The Tai-Chi of Snow Shoveling

The Tai-Chi of Snow Shoveling

It has been a bitterly cold and snowy winter thus far in our stretch of the woods. The reasonable tendency is to avoid the cold and stay indoors. As someone who works from a home office I tend to get cabin fever on occasion. So in order to combat this I have taken to shoveling the snow by hand with the intent of getting a mild workout. Due to my heart condition I can only attempt this with fresh snow before it has had a chance to become heavy, otherwise I need to resort to using the snow blower.  The two experiences are totally different. When I use the snow blower the procedure becomes a chore to finish as soon as possible because of the noise and the guilt from burning gasoline. However shoveling by hand is a quiet affair that allows my mind to wonder and my body to be immersed in nature’s elements. It does help to know that I can retreat to the indoors if it becomes too uncomfortable.   This winter it has snowed often and permitted me to attain a set procedure for the removal. For instance at first I simply started from the entrance door and worked my way out. Now instead I learned to be one step ahead of the sun. That is, I begin where I know the sun will first shine onto the drive and work my way following the shadows as they move. This way the sun’s rays can heat the drive and melt that fine residue left by the shoveling as I finish up sections still in shadow. Wrapped in warm layers I am totally aware where my body’s extremities are at all times, constantly reminded by the breeze pressing on my clothes and the tingling of the exposed skin. My mind can ponder the outside views, the animal tracks left behind by nomadic souls that traversed the property during the night, enjoy the colored feathers of the birds or the defined patterns of the shadows cast on the virgin snow. Since I have mastered the routine and pace, my mind can be given tasks to resolve challenges I face in my work. It becomes a mobile meditation that often bears fruit. It is the season when the landscape becomes transparent, undressed to its basic elements - when trees can no longer hide the sky behind their canopies and silence permeates everything.  And when you believe to be alone it only takes a glance into the scenery to discover sets of eyes that are sharing this time of day. 

Reflections for a New Year

REFLECTIONS FOR A NEW YEAR

by Domenico D'Alessandro 

In the first days of January one tends to recall the past year and give thanks for the good life has brought your way. As the rest of the family expressed their thanks, when it came my turn I had a difficult time with this task. The year 2013 for me was a disappointing one, full of dashed hopes and mostly horrible news regarding the environment and our political process. The four art works I proposed for commemorating the centenary of the death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon, which at first seemed to have a high probability of coming to fruition, dissipated one by one as they were deemed too ambitious for potential sponsors. The pilot project for the Bioshaft design implementation came to a standstill as research did not meet the expected deadline for results.  My attempts at establishing a proof of concept project for my fish refugia designs for existing marinas also stalled despite the fact that it qualified for application to the Great Lakes Fishery Trust grants. I was unable to convince the managers of the marinas I spoke to to take the visionary steps. 

We ushered in the New Year in a cottage near the Lake Michigan coastline just north of Traverse City, MI. A beautiful geographic area with rolling hills, plentiful lakes and rivers and streams with many fruit orchards and vineyards. However the present beauty could not completely hide the destructive historical facts. What we were experiencing was probably third generation growth of what were once majestic millennial woodlands. 

As I ponder over numerous articles distributed in the web on the merits of a sustainable way of life, especially when dealing in urban ecology, my area of interest, they remind me of the little progress we have made since 1989. Why 1989? This was the year I wrote my master's thesis in Landscape Architecture. At the time I still held a firm belief that we could resolve many of the challenges faced in regards to our relationship to the environment. These thoughts made me go back and revisit my thesis. I recall having trouble receiving help from the Landscape Architecture faculty. The topic I chose was uncommon and no expertise to be found within the LA school. I ended up working with the Pure Math department because my goal was to create a computer model based on cellular automata that could model groundwater movement in the unsaturated vadose zone. As expected the model I created with the help of a graduate math student is simple compared to what is possible today. It was written in FORTRAN and my personal computer sported an amber screen. I am still proud of this thesis which opened the door to a practice of design for me focused on the processes of nature and less reliance on the anthropocentric historical approach. One aspect of the thesis I was criticized for was the addition of illustrations. I was told that their inclusion would somehow negate the seriousness of the work. A sterile words-only, following a strict template, is required to maintain gravitas to academic papers - a no frills approach to express the mind and diminish the emotions. As an artist I value emotions as means to entice responses from deep within our being. The critique received to deter me from using the illustrations backfired. As I turn the pages of the thesis it is clear that the content is slightly outdated, the model certainly is and to my surprise the illustrations, at least for me, are still viable. The images of slayed elephants, overfishing, animal cruelty, expansion of computer data and technology, DNA science, and the decline of environmental health along with questions of where do we fit in the scheme of things are still valid. The central theme of water and its health are at the epicenter of today's environmental debate. 

I used the illustrations to enhance the qualitative analysis of the thesis that accompanied the quantitative analysis. They were executed as collages; the images  gathered from articles of the day that dealt with environmental awareness. The topics, ironically have not changed. To me these images represent the weakness of my generation and the failure to resolve any of the issues we expressed with heart-felt rhetoric; one that has not changed either. We continue preaching the same message with conviction but with each passing year the baseline shifts ever closer to the threshold for system collapse. There has yet to be a paradigm shift of values for co-existence with our home planet.

For 25 years I have dedicated my talents and time to generating solutions but had great trouble navigating the political landscape. A political and economic model I witnessed decline into one manipulated by a small number of corporations. Therefore when I read articles posted by my peers expressing with passion those same concerns of 25 years ago, I cringe at the prospect of wasting another quarter century on great rhetoric but little progress. I suppose each of us needs to continue to be optimistic even in the face of steep decline of life maintaining processes. One thing our species is excellent at is the ability to rationalize the most terrible predicaments. 

The following are the illustrations for the thesis written in 1989 and presented in 1990. Hope they don't debase the academic research that brought them to life.