Loveland Magazine

LOVELAND MAGAZINE

News and Events from the Loveland, Ohio Area

Without fear or favor

Since 2004

Tag: Love-the Land

  • Earthrise

    Earthrise

    Among environmentalists, John Muir is like a rock star!

    Columnist Stephen McClanahan is retired from P&G and now active in environmental advocacy, search/rescue and emergency medical/disaster response.

    Perhaps you’ve heard of John Muir.  If you haven’t, you should. He almost single-handedly convinced Teddy Roosevelt to establish the national parks system in the US. His explorations of and writings about helped establish some of our iconic wilderness areas we know and cherish today, including Yosemite, Sequoia, Mount Rainer, Petrified Forest, and the Grand Canyon to name a few. Among environmentalists, he’s like a rock star; he started the Sierra Club. But perhaps his greatest gift was teaching us how connected things in the natural world are to one another.  He’s quoted as saying: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”

    “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” – John Muir

    I think that fundamental truth is a critical one to understand and internalize and celebrate and live by. You and I are completely and irrevocably rooted to the earth.  Always have been and we will die that way. Innumerable connections that are complex, intertwined, interdependent and beautiful. In “The Hidden Life of Trees”, author and forester Peter Wohlleben opens his wonderful little book with a story. He passed by the hollowed-out stump of an ancient tree that had fallen hundreds of years ago and when he took his knife and scraped away a bit of it, he found it was green. Green as in chlorophyll; green as in alive. And as you discover in the pages that follow, the roots of this ‘dead’ stump were being fed by the roots of neighboring trees. They were caring for each other because they were connected!

    They were caring for each other because they were connected!

    Here are a few of the more obvious connects we kind of rely on. Right now, at this very moment, you and I are breathing in air which contains just the right amount of oxygen, thanks solely to photosynthetic plants. As you recall from botany, these chlorophyll-containing creatures possess the amazing ability to capture energy from the sun and use it to power complex chemical reactions to make the sugars they need to live. Conveniently for us, in the process of doing this, they take up the carbon dioxide that you and I have exhaled and provide for us the oxygen we need to live. Not a bad deal.  Take away the oxygen and we won’t last long. We have unbreakable bond with the green side of things; plants need soil with nutrients, microorganisms, worms, leaf litter, water (from regular rains), sunshine to drive photosynthesis, a relatively narrow and controlled temperature range, and so on and so on. Because they need those things, we need those as well.  (Internalize this and you will never view an earthworm the same again!) As the expression goes, we live together, we die together. Connected.

    We have unbreakable bond with the green side of things.

    Everything we have ever consumed for dinner came solely and completely from the earth. 100% of it. Ergo, what’s in the best interests of fruits and grains and vegetables is in my best as well. No bees, no pollination, no food. No food, no life. Connected.  

    These connections extend all the way down to the very atoms that make our bodies. They too have been borrowed from the earth; before us, they existed in some other organism or inanimate object. After us, they will recycle into something else. Connected.

    Every spring, the herons come and fish in Stephen McClanahan’s backyard pond.

    We have a small pond in the backyard that some fish call home. Every spring, the herons come and feed. As I watch this act of nature unfold, I think. One minute, the creature exists as a fish; a few hours later, it is part of a magnificent bird. What will it become next? What was it before it was a fish? Connected.

    Success!

    One of my idiosyncrasies is an interest in words, where they come from, what they really mean. Look up synonyms of ‘connected’ and you find ‘linked, combined, akin, allied, joined, coherent, coupled, banded together’. The word ‘nexus’ (i.e., a joining, tie, link, binding) has a similar Latin root as connect. I think if we could put all these words together and hold them simultaneously in our brains, we might get a glimpse of the real oneness of nature upon which all life depends. And this isn’t just some metaphysical quip – this is the reality of all that is. If there’s one photo or image that drives this home for me more than any other, it is that of Earthrise, taken on Christmas eve, 1968 by astronaut William Anders when Apollo 8 was in lunar orbit. I cannot look at this without deep stirrings; our earth is home and we are firmly rooted in it. Connected.

  • [Stephen McClanahan] It’s all my son’s fault

    [Stephen McClanahan] It’s all my son’s fault

    Meet Loveland Magazine’s newest columnist. A long-time resident of Miami Township, Stephen McClanahan is retired from P&G and now active in environmental advocacy, search/rescue and emergency medical/disaster response. The title of his column will be Love-the Land.

    It’s all my son’s fault that I became interested in adventure motorcycling.  When my friends ask me what this is, I tell them it’s kind of like backpacking down remote roads but with a motorbike under me.  I try to get away to experience places I’ve never seen yet at the same time, I strive to move in a way that leaves no trace of me having been there as well as minimizing my presence in the moment.

