On Remembering

I’m dropping in today to write a little update from our 100ft-wide patch of nature and beyond. Since I last wrote about this small plot of woods, three new species have been spotted - a fox jumping around the thickets, bats circling, hunting in the light of a full moon, and deer munching on meristem growth in broad daylight.

We have witnessed rabbits, squirrels, a groundhog, an opossum, a fox, bats, deer, and birds aplenty living in and utilizing this space. Many of the trees in this patch are Black Walnut, an allelopathic tree that secretes toxins into the environment to out-compete other trees and gobble up all the light. Black Walnuts tend to decrease diversity and I used to think of them as kind of a boring “white bread” tree whose presence make the surroundings a little less interesting. So, I have been shocked to see the kind of wildlife that has been frequenting the area and the variety of plants that have been popping up to prove me wrong.

I have to admit that when I first moved here I was constantly comparing this view to the pristine and ancient forests of Oregon. This area looked like a dumping grounds by comparison. It is pretty young ecologically. Side by side with an Oregon forest, the Maryland forest (at least the forest close to me) looks like a bunch of sticks in the ground.

I am really into trees. I wrap up a lot of my happiness in them. When people used to ask me why I moved to Oregon, I usually told them that I needed a change, which was true. But, a big part of the reason I moved there was for the trees. Conifers make me happy, the mountains fill me with life.

Oregon is an incredibly beautiful place and its beauty is so easy. You don’t have to look hard to find it. I used to drive around the streets of Portland and feel overwhelmed with happiness and gratitude for getting the chance to live there. Saying goodbye to the safety and serenity of that place tore me to pieces. But, I knew that eventually (if I tried hard enough) I would be able to take the freedom of Oregon with me anywhere I went. 

Most of the time I spent on this balcony in those early days of moving back, I would stare off into the distance at the trio of conifer trees that reminded me of Oregon and pretend I was somewhere else. I gazed out over the horizon, past what existed right in front of me. I would not see it. I could not see it. I did not pick up the trash. I tried to remember and hold on to that freedom. But, I felt lost.

These past couple months I have been refocusing, trying to stay present here, really being exactly where I am. As it turns out, thanks to a global pandemic, I have to. In this time of sinking deeper into this presence of place, I have reinvigorated my love of foraging and have been visiting the forest for solace and comfort.

I miss Oregon less as I learn to love the nature here even more. On a walk yesterday to a nearby patch of woods, I found a mighty oak in the midst of a tulip poplar forest. The trunk of this oak was so big that I couldn’t wrap both arms around even half of the diameter. I thought to myself, “bah!” at the idea of a Maryland forest being a bunch of twigs.

On one side, the oak tree was rotting, a series of holes the size of my hand pecked or torn into it, at least four of them, one after another stretching up toward the canopy. Yet the crown of the tree was still so full and luscious. I saw those soft greens speckled across the bright blue sky and thought to myself: summer colors and my heart was full.

The woods in Maryland are resilient, the trees are fighters. They shine in their own special way that needs no comparison. This is something I forgot. Something I am remembering. Where I live, in the suburban outskirts of the city, the wildlife are crammed into small spaces, yet still find ways to survive and to thrive.

I am still learning to relax into the presence of this place. The Oregon forest taught me lessons that I choose to carry with me everywhere I go. Their safety and comfort has allowed me to remember and to view the place where I was born through a new lens. And in this way, I am grateful to have had Oregon and also to have lost it.

The Lessons of Mushrooms

I’ve been spending more time in the forest since the quarantine began. I live in an apartment complex that is in walking distance to a patch of woods that surrounds a local river, which is a great privilege I do not take for granted. It has been raining a lot this April and morels are in season for a little longer. So, I have been venturing to the woods at least once a week to look for them (and also to collect garlic mustard - an introduced species that grows like wild around here). Just walking and getting my body moving has been essential to my mental health.

Also, I have been working on creating a hidden section to this site to house some of my recipes that I have been creating under the name The Radish Room (Instagram, Facebook) since 2017. You can find the recipes here: katcoolahan.com/theradishroom. I am slowly typing up my handwritten notes and getting good photos of favorite meals to share with the world. One dish that has worked particularly well with foraged ingredients is my sunflower pesto recipe. I substitute garlic mustard for the basil and use that as a sauce for pasta, with chickpeas and sautéed peppers and morels.

Foraging brings me a lot of joy. The hours spent in the woods forgetting about the outside world, then the hours spent in the kitchen remembering nature. Getting low to the ground looking for mushrooms changes my perspective, helps me to better appreciate the smaller aspects of the forest and the interconnectedness of the ecosystem.

This pandemic has brought joy and purpose to the forefront of my consciousness in a big way. The joys in my life now “pop” with a new brilliance. Yes, there has been sadness and despair and anxiety too. But those also illuminate the joy in a way. Because when I contemplate how I want to spend my limited time here, writing and being in nature stand out more than ever. Both of these activities are ways that I connect: to other people and to the natural world. I value connection, networks, diversity. I am finding new ways to connect that I never considered before, like online writing classes and zoom calls.

