoon last year.) 

Within a few months, I made some new friends who happened to be avid hikers (as many Arizonans are), and I tagged along, more for the company than the exercise, to be honest. Eventually a 4- or 5-mile hike became my morning routine, and I started hiking the Grand Canyon every year. This is not something I could have done back east – or could have imagined doing. 

This is my point, I guess. What I can imagine, and how I perceive the world and myself in it, is profoundly determined by my physical landscape. Perhaps it’s not the same for everyone or everywhere, but Arizona, with its vast desert, hulking mountains, unusual climate, and strange beauty, has impressed itself upon me more strongly than anywhere else I’ve lived (including upstate New York, New York City, Ann Arbor, San Diego, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Milwaukee, and, briefly, London). 

Living in Arizona, my children were outside every single day of their lives. In the fall, winter, and spring, we were at the park; in the summer, we were in the pool, rather than indoors for much of the winter, the way I was, growing up in Rochester NY, with dastardly winter temps. Because of Arizona, I’m scrupulously conscientious about hydrating; I always have a water bottle with me. I hike nearly every day. I’ve even lost my phobia about snakes (not that I don’t jump when I see one, but they’re just part of the landscape now). I also think nothing of a two-hour drive to Tucson to visit my son. And I believe I have a vaster sense of what is possible in my life generally, because every morning, from my hiking trail in the McDowells (photo, above), I can see for miles.

I don’t intend to tie everything back to my fascination with Victorian London, but the riparian  environment is one of the things that compels my interest. Think about it – what would London be without the Thames? The river is the lifeblood of the city, as well as the repository for the city’s detritus. From the times of Londinium, the river determined virtually everything about the city. 

When I wrote Down a Dark River, and made Inspector Corravan a former lighterman, I did it partly because I wanted to explore how the Thames and the land shaped each other, modes of travel, work, and experience, and people’s lives. 

Many people don't realize the Thames is tidal –twice a day, the river changes direction from ebb to flow. This is why mud larking – aka scrounging in the dirt on the banks of the river, like these folks are near Blackfriars Bridge (Dec. 2022) -- is still a popular pursuit. The tide washes up treasures and trash alike. FYI - if you want to try mud larking, you can book a guided expedition, complete with waders and bucket, on Tripadvisor here: https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g186338-d13998271-r946820248-Cultureseekers-London_England.html.

So here's a question for you: Of all the places you've lived, is there one that impressed itself upon you more than others, and, if so, why?

The Golden State

Sujata Massey

Naomi Hirahara and me in a Japanese garden in Little Tokyo

The Golden State was the port of entry for me as a very young immigrant from Great Britain. Although my family's stint in California only totaled three years of my childhood, it has always held a mythic place in my heart. Palo Alto is where I remember collecting snails in the garden during a rainy winter and my parents getting their first car. Berkeley is where I spent a mostly ecstatic eighth grade year during in which I bought my first album (The Commodores) and had an awkward first kiss (Laurence).

The beloved house that we rented in the Berkeley Hills was destroyed to a wildfire that raged up from Tilden Park in the 1980s. So I know that fire is both shocking and a fact of life in California.

It has been terrible to follow the news of the devastating fires of Fall 2018 currently raging through residential areas in both Northern and Southern California. These fires--more than 7600--are the most destructive in California's history. There are reportedly more than 14,000 people fighting fires, including a number of volunteers and prison inmates.

Arguments abound about whose fault these fires are and whether global warming is a factor. I have no argument with global warming and the increasing dryness of California has been well-documented. This article in Slate gives a great explanation of many factors, including the dangerous conditions caused by building very close to wilderness. In some areas, like the town of Paradise, the fire jumped from building to building, and trees were actually left standing.

A vintage academic building at Occidental College

A few days ago, I flew with my teenaged son to Los Angeles County for college visits planned several months ago. I was almost certain that CalArts, the school we were visiting near Santa Clarita, would have been evacuated. It turned out the flames hadn't come that close, and the campus was open for visiting.

Historic student housing at Occidental College

It felt surreal to drive along the typical crowded highways visiting schools during the three day period. The sky was hazy sometimes, and there was something in the air that gave me slight cough, now and again--but it was manageable. Yet probably twenty or thirty miles away, everything was burned black. The reports from Northern California were even worse; one of my friends has to wear a mask when she goes outside, the air is so filled with particulate matter. And people are living with the knowledge that hundreds are likely dead, and thousands displaced with no chance of rebuilding their homes.

Most California citizens and officials have worked hard not to speed up global warming by regulating energy, cars, and potential sources of pollution. On the trip, we saw electric charging stations for cars everywhere, and my son was surprised to be billed 15 cents for a bag when he was buying sundries at a gas station. The colleges all had well-identified recycling stations and served food in compostable containers. But still--a lot of people want to live in California. And developers and towns have allowed buildings to go up very close to areas with a lot of dry brush.

Rebuilding existing cities takes on new meaning. It was heartening to see reuse of old buildings in many areas we visited. Inside Los Angeles's Little Tokyo, the crime writer Naomi Hirahara took me to an oasis tucked within city buildings--a Japanese garden that honored the neighborhood's population and was filled with lush California and non-native plants. I visited writer Jerrilyn Farmer at her beautiful 1920s Spanish home located within a completely urban district in Glendale.

At the University of Southern California, my son and  sat in a former sound stage that had been turned into a performing arts theater. The CalArts tour guide was proud to show us what may be the country's last modular theater. As I walked around Occidental College, I was taken by many lovely 1920s buildings that spoke of a nostalgic era. And just like in my day--not all the dorms had air conditioning!