    A few years ago, my son and I took a couple of weeks and traveled some of the incredible lands in the western US.  One afternoon when we were on a backcountry road in Colorado, we stopped due to some road work.  As I grew impatient, I looked to my side; there was a peculiar rock sticking up from the ground, probably 30-40 feet into the air.  I surveyed the area; there were several of these formations.  It turns out that it’s a good thing to take trips like this with my son who happens to have majored in the geological sciences; since I’m his father, I get to ask as many questions, intelligent or otherwise, as I wish, and he must answer.  (Simple rules to my advantage; what’s not to like?)  

    Since I’m his father, I get to ask as many questions, intelligent or otherwise, as I wish, and he must answer.

    I asked about the rocks sticking out of the ground and after a few moments, his answer arrived.  And I literally spend the next several hours of motorcycling contemplating what I heard.  The rocks didn’t stick up out of the ground; they formed within the earth and over time, the ground eroded away leaving the rock exposed.  It turns out that the rock is of a mineral that is more weather and erosion resistant than its surroundings, so it survived the rains, the winds, the heat, cold.  I’m a chemist; I understood this piece; some chemical bonds are stronger than others.  But the question that left me dazed followed; how long has this been going on?  My son commented that it was likely somewhere in the ballpark of 300-400 million years. 

    So here I am, sitting on my bike, impatient over the few minutes needed for new asphalt to be smoothed.  And sitting next to me is rock that is in the process of being exposed for more than 300 million years.

    So here I am, sitting on my bike, impatient over the few minutes needed for new asphalt to be smoothed.  And sitting next to me is rock that is in the process of being exposed for more than 300 million years. Three hundred million years!  I tried to contemplate the juxtaposition of these two points in time, of me and this rock. My focus was so small – the minutes I had to wait before continuing to ride.  The rock has been waiting on me for hundreds of millions of years. I tried to seriously understand 300 million years and not just let it pass as another number.  I started small.  What does 10 years feel like?  I could put my head around that.  What about 100; could I really imagine what a century was like?  Maybe.  Moving on, I tried to understand 1000 years, a millennium.  I lost it here; I couldn’t honestly say I fully understood what 1000 years was really like. Yet the rock next to me was 300,000 millennia old! And compared to many other objects in the world, the exposed rock was young.  

    l find there is always ample evidence of something much larger at work than me.

    My experience is that the world is full of these kinds of intense places that shape me if I immerse myself in them.  And l find there is always ample evidence of something much larger at work than me. In this case, I was reminded that, compared to the vastness of time from which our natural world emerged, I am a mere fleeting mist.

    Wildflower House — where women & girls bloom!

  • Love-the-Land by Stephen McClanahan

    Love-the-Land by Stephen McClanahan

    Meet Loveland Magazine’s newest columnist. A long-time resident of Miami Township, Stephen McClanahan is retired from P&G and now active in environmental advocacy, search/rescue and emergency medical/disaster response. The title of his column will be Love-the Land.

    It’s interesting how experiences come into your life that forever alter who you are. Years ago, a group of friends backpacked the Elizabeth Pass trail in Sequoia National Park, about a 50-mile loop. One day when we decided we had found a good place for camp, John and I went for an early evening scramble up a nearby boulder-strewn hill. It was good to move without packs and we were enjoying the climb over chunks of rock the size of cars.

    When we summited, we discovered that we had stumbled upon a sizeable alpine lake, completely still in the fading sunlight of the cloudless day.

    We sat and tried to absorb the mirrored water that was in front of us, but the silence was overwhelming, crushing us in its utter tranquility. Nothing moved, absolutely nothing. No wind, bird in flight or ripple on the water existed, a lake as quiet as the boulders that rimmed it. The complete stillness washed over us, and we too became totally silent, trying to not to disturb the beautiful, holy moment in which we were immersed. No doubt that we were on sacred ground and were deeply blessed for being in its presence. 

    Twenty years in the passing and I remember that time as if it were now. It is seared into my brain. When I read ‘be still and know I am God’, I begin to have a deeper understanding of what it means. Nature has a way of doing that to you, if you will let yourself be exposed.  

    I certainly have not had every adventure that I dream of, but I cherish every one that has come my way. Each has taught me something about life and my place in it.

    In the coming weeks and months, I hope to share thoughts, experiences and moments with you that derive from my journeys out there.

    In the coming weeks and months, I hope to share thoughts, experiences and moments with you that derive from my journeys out there. I hope to paint pictures for you of what lies in store for those willing to experience what is sometimes referred to as the back country. Yes, it costs some creature comforts and demands some efforts to venture into the wilderness, but what it gives in return is priceless. 

    As you can probably surmise from my words, I am at home in the wild; it is so utterly beautiful and majestic, and I cannot help but want to share it. By doing so, I hope to create and embolden your desire to immerse yourself in a bit of the world out there.  So, let’s journey together.