In many ways, I feel life has prepared me in its own way for this global health crisis. I spent the greater part of my adult life studying edible plants and the patterns of nature, as well as mindfulness and healing techniques to deal with depression and anxiety. I trained in yoga and reiki, I learned to cook and how to eat really well at home. I have (for the most part) eased away from alcohol and others ways of numbing out to pain. I have lost many loved ones, including a parent and a parent-in-law. Just this last year, my spouse and I lost three family members within a few months of each another. The year 2019 was, by far, the hardest of my life so far … and then in 2020 we all get hit with a global pandemic. For much of this past year, I could not understand how that kind of compounding loss ever could serve me, how it could teach me anything other than that I needed to endure and just keep living when things felt utterly hopeless. With each death, though, I realize that my grief evolves a little. I have gotten better at accepting life’s impermanence and moving with (instead of fighting against) the current reality. This has also illuminated joy in my life. I can be more present with my life when I live in this acceptance. I am by no means perfect in grief. Not even close. Grief answers to no one and will do what it pleases, after all. But, I do feel more prepared than before to deal with whatever life will throw our way next. I do want to mention that I also have the incredible privilege in this pandemic of not being in survival mode, worrying about a paycheck or housing or groceries or any other basic needs. Although this would not have been the case for me for most of my adult life, which is mostly a matter of timing, I have had more mental space and bandwidth to process and think. As Yuval Noah Harari so aptly says, “thinking about the big picture is a relatively rare luxury.”

Most of my life, I also believed that I was flawed because I could never just be one thing … I worked many jobs across many fields (environmental, fundraising, accounting, retail) and cultivated deep interests in several areas (nature/science, writing/communication, wellness/healing). I almost never felt adequate in the world and often felt like a failure for not being able to just put my head down and commit. But, now, I am seeing clearly how these aspects of myself converge to serve me (and thus help to serve others). Now, more than ever, I know that I was not put here on earth for the status quo. I am here to help build something new. In these words is where my interests merge, art is where they come together.

Mushroom hunting is a lot like life in this way. Sometimes I need to be patient to wait for the lesson. I need to get down low to the ground and humble myself to change my perspective. There is a season for everything in life. When the season is over it is time to let go and begin something new.

A Beautiful Mess

I left my house Friday and drove around for the first time in a couple weeks. I was hoping to find a trail to walk in the woods for a little bit. I miss the trees, the silence and loving embrace of nature. We are blessed to have balconies in our apartment, but the noises of traffic and trash in the woods are often all I can focus on when I'm trying to sit in the sunshine.

I drove to a few trailheads that I knew well. All of them were too crowded with cars. While driving, I saw people outside shopping, large groups playing basketball, children at playgrounds... I also saw the signs on the highway telling people to stay home and an elder picking up trash along the side of a busy street. I ended up at my old Elementary School because I knew there was a patch of woods and also lots of open space. I saw even more people playing basketball. I also saw kids on bikes keeping their distance and teachers wheeling an aquarium cart to their car to save their class pet.

While I sat in the woods, it was hard not to notice the mess, the trash, to want to fix it, to be angry. In particular, there was a plastic bottle whose wrapper read "tropical paradise" on it that seemed to taunt a little extra. It was hard not to get distracted by the awful din of I-95 as it echoed up from the valley. I thought about how I had spent so much of my childhood at that school with those sounds of traffic, so extra loud in the winter when most of the trees were barren of leaves. I walked the back of the field and visited the trees that were planted using the planting plan I created when I worked for the County. I thought about how each species was chosen by me and in what order and hoped that I chose well. I remembered how I used to look out across that valley past the traffic and toward the college I would one day attend, to study environmental science. I thought about how I planned most of my life to leave this place and I did. But now here I am again about to hunker down for an indeterminate amount of time. And how it cannot be any other way.

I have followed this virus very closely since it first arose in Wuhan. I have been consulting the science daily and making logical decisions based on data and what epidemiologists recommend. Because of this, I bought extra food with each trip to the store for my family weeks before the shelves at the grocery store started running low. I haven't stockpiled. I have isolated and tried to make choices that are best for my community, for humanity. I have practiced the mindfulness techniques I learned over the past ten years to get myself into a good head space. I have allowed myself to feel fear, but tried my hardest not to let it overwhelm me.

I have also been reading and listening to a lot of spiritual takes on what is happening right now with COVID-19. Spiritually, we may be dealing with how we can collectively release fear and illusion. We need to stare the truth in the face and find new ways to communicate with each other. We need new paradigms, systems, and ideas for how we heal our relationship to the earth. Of all of the species that have ever existed on earth, 99.9% of them are now extinct. We are but a blip in the timeline of the earth's history. I want to be very clear that humans are NOT killing the earth with climate change, we are killing ourselves. The earth will be here long after humans are gone. Collectively, this virus is showing us just that.

I love humans and humanity. I love the ways we are good to one another and take care of one another. I love how we fight back against oppression and oppressors and demand better, demand justice, demand truth. I love how we tell stories and give each other hope.

And yet.... any yet... right now I am STRUGGLING with others. I am struggling with myself. I want to do more. Be more. I want others to care. I am tired, so tired, of screaming into the void.

I believe that a lot of the problems and toxic systems that exist in the world are inheritances. They are what we are given as children, what we are taught, but not what we need to accept. We can and must do the work to first acknowledge and then to dismantle the hierarchical power structures that oppress and deny our connectedness. There are so many who have been/are doing this work already and who are holding new visions of how we can show up for each other and for the planet. It gives me such hope.

I don't know what the future holds. I believe everything, life as we know it, especially in the United States, is going to fundamentally change forever. I don't believe in "all good, everything is better, back to the way it was before." There will always be hardships, loss, suffering. But, there will also always be love, truth, and kindness. Life is messy, humanity is messy.

I just hope we can more fiercely take care of one another.