07.22.09
Posted in Experiences and reflections at 4:40 pm by admin
We haven’t put a counter on the Dogwood Journal yet, perhaps out of fear that the count will come back with a big zero. One, two, or if the heavens are really smiling, three readers per entry would be very exciting. And since I don’t know, I’m going to assume that the readership of this blog exceeds our wildest expectations and in fact their are four readers out there. Ignorance is indeed bliss.
So as a reward to our four loyal followers, I thought I’d share a couple Innsbrook Insider tips in this edition. First, the blackberries are ripe at Innsbrook. Almost anywhere you go right now, there are blackberry bushes along the road — in some areas, incredibly plentiful. My second tip: Thierbach’s Orchard is a fantastic place to spend a summer morning in Warren County on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays — that’s when the pick-your-own farm in Marthasville is open. Currently peaches and blackberries are ready to harvest — which brings up a story.
Last week, my wife and I took our three boys blackberry picking at Innsbrook. We found a place that is literally covered with bushes scattered in tall grass (no, I’m not going to tell you exactly where — reader loyalty only buys so much).
Our three boys plunged into the brush and immediately began crawling under the bushes to get the best clusters of ripe berries. The birds tend to get the ones on the top of the bushes first — see there’s another benefit of reading this blog.
They quickly discovered that blackberry bushes fight back with hook-shaped thorns that grab and hold onto pickers whose movements are not slow and careful. After a while, all three boys caught on and the amount of “ows” began to die down. When the picking was complete though, they were covered with scratches and five-year-old Riley’s legs were bleeding freely. But all three boys sported huge smiles, purple hands and many cups of berries.
Now that the harvest bug had gotten into them (along with multiple chiggers) they demanded an immediate trip to Thierbachs to go peach picking. So several days later, we headed over there on a beautiful overcast morning with the temperature in the low 70s.
The boys picked three bags of peaches immediately, and were ready to start a fourth when they noticed that Thierbachs also had blackberries.
We traded in our peach bags for berry trays, waled over to the huge stands of bushes and began picking. The berries were much larger that the wild ones we had been harvesting a couple days earlier and there was another difference — no thorns.
Apparently the geniusses at some plant science company found a way to breed blackberries without thorns. The immediate reaction was delight.
But after a while, I noticed 11-year-old Aedan looking a little somber. A little questioning revealed that he missed the thorns. “I don’t know, it just isn’t right without them,” he said.
Honestly, I agreed. Not only are the domestic berries inferior to the wild in taste, the picking experience just wasn’t the same. Yes, we weren’t getting scratched, but in a way, the scratches are kind of nice. It’s part of the experience.
In the wild, you feel the berries, you enjoy the chaos of meadow plants they thrive in — sumac, grasses and wild flowers. Birds are everywhere and by the end of the day, you’re almost guaranteed to see a deer. On the farm, the rows are neatly trimmed, the grass is cut and the berries present themselves at picking height on thornless stems. “Now what’s wrong with that,” at least one of our four readers is asking.
Honestly, I don’t know — perhaps it’s that I feel, hear, smell and see so much more when picking the wild berries. The philosopher Fredrick Nietzsche had an idea the future of virtue would be reduced to what is comfortable — no good, no evil — just expedient. All regard will be for moderation and careful living “he will have little pleasures in the day and little pleasures in the evening.” Thornless blackberries would make sense to him. Nietzsche believed that “last man,” as he called him, would be long-lived and would live very carefully. “They will have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health”.
Another philosopher, Thomas Hobbs, believed similarly to Nitzsche that the future of man was to abandon quest to live good lives and instead, man should strive to live comfortable ones.
In Hobbes’ world, all of education oriented to the highest good is replaced by education with the sole goal of avoiding death and preserving physical comfort. The aim is no longer to teach men how to live well; it is to “enlarge the power and empire of mankind in general over the universe.”
And so we have thornless blackberries. We have neat rows of bushes that produce berries at perfect picking height — safe, comfotable and lacking the chaos of the wild berries.
But then Nietzsche countered that it is the chaos that lives inside of us that gives birth to stars. He believed that the height of the human condition welcomed change, chaos and experience. With that in mind, I think I’ll take the thorns.
After all, my favorite philosopher, 20th-century sage Jimmy Buffett, said, ”Let the winds of change blow over my head, I’d rather die while I’m living than live while I’m dead“
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07.16.09
Posted in Experiences and reflections, The Woods at 10:23 am by admin
Our week-long kids camp at Innsbrook just concluded and word on the street is that it was much enjoyed by all.
Kids from ages 6 to 13 spend five hours a day at Innsbrook’s farmhouse area in the shade of our giant Mulberry trees learning about everything from Tibetan prayer flags to printing to drama to how to build a cardboard boat.
Here I am trying to keep my cardboard boat afloat!
My favorite part of the week though is the nature hike. I take two groups of 25 kids on a walk along Innsbrook’s Tyrolean Trail where we identify leaves, trees, berries, etcetera. And then we plunge into the forest to follow and old horse trail that crosses the creek two or three times.
