Freedom from Torture-- Really?

Yesterday, as I was driving the quiet, winding roads of my neighborhood, not quite rural, not quite suburban, I turned on the car radio, turned to NPR, and found myself in the middle of a program in which a reporter was visiting a center for new immigrants. In New York? I’m not sure. These recent immigrants were learning, the reporter said, what it meant to be an American. First, a group of four year olds singing a song I knew I was supposed to recognize, but didn’t. Then, adults, a woman, reciting, carefully, in her Asian accent, some of our core American values. “… freedom from torture and degrading treatment,” she said.

“Ooooh, very good,” her instructor said.

In my mind’s eye, images from Abu Ghraib, a hooded prisoner, toes grazing the top of a rectangular box, arms outstretched as if crucified, a naked prisoner dragged by a leash, a pyramid of naked prisoners, American troops, holding rifles, taking pictures. A few bad apples, they told us. Believe that, and I’ll sell you the Brooklyn Bridge. There is evidence. There is history. There is Nick Flynn’s The Ticking is the Bomb, his research on the technique that became known as “The Vietnam,” that hooded man, arms outstretched, a stress technique developed with the aid of the CIA.

Overhead the arching branches of maple and oak. In a backyard a paddock where two horses graze. Another glorious summer day. I'm on my way to teach at a conference, and I’m angry, angry with my government, angry with my neighbors, angry with myself, our apathy, our loss of our sense of decency, our detachment from our core values. “We do not torture,” our Presidents (note the plural) tell us. Clearly, we do.

Carter Notch

Water ripples. Here, there is a slight breeze. We’re in the middle of a heat spell, temperatures spiking into the nineties in New Hampshire and Maine. Lucy and Sam, my two standard poodles and I have hiked for nearly three hours. We’re hot. We’re tired. But I’d chosen this hike, carefully. We stand, now, at the edge of a mountain lake. Low growing pine trees ring the shore line. There are boulders, a small sandy beach. Sticking up out of the mist, Carter Dome towers above us. In the distance, cast in blue, the rest of Carter-Moriah range, draws itself against the sky.

I unclip the dogs packs, unclip their leashes. Unburdened, they wade and they drink, lapping, carefully. Because they are poodles or because the water is mountain cold? I unclip my own pack, leave it on a rock. I take off my wet shoes, my soaking socks. I’ve crossed the Wildcat River, three times, stepping on rocks, slipping, filling my shoes, soaking my socks. I strip down to my underwear, wade into the lake, submerge, emerge. Finally, I’m cool, so cool. On shore, knee deep in water, the dogs watch. This is one of those times, I want to read their thoughts, although, I’m told dogs don’t think. I’m the one who thinks, the one who anthropomorphizes, who sees in their faces both concern and amusement.

After snacks, Sam digs a hallow in the muddy sand, settles in next to my rock. Lucy finds scrub and settles down. We’re at the edge of a trail. A couple passes. I’m an old woman, happily sitting on a rock wearing her underwear. Now, I begin to feel a little self-conscious, so I pull on my shirt, a sleeves white, tank top, made of a fabric that dries, quickly. I leave my trousers on a branch. Sitting on this rock, knees raised, feet planted, I tell myself, I look like I’m wearing a tankini. I don’t own a tankini. I eat my lunch, a peanut butter and raisin sandwich on gluten free bread. I drink water. Trail food.

For nearly an hour, I sit in the quiet of this place as if I'm veiled, absorbing stillness, this rippling water, these ruffling leaves, the rising mist. There is no other place I need to be. I am here, no place but here, and there is very, very far away.

Carrying A Cloud

Words by Sandell Morse

Music by Kento Watanabe

Recorded at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, Florida.

Naming

Saturday morning walking a wood’s path with the dogs, I stopped to visit my favorite wild flower. It was a delicate flower that bloomed for a brief period in late May. Somewhat rare. As I stood looking down, I realized I couldn’t name the plant. Gone. It’s name was gone. I remembered that I’d once described the flower with its tiny veins and pink bulb-like sack as a tiny lung, imagining that this must be what a surgeon sees. But that didn’t help me find its name. Fleetingly, the word Alzheimer’s flashed across my mind. But I knew these things happened, knew that a momentary blip didn’t necessarily mean the onslaught of Alzheimer’s.

It had rained the night before, and pine needles were damp beneath the soles of my sneakers. The scent of pine wafted up. The scent of pine wafted down. As I walked, I thought about naming. I was disturbed, as if some essence of that flower had left me. I searched my mind. Nothing. And so I named what I could name, seedlings on the forest floor, beech, hickory, maple, oak. I named the rose tinged leaves of poison ivy. I named wood fern.

