Out west, part I

Dear readers, I began this a good five mornings ago, and am just now sitting down 

to try to bring it to a close.  I already think it will be a two-part junket.

Wish me luck!

The other day [as in, a week ago now], my sister and I drove the four hours west to Hendersonville, just south of Asheville, to visit my brother-in-law, Jim, solo-ing for two months as our sister Eileen has been in attendance to their son, slowly recovering from his bad skiing accident in February.  My nephew cannot get about yet (luckily, he finds distraction in his remote work), so she will be in Oregon for another month yet. At least.

Our pioneering Jim welcomes company and treated us to a few days of touring while we fed his freezer meals and kept him in conversation.  The Arboretum, one of the loveliest campuses of the University in Asheville, was our first stop (after the grocery, of course).  

It's early yet for spring in these hills, so though there were banks of planted tulips, small brave ground blooms, and trees valiantly trying to blossom, the park called to us in its open welcoming way.  

The current exhibit/theme, though, was the real fascination:  Frederick Law Olmstead, who designed the Biltmore estate here and, more famously (and more significantly for him) Central Park in New York City.  

We spent a long time viewing the placards and film about his life, work, the blossoming of parks in cities across the nation and beyond.  For me, his genius began with his idea that all cities need public spaces that all people can share.  Parks make people equal. Reminded of my young years living in New York City, where Central Park was a univeral playground, retreat, open invitation to wander out of the tall buildings and old neighborhood of brownstowns where I lived (though not a stone's throw from Riverside Park), I thought with gratitude that someone like him designed relief from the otherwise busyness of, if often entertaining, city life.  Then with gratitude for anyone who makes our lives more human, open to friendliness, even kindness, and surely a sense of (those pickup baseball, softball and frisby games, those theatricals, that music and picnics to share, sometimes with people who five minutes before were strangers) humanness. 

Here in my town, I thought then, my gratitude for green and open landscape feeds that same sense of humanness, though it takes this visit to show me that. 

Just now, writing this at my worktable with the breeze outside shuffling newly leafed branches, some still their lime tint, I also imagine the cities I have been, and have missed visiting...New York, certainly, but also (and perhaps a tad moreso) San Francisco, Havana, London, Paris.  There, especially, the spaces of green among old stone and new glass, lush landscapes, some planned, some not, speak of Olmstead's work toward universality among people.  Parks and other natural landscapes are common ground, no matter how fancified.

It set me thinking anew about the Arboretum landscape itself.   So most of my photos there were set-pieces, so to speak, around the grounds, rather than the floral views I am usually drawn to.  In this garden, this time, each corner or juxtaposition seemed its own story.

The bonsai were still in their winter greenhouse, but we took in both the trees there and their empty shelves in the garden, where the rock formations, dry unless there is rain, reminded us how inspiration works.  It's not only grass, trees and flower beds that enliven the parks but other natural elements, some raw, some reformed by human hands.  The latter provide foci and point out the beauty of terrain and air.  

Art in a park, as in a garden, is more in synthesis than in juxtaposition, it seems to me.  Even the sign below, while it informs a fact, also makes its philosophical statement in the stone it is carved from.

 "This stream bed is intended to be dry; the only time it carries water is when it rains...."

After the Arboretum, Jim rode us back through the Blue Ridge Parkway to the Pisgah Inn, the view from which is vast, contemplative in its spring silence, its nature both different and same in the world of parks.

There was, however, no room at the Inn for lunch for us, so we took a snack to one of the Parkway's overlooks, then stopped at another, Eileen's favorite.

The road down the mountains curled between tiny-budding rhododendren and still dark mountain laurel, opening enough to follow the distant blues as we went.

The next afternoon, too beautiful to waste, Jim took Mary Ellen to Biltmore while I poked around here, weeding and cutting a bit in Eileen's garden, taking a spin to the Council on Aging thrift shop where Eileen volunteers (she's much missed there these days) and coming back with a good pile of treasures, doing an errand for Eileen while I was at it.  I spent the rest of the afternoon on their front porch, starting a new scarf to send her (it's damp in Portland still) and watching their overly quiet neighborhood for signs of life.

The visit, the longest trip in more than a year, excepting my aunt's 99th birthday in September, opened me to longer travel again, to thinking about venturing abroad once more.  And, indeed, a few days ago, an afternoon's birthday celebration out in the country brought me back to another of my favorite landscapes...Jim and Angie's view from their house on the farm, a space of inspiration always to me...to make drawings, paintings, even a novel written in the cabin, and this photograph to remind me...

Now, dear readers, look for part II of this post in a few days,

 where Art, natural and nurtured,  plays its part in bringing us breathing room.

As I close this up, there has come about yet another adventure to add there, this time in the nature of (I do not, I assure you, exaggerate in the tiniest bit) an epiphany.