It’s a wonderful circular hike and the kids enjoy splashing through the creek and mucking through the mud on the horse trail. It’s amazing to me to see how some kids just love being in the woods — mud, water, bugs — not much phases them.
With this particular group of kids, I think that’s partially a function of being Innsbrook kids and living in A-frames where their playgrounds are a couple acres of woods. By the way, there is a great book about the benefits of raising kids that are woods savy — it’s called the “The Last Child in the Woods” by Richard Louv. Click here to learn more.
This year the hike through the woods was particularly muddy which most of the kids delighted in but a couple found troublesome because their crocs were being sucked off their feet into the mire. Here’s a side note — crocs are not the best choice for hikes.
One little girl — about kindergarten age — lost her pink crocs in the muck and then into the slop and pretty much lost it refusing to go on.
I helped her up and offered to carry her through the rest of the mud. She immediately agreed and when I picked her up she buried her head in my chest and cried. The counselor that was with us dug up her shoes and we all walked down the slope to the creek where the rest of the group had stopped.
The creek in this spot is beautiful — shallow riffles a couple of inches deep about 12 feet wide. The water sparkles with the sunlight that filters through the Sycamores that form a canopy 70 or so feet above. The edges of the creek are lined with wildflowers, bladder nut and lush vegetation.
We all washed the mud off and the other campers helped my young charge restore the pink to her crocs. It was kind of a special Innsbrook moment – 25 kids standing in a creek dappled with sunlight in the middle of the woods helping each other scape the mud off and doing quite a bit of creek play in the process. By the time we left the creek, we were smiling, clean and ready for more hiking.
My passenger was not to be pried of my hip — she preferred being carried. But she was done crying and by the end of the hike, was pointing out the dragonflies that danced along the trail.
We came out of the woods together, clean, smiling and one big family. It seems like that moment in the creek was a little bit of a metaphor of what Innsbrook and frankly, any escape into the wild should be. It’s an opportunity to scrape off the muck of everyday life, to regain our balance, to play a little and leave our tragedies behind — and when we return “from the creek”, we are again ourselves.
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07.08.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:51 pm by admin
Every once in a while I get a ration of trouble from someone about working for an elitist, gated community.
My comeback is always, “everyone is welcome in, we just have to know who’s here in order to keep unattended second homes safe”.
Usually that gets and eye roll and that’s the end of the conversation. But I always want to shamke the person and say, “no…you really don’t know how wonderful the people in this community are”.
Innsbrook people will do anything for you and always want take part in what’s going on. They are an adventuresome, social and easy-going bunch. And more than anything, they seem to love to see and do. They also are not easily discouraged as we saw this Independence Day.
Every year Innsbrook celebrates Independence Day with one of the largest fireworks shows in the Midwest and the entire cost of the show is donated by Innsbrook Property Owners and vendors. And there are always about 10,000 people out to watch the display over Lake Aspen.
This year, as the moment was arriving for the first shells to be fired in conjunction with the Star Spangled Banner, the clouds absolutely opened up.
This was not just a sprinkle, it was a gully washer. The rain kept up for about 20 minutes and torrents of water flowed down the hillside, over Lionshead beach and into the lake.
Most folks were prepared for the weather and didn’t leave their lawn chairs. Others ran for cover beneath hospitality tents or with neighbors. Others retreated to their cars to wait out the storm.
During the storm I watched the American Flag across the lake in the fireworks field. It was clearly visible in the flashes of lightning and between waves of rain. I found myself wondering if maybe that’s how Francis Scott Key felt as he sat on the ship in Baltimore Harbor, looking at Fort McHenry, with the “bombs bursting in air, giving proof through the night that our flag was still there”. I could imagine him hoping to see the flag, but I also could imagine that he was resolved to see the flag, almost willing it. We Americans are good at that — willing our way to success. Even in days when people believe Americans have lost their resolve, it still seems to show up when needed.
When the rain was finished, the announcement went out that the show would go on and there was a huge cheer from the crowd.
The opening bars of the Star Spangled Banner rang out across the lake and the soaked crowd stood as one, to salute a symbol that stands for the “home of the free and the brave” today due to the resolution of so many.
The following pyrotechnic display was the best I ever saw. We didn’t need a rainbow to follow that thunderstorm — we created our own rainbow with it’s own thunder. And it didn’t hurt that the retreating storm echoed the aerial blasts with flashes of lightning in the distance.
Following the display, the crowd gave the loudest applause I have ever heard at an Innsbrook Fireworks show.
As the crowd started back to their cars, I heard one soaking wet little boy say with a huge smile on his face, “this was the most awesome night ever”.
I heard later, a lot of the surrounding cities cancelled their shows or moved them to Sunday. But as I thought about Francis Scott Key, and the little boy who stuck it out and had ”the most awesome night ever”, I came to the conclusion that a little resolve definitely has its rewards.
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