Learning From Stones, Wild Horses, Wisteria, Jays And Pines
Having grown up outside of New York City and lived much of my adult life in Chicago, I wasn’t very familiar with the American West. Luckily, I was invited recently to guide a retreat in Reno, Nevada, a city straddling the California border, embraced by the Sierra Nevada Mountains and graced with the pristine blue-green waters of Lake Tahoe.
Reno is probably best known for its casinos — slot machines line even the city’s airport. Yet there is so much more to this city. Immersed in its magic-scape of mountains, sea and all manner of birds, plants, trees and flowers, I felt like dropping to my knees several times in gratitude for living in a country with so much variety and natural beauty. Perhaps more of us could focus less on what we think is wrong or missing from our country and rejoice more over living in a nation overflowing with natural treasures.
Mariah Nickerson and Karen Totten are the two wonderful adult education coordinators at Our Lady of the Snows parish who invited me to guide the retreat. Before my work began, they took me on a tour of the area the locals refer to in a kind of shorthand as “Tahoe.” It includes not just the lake and mountains but the brush fields and small towns that dot the valley below the pine-studded Sierras.
I never knew there could be so many types of pines — just one of the gifts the Sierra mountains offer up. You’ll find sugar pines, ponderosa pines, lodgepole pines, and the Western white pine. The Jeffrey pine quickly became my favorite. It oozes a type of sap and if you put your nose close enough to sniff the bark, the tree will reward you with the delicious scent of butterscotch. Who knows why.
Bald eagles peer out from the tops of cottonwood trees, red-tailed hawks soar over the sandstone mountainsides and white herons skim the marshlands. The bird that charmed me the most, though, was a little creature called the steller’s jay with indigo feathers and a distinctive black tuft like the featherhead of a military cap. It greets visitors with a call that sounds a bit like it is saying, “Squawk, squawk!”
In her book Braiding Sweetgrass, botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, a member of the Potawatomi Native American tribe, calls humans the lesser lights “in the democracy of species.” She notes how in indigenous cultures, humans are considered “the younger brothers of creation.”
She adds, “Like younger brothers we must learn from our elders. Plants were here first and have had a long time to figure things out.”
Kimmerer’s observations make a great deal more sense to me now after visiting Tahoe.
I had never seen in person the lovely, light-purple blossoms of a wisteria vine. When I spotted one in a Reno backyard, I ran up to it like a delighted child and pressed my nose against its hanging flowers. The only way I can describe the scent these blooms emit is to say they smell like every pleasant odor of summer, all rolled into one.
Much of the Tahoe area was formed when an ancient glacier roved across the landscape. Climbing atop massive granite boulders deposited by the glacier or running my hands across the sandstone side of a mountain, I felt like a ‘younger sister’ in the presence of a wise elder, as Wall Kimmerer puts it. I felt I was spending time with a mentor who knows the earth’s hidden, unspoken secrets. If only those stones could speak.
The waters of Lake Tahoe are among the clearest and cleanest I’ve ever seen. Mariah and Karen explained that local residents feel as protective of these waters as they would a child. “Keep Tahoe Blue” stickers stare out from walls, car bumpers, even coolers. What began as a catchy slogan in 1973 has resulted in curbs on housing and commercial development that otherwise would have threatened the lake’s longterm health and beauty.
As one leader of the League to Save Lake Tahoe noted, “People understand transparency. They know that a blue lake is a beautiful, clean and healthy lake.”
Another unforgettable moment came when Mariah and Karen accompanied me to a wind-swept patch of valley in Washoe County. The wind is so fierce there that even the strong, tall pines stand bowed, looking as though they are perpetually reverencing the ground from which they grow.
This also is the part of Tahoe where dozens of wild horses gallop freely in open fields. A gravel path runs down the middle of one of these fields so that you can walk along it and watch these magnificent and graceful creatures at close range. There are no barriers between humans and horses. There doesn’t need to be. If you leave these wild creatures to their frolicking, they will leave you to your gawking.
The horses share this space in common. There appeared to be no fighting over borders, or clashes over property lines, no muscling each other for food. There is enough space, enough scrub grass for each one. It seems these wild horses view the world from a persepctive of abundance rather than scarcity. Perhaps we humans could learn to do the same.
I left Nevada with greater reverence for all the plants, flowers and creatures which the indigenous Washoe of this region refer to as their “kin.” If you visit Reno any time soon, do skip the blinking, clanging slot machines. Head straight for the quiet beauty of Lake Tahoe and Mount Rose, where the tall pines stand guard, and the nature trails where the steller’s jay sings and the wild horses cavort.
This week, wherever we live, can we take time to listen to the birds we encounter? Can we run our hands along the bark of a neighborhood tree? What does it feel like, smell like? Can we press our nose to the flowers in bloom? What are the secrets they are all longing to tell us?