The Mayfair Hotel in downtown Los Angeles

The hotel we stayed in was a recycle, too. The Mayfair was once one of the largest hotels West of the Mississippi. This 14-floor hotel was built in 1927 in what was once the heart of Los Angeles, but now is a little bit lonely.  The hotel's claim to fame is that American crime writer Raymond Chandler lived here in the 1930s. Chandler references in the beautiful renovated hotel were frequent, from Eve's American Bistro to cocktails named "Windemere" and "Farewell My Lovely." It made me smile to see 1920s design cliches like potted palms and clamshell motifs and curvy velvet conversation settees in the lobbies. And because today's creative needs are quite different from that of the 1920s, there are some interesting innovations: a soundproofed podcast studio for guest use just off the bar, and a beautiful writers room on the main floor with many seats around a long, high table. I was the only one writing there at 7 AM on a Sunday morning, but I could imagine a team of television writers breaking story there at a much later hour.

Mayfair's stylish lobby

The Mayfair's podcast room

Rain is supposed to be falling on California the day that this blogpost goes to print. I hope that it lasts long enough to give the firefighters an extra hand in quenching the fires and saving the Golden State.

The Secret Life and Death of Bees

Sujata Massey

Two years ago, my neighbor bought a package of honeybees online as well as a beehive. The bees arrived healthy and active. But shortly after spring started, the bees vanished. Jeff said he didn't see any evidence of dead bees nearby. It was as if the whole colony had taken off. 

It was a sad mystery for all of us. It wasn’t until recently that I started regularly reading about insects and gardens. I've learned such honeybee evacuations are a worldwide problem that has a name that sounds like a psychiatric diagnosis: Colony Collapse Disorder. 

In Maryland last year, the loss of bee colonies was 61 percent. This is  among the highest rates of bee loss in the US. Huge honeybee losses are also being counted throughout Europe and in 

South America and Asia. In China, so few bees are left in the massive agricultural belt that people are forced to hand-pollinate to have any apple crops. 

The British are desperate to preserve their native honeybee

Hand-pollinating apple trees in China

Many scientific studies have determined that CCD is largely driven by pesticide ingredients called neonicotinoids (aka neonics) introduced in the 1990s. Neonics go by names like imidacloprid, acetamiprid, clothianidin, and dinotefuran. Ironically, these pesticides are meant to kill borers, Japanese beetles, termites and other insects that damage shrubs and trees. Not honeybees. But honeybees make it their business to dine on flowering trees and shrubs. They won't fall down dead tasting a poisoned plant--but they lose the memory of where they need to go. And because they don't know the way back to the hive, they perish. I read more about this in some recent articles in The Washington Post and Mother Jones.

Ortho and Scott are two huge pesticide companies that have pledged to phase out neonics in their product lines. A recent search of Amazon’s garden category showed Bayer, Bonide, Dominion and other manufacturers have plenty of neonic pesticides for sale.

Apparently, it’s not just the sprays that are risky. Nursery plants grown from a seed or seedling treated with neonics, is also running the risk of poisoning bees. Even trace amount of neonics have contributed to Colony Collapse Disorder. You could make yourself crazy wondering whether any flowering plant you’re considering is a Typhoid Mary.

Last summer, I decided to start work on our largely ignored garden. The house is in a1890s city neighborhood where very few people use pesticides and fertilizers. Our neighborhood is a haven for birds, foxes, rabbits, raccoons, bats and other delightful wildlife. Of course, I wanted to do no harm. A 25-year-old memory of how I accidentally killed most of my Japanese garden’s camellia trees by spraying Round-Up on dandelions still haunts me.

I contacted Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay-Wise gardening program, a free teaching service aimed at reducing pollution flowing from the state into the Chesapeake Bay. After an email exchange, two friendly master gardener volunteers. Lynn and Debbie, walked me through my struggling garden. They checked off which practices were environmentally sound, and gave advice on where I needed improvement.

I'm an official Bay-Wise Gardener!

I was very surprised that years of benign neglect put my garden in the Bay-Wise certified category. The fact that grass clippings were left on the lawn after cutting, and water easily reaches the earth through the gaps between bricks in the path. The house gutters have long downspouts that allow rainwater to flow into the earth; all I need are rain barrels to perfect my water conversation. The master gardeners looked at all my weeds but did not criticize. However, they told me I'd better start pulling wild mustard that day.  Debbie and Lynn were concerned about invasive non-native plants, like English ivy, and had chemically free strategies for elimination. There were a few bees buzzing around, and the local trumpet honeysuckle vine was pointed out as a great nectar source for them and hummingbirds.

My biggest takeaway was that if every plant I added was a native one, I could become a farmer’s market for the butterfly, bee, insect and bird populations. I also got the sense I didn’t have to make my property look like a forest to go native.

an inspiring post from Thomas Rainer's wonderful blog, landscape of meaning

Ever since I saw charming cottage gardens filled with wildflowers and perennials in England and Australia, I’d secretly wanted one. No grass to mow—just flowers, shrubs and herbs waving in the wind.  I realized that if I were to remove the grass right in front of my house, I could fill the leftover space with many perennial plants and grasses that would be more than eye candy.

They’d become bee, bug and bird candy.

Let the planting begin!

The grass came out yesterday. Despite a looming book deadline, I’m working on installing two brand-new gardens: one in front of the house, and the other along the driveway, where English ivy once held a ruthless grasp.

The landscape doesn’t look like much now, but I am hopeful that the organically-grown native plants will be rooted and spreading by summer’s end. Just as I hope that the new Pollinator Protection Act banning commercial sales of neonic pesticides will be signed by our governor tomorrow, making Maryland the first of the United States to get serious about saving bees.

Lovely natural roses with insect-bitten leaves. Who cares?