At the end of the path, I called to the dogs and told them to wait. I fed them treats, then gave them the okay to cross the dirt road, and suddenly it was there on my mind. Lady slipper. Of course lady slipper. And I thought of the lady slippers that had lined a path behind the house where we used to live in Holderness, New Hampshire, a path I’d walk out to my small log cabin. That log cabin had been my first study, the place where I’d begun to write. My sons and my husband had dug a trench so the electric company could bring a line to my study. I needed light, power for my electric typewriter. I heated that cabin with a coal stove. I thought of hiking in the White Mountains, the trail to Whiteface, where I’d sat on an rocky ledge, a sea of lady slippers in front of me, pink lady slippers, white lady slippers, yellow lady slippers.

When Adam named the animals, he called them into being, or so I’d thought. My friend, a rabbi, tells me, no. The animals were already there. As were the plants. But Adam didn’t name the plants. My friend, the poet Susan Donnelly, has another take on naming in her poem, “Eve Names the Animals,” a poem I adore. Eve uses words to transform—perhaps what Adam has already named. A lion become sun. Hers is a poem about language. It’s a poem about change—and being open to what we see—or to what we lose. I lost a name, but I saw the lady slipper, saw it transformed into a log cabin, then into three boys and a man digging a trench, and finally into a sea of color on a mountainside.

Sounds Like A Plan

A friend called from Florida. He’d moved there three years ago, but he’d kept a condo in Killington where he went winters to ski, then spring, summer or fall to bike. “How’s the weather up there?” he said.

“Oh, you know,” I said. “Cloudy, drizzly, around fifty to fifty-five. But we have had sun and a few glorious days.”

“Thought so,” he said, his voice flat. And in that flatness I heard, Better you than me.

What I didn’t say was that as I walked the dogs this morning, Lucy and Sam, my two standard poodles I’d noticed buds opening on the apple tree at the end of the driveway, that as we walked out the dirt road, a hedge of forsythia bloomed along the perimeter of a neighbor’s yard, that the in the woods the fiddleheads were growing taller, holding onto just their end curls, that in the marsh green spears of cat tails were pushing their way through last year’s dried stalks, that I came out of the woods at the base of a hilly lawn where clumps of daffodils bloomed their heads off, that I’d stopped to watch a cedar waxwing perched on an out lying branch of a red maple, the bird singing, apparently oblivious to my presence, the branch tottering, its nascent leaves as delicate and perfectly formed as an infant’s hand, that along a swath of grass the dogs romped among snowdrops and violets, that back home I checked on my small vegetable garden near the pool where sets of lettuce were nearly ready for picking, that soon I’d see shoots of arugula, carrots, peas and spinach, that my parsley, oregano, lovage and tarragon had wintered over and were thriving, that the two lilac bushes I’d planted in memory of my parents, first my mother, then my father were unfurling their heart shaped leaves. I didn’t say that anticipation and promise were in the air.

“I think I’ll come up at the end of August. Maybe by then the rain will stop.”

I smiled to myself. “Sounds like a plan.”

It's No Joke

Seeing the Tea Party protestors in brief glimpses as I watched television the Sunday Congress was voting on the health care bill, I was struck by the awfulness of their signs, the portrayals of President Obama as a Nazi, as the devil, the name calling: Communist, liar, traitor, thug. I wanted to dismiss those protestors, call them fourth grade playground bullies, but I couldn’t. There was something chilling about their rally, their own evocation of the Third Reich. I am a woman of a certain age. I am Jewish. I know that propaganda can incite, know that mobs are dangerous. Then, I saw John Boehner, waving from a balcony. Yikes, I thought, this is serious.

To me the health care bill was a watered down version of the reform I’d hoped for. No public option. Thirty-two million more customers handed over to private insurers. No coverage for illegal immigrants. The powerful interests had had their voices heard. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for passage, grateful for Obama’s legislative victory, thankful for reform. Yet, on that day, I wondered at the rage of the protestors, their racial and anti-gay slurs, their hatred of President Obama, of Nancy Pelosi. Their venom seemed disproportionate to what was actually in the bill. I couldn’t figure out what was driving them. Then, this past Sunday I read Frank Rich’s piece in the Sunday Times.

“To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill,” Rich wrote, “you have to look a year before Medicare, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both laws passed by similar majorities in Congress; the Civil Rights Act received even more votes in the Senate (73) than Medicare (70). But it was only the civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails.” Rich goes on to say that what was at stake here was a law that that signaled “inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of American, not just its governance.” Think of a tapestry in which color changed design.

