Back in Vermont

So I am back in my tiny little house in this tiny town... You may be wondering who I am and why I am sending you these notes. I could tell you in more specific ways who I am... and I will do that eventually. But for now, what matters is the wind and the water.

I was expecting to meet you on Monday. I was expecting that we would get to know each other as colleagues and friends. Instead of standing in a classroom somewhere on the west side of Manhattan, I was weaving through roads beside muddy cornfields, some submerged in five to 6 feet of water, roiling from the Battenkill River.

I followed the route the GPS picked for me, up through Paramus' shopping corridor and the land of cheap(er) gas where they still clean the windshield for you. I was routed to the Palisades where I hadn't been since I was a girl, driving with my father whose love for the car was exceeded only by his need for ritual. He stacked the change from his pockets in size order every night. He scooped the excess butter from the holes in his bread and used it on other areas. He has been gone some 15 years now. And my mother is not well.

That's why I was in New York--along with meeting you. I was there to help her with some medical procedures. And I was sitting on the couch in the apartment I grew up in while I wrote to you. I have always been a New Yorker, even when I have tried to leave it behind. And I know the view outside the single pane windows over the park as well as I know anything in my life. I listened to the storm from Irene come in at 5 in the morning. I heard it on the metal housing of the air conditioner. I watched the clouds on Sunday as the wind picked up, and yes, I walked to the Hudson. I needed the air. I lay down on a bench in Hudson Park and watched the clouds roll over me. I walked back through the west village and had lemon granita in a place I have gone to since I was a teenager. I walked back to the apartment and packed.

I left at midday and wound through roads choked with traffic, and a highway that was startlingly empty. I wound my way around barriers at tiny bridges over brooks that had become rivers. I watched the driver of an 18-wheeler back up, his rig of wood shavings for animals slanted uphill into a farm field, so that he could make a U-turn and return on the country road that had been "closed." We both had taken a chance that we could get through. We both had failed. When I asked him what was ahead, he said in heavily accented French: "No pass. No pass."

I imagined sleeping the night in the car as I hit another place I had to detour, and then another. I was grateful when I found myself on a familiar road that would lead me home. I chose the last stretch for its topography -- away from rivers and the lake, toward the higher ground that would be unlikely to flood.

It took 7 1/2 hours to get back to my tiny little house at the center of a town of 800. It should have taken 5 at most. It was just past dusk, and I could see, but not the details that daylight would bring. The garden looked as though I had never been gone. The tomatoes were on the tomato plants, the corn was standing high, and the flowers were blooming yellow and purple. In the morning, I picked squash and an enormous puff ball from the lawn by the lilac tree.

So who do you think I am as I write all this? Are you intrigued or bored? I have never had the "luxury" of meeting my colleagues without seeing them and having them see me.... so what do you "know" about me now?

The Environmental Autobiography is a portrait of the places we live (and work, and heal, and learn, and play), and the manner in which these places mark us, impact our values for place. How does the ritual of stacking change every night tell you something about my father? How does the knowledge that I grew up on the corner of Washington Square Park make you think of me? And the idea that there is a garden where I live now, in a town of 800? What does the story of wind and water make you think?

Here's what I know of you... you are eager. You have chosen this because you are willing to take risks. You want to do something that hasn't been done before. We have struggled with the technology of broken connections. One of your colleagues asked me to "forgive her persistence." I like persistence. I admire it.

Here's what I know of you. I know there are three men and 7 women. I know you have names that suggest some experience of other cultures though you may all have grown up in New York.

Here's what I know of you. You have professional backgrounds to bring to the table.

What I don't know is what motivates you. What I don't know is what it is that you want from this course and this curriculum. What I don't know, yet, is what you have to teach.

I am looking forward to your "voices"--in your blogs and in person. We have a lot to learn together.