J Daniel Hess’ Blog

Remember the dry warm spring of a year ago?  Sandhill cranes did not stop at “the burn” near Winter Wood because the lowland was dry. This year we’ve received enough rain to make muck.  Yesterday, rainy and dark, was my day to drive over. I didn’t get stuck but the car was a mess after my second visit.

Perhaps 300 or 400 cranes have stopped for a rest. Most were on the north side of the road on soil that has supposedly been drained. They were just waking on my first trip. A few were jumping, getting ready to dance.

While I was able to get closer this year than last. the rain and darkness and distance didn’t make for good photography. Nonetheless they were a delight to watch. (The high resolution offered by the camera allows me to pull the photos closer.)

Cranes were accompanied by many ducks, surely of multiple varieties. It was much too dark to see markings. Birds were on the lane when I arrived on my second visit; I wished I could have crept to their side.

I hope that the wind farms do not swirl in their way as they head toward Wisconsin, Minnesota and Manitoba.  Perhaps one of these crane couples will veer off to Friedenswald where I watched two cranes several years ago.

I’m not a pack rat but I’ve got much to learn if I am serious about developing habits of  the minimalist. Fewer possession but prized ones. Less clutter and better organization. A simpler life style.

At the moment my best teacher is the camera. It is showing me that less is more.

Broom

The broom bristles caught my eye this morning as I was going to the basement. Just a broom. I placed the photo on Facebook and by evening four people had already responded to it with several others hitting the “like” button.

A doe and its yearling

What I saw from the doorway was a forest, snow, a melting snow scupture, several water trickles, titmice in a tree, and several additional deer in the distance. My camera preferred the close shot and thus excluded all of the other items I had seen. The camera wanted just enough and no more.

Orchid blossoms

There are five or six branches in the orchid in the living room. When the camera looked at all six, it lacked a focal point. It much preferred one branch with three flowers. The others were excess.

Snarling dog

If I say it with words, it goes like this: “It’s not so pleasant taking a walk by the yellow house because the dog comes crashing to the fence, fussed up or angry that anyone would presume to enter its dogmos.”  The camera doesn’t need words, just a a fanged mouth.

Barn

The barn has a long history with many chapters. The camera looked at the entire red barn, then preferred to let several boards tell the story.

Coastal bird

Knick knacks lend themselves to hobbies for some people, clutter for others. My camera would have a difficult time capturing birdness from a cabinet stuffed with static ceramic fowl. But this one bird makes the sun rise.

I’m still in photography 101, but I hope to arrive some day at 102. To make that leap, I will have to continue learning about less is more.

Yesterday I was shocked driving north out of Elwood, Indiana. In June I observed lane construction in the large fields and a large corner lot laden with stones as though a huge parking lot was in the making.  Now, just months later the fields were abloom with huge windmills.

I estimated there to be a hundred. So unbelievable it was that for a second I thought I needed a Sancho Panza to set me straight. But I aimed the camera towards one of them, thinking that the camera would tell me whether or not all this was a phantom.

Back home I typed to Google: Wild Cat Wind Farm Elwood Indiana. Up came reports.  Somewhat puzzling, however, almost sinister was a note at the end of a brief news item. “(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)”

Hoping not to violate this unusually strict reservation, I will summarize facts.

—  Yes, it is called Wild Cat Wind Farm.

—-The owner and operator is a German-based company.

—  E.ON Climate and Renewables North America began harvesting electricity in October of 2012.

— The total number of wind turbines is 125.  How many properties are now a part of this factory farm, I do not know.

— The wind farm, according to Elwood’s mayor, is the largest economic development project in northern Madison County’s history.

The best of my vacations have offered double, triple rewards. They’ve not only done the good work of vacating my mind and emotions there on the spot, but they have also pre- emptied several closets at home.

That is, when the vacation is really good, I return not with a yen to own more but rather to live a simpler life sans cluttered closets.

During the recent vacation I read Clarence Hill’s essay on this very topic. He writes, “We live in a world of surfeit stuff, of big-box stores and 24-hour online shopping opportunities. Members of every socioeconomic bracket can and do deluge themselves with products. There isn’t any indication that any of these things makes anyone any happier; in fact it seems the reverse may be true.”

He cites a study published last year titled “Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century” by researchers at U.C.L.A.  Thirty three Los Angeles mothers’ stress hormones “spiked during the time they spent dealing with their belongings. Seventy-five percent of the families involved in the study couldn’t park their cars in their garages because they were too jammed with things.”

I don’t know anything about my stress hormones but this household knows that the process of buying a car gave me several tense days and a sleepless night.

In another of Hill’s citations, the Northwestern University psychologist Galen V. Bodenhausen linked consumption with aberrant, antisocial behavior. Professor Bodenhausen found that “Irrespective of personality, in situations that activate a consumer mind-set, people show the same sorts of problematic patterns in well-being, including negative affect and social disengagement.”

Sunday is not necessarily a go-to-church day for me, but I regard this one day in seven as special. The worst way to violate it is by having to go to the pharmacy or grocery or worse yet a box store for something or other.

Our house is not as small as Clarence Hill’s 420-square-foot studio, but we have been able to make spaces for the spirit.  When I take a walk, I don’t carry any closets with me. I’m working deliberately, fifteen minutes at a stretch, to get rid of books and files and objects that are hard to vacuum around.

Here is the citation for the Hill article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/opinion/sunday/living-with-less-a-lot-less

10:30 PM  Just got home … an 800-plus mile day.  Here are three photos to help us remember our vacation.

A doe and two yearlings.

Very special home-made food.

Snow and rain and mist.

The fourth day of vacation is graced by weather.

Rain and melting snow flood the driveway in the early morning.

After breakfast a dark overcast.

In the higher mountains dense fog.

A farmer says it’s going to clear up by noon.

Sure enough the clouds begin to lift.

By the time my little jaunt comes to an end, I see blue sky.

Down the mountain were deer …

down from the deer was a donkey …

down from the donkey was a river …

and then up the mountain again.

On vacation, the mind is empty as in vacated. Such a state is remarkably freeing, …

…  offering limitless possibilities.

Brain cells, drained dry, then become vials for whatever the vacation offers.

A tree trunk, a shadow, snow and a bale of straw.

A drainage pipe carrying melted snow.

A wooded hillside, doubled.

On vacation, it’s really hard to retain vacancy.

The first of five days of vacation.

On the eastern slope of the mountain.

A heavy snow just days ago.

Obviously the deer are hungry.

These five days I shall not try to change the world.