According to Rich, had Obama chosen climate change, financial reform or immigration as his legislative priority, each would have triggered the same reaction, for what we had and have is a confluence of “a black president and a female speaker of the House—topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman….” And when I read his words I knew that Rich had clearly and succinctly identified the force behind the rage. These Tea Party folks were afraid. Mostly, they saw themselves as a dwindling minority. When they held up signs saying they wanted to “take our country back,” the obvious question would be, “From Whom?” From those who were not like them, blacks, Jews, Latinos, gays, but demographics would not and will not let them.

The Tea Party Movement, along with the attendant Militia Movement, is a force to deal with. Perhaps, though, a greater problem is the support they receive from mainstream politicians, those who speak at rallies, those who egg on the demonstrators. And what of the politicians who fall silent? Silence is complicity. So I’m calling on my two senators from Maine, Olympia Snow and Susan Collins, smart women, supposedly independent women, to speak out against the lies, the propaganda, the anti-Semitism, the homophobia, the racism and the awful signs that link our president to Hitler and to the devil. If they can’t find their voices, who will?

The Minturn Mile-- Vail, Colorado

“The Mile”, as locals call it, is not for the timid. It is a backcountry ski run, out of bounds, but not illegal, which means that as a skier you’re on your own, no lifts, no ski patrol, just a pristine snow field, then trees, pine and aspen groves, to ski among before hitting a long gully of narrow twisting terrain that rolls, a stretch that, later, Raina and Nina, my grand daughters, will call the loop de loops. The trail crosses a stream, no bridge—you take off your skis, toss them, then leap. After that leap, you catch your breath, step into your bindings and you’re off, running the infamous luge, a rough yard wide path where it is nearly impossible to control your speed. You snow plow; you look for an opportunity to slide left or right to slow down. Finally, you’re at the side of a hill and a narrow shoot that’s always, rocky, always moguled, but you see the end of the trail, see the road, know the Minturn Saloon is a mere half mile away where a bartender will serve up pitchers of margaritas, then carry platters loaded nachos to your high table.

The run begins at the top of Ptarmigan Ridge, dives 2,000 feet, then travels for three miles. To get there, you climb, ridge, ten minutes for Richard, my son, fifteen minutes or more for Raina, Nina, and me, all of us shouldering our skis. This is Raina’s second time on "The Mile," Nina’s first. She’s eleven, struggling, to carry her skis as she climbs, but if you’re skiing "The Mile," you carry your gear. Nina is strong. And she’s determined. As is Raina.

Richard is an expert skier, a backcountry skier. He’s trained to read terrain, to read snow. He knows exposure, understands the layering under our skies. He has timed our trip so that we’ll enter the back bowls before a ski patroller ropes off access, and if all goes well, we’ll arrive at the Minturn Saloon at 4:30 to meet the rest of the family for those famous margaritas and nachos.

As we reach the ridge, we see an outcropping of rock. This is our resting point, and standing here at 11,000 feet, we feel the stillness of these mountains, their majesty. The snow cover has been low this year, but in the last week snow has fallen every day. This day is no exception. We have high clouds. No view. We have a break in the snow, visibility and nearly a foot of unbroken powder, a skier’s dream. Skiing powder is like skimming along on whipped cream, but if you fall, you’re buried in snow that turns to cement. You need to dig out. You need strength you’re not sure you have.

At the top of the snow field, Richard chooses a line. I’ll go first, stopping above a small stand of pines. He’ll send the girls one at a time, then ski last to dig out anyone who falls in. The angle is low, not too steep, perfect for me, and as I point my skis down the hill, I feel them puff up on top of the snow. I let out a squeal. I’m floating. I’m flying. This is heaven. Now, the girls, spraying snow, each giddy with delight. Richard’s turns are perfection. He’s been skiing since he was a child. I’ve been skiing since I married—took skiing with my marriage vows. “You have to understand,” Richard once told a friend, “skiing is more than a sport in our family. It’s a life style.”

Life style. The way a person lives. So according to Richard, our family lives through skiing. What does that mean? All three of my sons, grew up on skis. My husband grew up on skis, still skis, although "The Mile" is no longer one of the trails he skis. At the Saloon, he will tell us once again, of his last trip down "The Mile" when he fell in that infamous brook. We’ll listen. We’ll laugh.

So skiing as lifestyle is memory. It is tradition. It is also strength—that determination I see in my grand daughters. It is respect for these mountains, for this back country where the unpredictable hovers, obstacles we don’t see, weather that shifts, a storm that blows in. It is love for a sport that thrills and challenges, a sport that binds us—three generations on "The Mile." Not bad.