Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

Late winter is my “difficult” season. Maybe it’s Seasonal Affective Disorder. Maybe it’s the combination of allergies and holiday letdown. This year, it’s also the ongoing can’t-look-away train wreck that is our electoral process. Either way, I’ve been depressed and unmotivated for the past couple of months.

Plus, as it’s March, I now have to deal with all sorts of passive-aggressive reminders—in ads, on billboards, and from the end-of-broadcast human-interest fluff pieces on the news—that, here in Seattle, I should be out there jogging, kayaking, hiking, biking, and tossing balls for the dog. It’s my civic duty, the expectation of a nation, that here in this region of stunning natural beauty I will be out, in it, enjoying every second of it that I possibly can.

Feh.

Don’t get me wrong. I do enjoy the outdoors, and here in the Puget Sound region we are surrounded by some of the most beautiful and varied vistas to be found anywhere. A big part of me doesn’t care—it’s perfectly content to snuggle up at home and read a good book, watch an old movie, or try that new video game—but there is another part that truly yearns to feel the light of the sun and the moisture of the air on my skin. I don’t have to go all REI to be outdoorsy, though. There are other ways to commune with nature than by running, walking, biking, or paddling through some remote wilderness.

My interaction with nature is much more personal.  I spend hours in a natural setting, but I do so in my own forest, surrounded by my own trees and ferns, mosses and ivy. Instead of tramping down hiking trails made by other hands, I get down in the dirt and climb up in the branches myself, bringing light and shadow, food and water to my corner of the planet. I collaborate with the creatures of my gardens, coax the trees to give each other room, and prune out all the duff and deadwood.

It’s a conversation, sometimes a heated one, between myself and my flora and fauna. It’s a discussion (much like our national election, if you’ll allow me the metaphor) about who we want to be, my gardens and I. True, sometimes I must do battle with the blackberries and dandelions, but other times, I simply regard what my plants have done on their own, and smile.

I don’t always win the arguments. I can be swayed, convinced by the perseverance of sumac roots or the enthusiasm of a maple’s new growth. The moss is particularly persuasive, and has brought me around to its way of thinking (sorry, Fescue, but if you can’t keep up, don’t let the gate hit your roots on your way out.) After several negotiations, the mason bees and I have achieved détente: they own the compost pile, while they bed down for the winter, but come Caesar’s doomsday, it’s mine again.

Being out in the garden is always uplifting. I especially enjoy it in bad weather when my sixty-foot spruces sway and moan and creak, the rain makes the world sound like it’s seething, and the squirrels hide shivering up in their nests. But it’s lovely, too, in calmer times, when chickadees fly past my head to cache their sunflower seeds in the craggy bark of conifers, and fat, somnolent bees bounce from flower to flower like boardwalk tourists. I leave my sweat and blood in the soil, and take away thorns and seeds and the occasional bouquet.

This will lift me out of my winter-born gloom. It’s always a challenge, but it rarely disappoints.

k