Strawberry Fields Today [View all]

[H2O Man]

">>>No one I think
is in my tree; I mean it
must be high or low.
That is you can't, you knw,
tune in, but it's alright.
That is I think it's not too bad."
-- John Lennon; Strawberry Fields Forever

I went for a walk this afternoon. Probably the time could have been better spent had I invested my energy into working on my lawn. Or cleaning the house. But I had a lot on my mind, and needed to spend some time talking to myself.

Walking near the Susquehanna River in the summer is an adventure. The paths along its side are the same that human beings have walked for ten to twelve thousand years. I’m sure that, at different points in time, other people have walked the same trail that I was on today, trying to clear their heads. And in the future, others will do the same, looking for answers to some of the same existential questions that I asked myself today.

(The name "Susquehanna" comes from a phrase regarding the strawberry fields along its edges in Chenango County.)

At one point, I noticed the dark soil that indicates that, long ago, there was a fire pit on the first terrace above the river’s bank. Upon closer examination, I found some scarlet-colored sand stone, shattered by the fire. Inside the pit were two broken, pocked arrowheads. A hunter had no doubt had success in killing his prey; perhaps his family sat around the fire while their meal was cooked.

Upon closer examination, I found four decorated sherds of pottery, another four arrowheads, and a flint drill. The arrows were all of a type known as Levanna. They are thin, well-chipped triangular points. The pottery is from the same cultural phase; it had been decorated with a net that would have been the type used for fishing the shallow rapids of the river.

The 11 artifacts all date back to approximately 900 ad. Maybe the individual or family using them had enjoyed the warmth of the early summer’s sun, much as I did. The sounds of the river’s rapids would have been much the same, though these people would not have had the background noise of automobiles driving in the distance. Nor would they have watched an airplane in the distance, circling around a small airport that is found on a field that, in colonial times, was the site of an Iroquois village.

Whatever those people were thinking about, and perhaps discussing as they sat near the fire, are long forgotten, no matter how important a topic it may have been at the time. Likewise, the issues demanding my attention will pass, soon enough. But they are real to me today.

In mid-May, my younger son called me from a hospital in Binghamton. He and his brother were there with their mother. She had been misdiagnosed in February, and had just been told that she had cancer. Thirty days later, she died.

I’m very proud of both of our boys. They are young adults, living busy lives -- work, college, girlfriends, and all the other things that fill young men’s lives -- had cleared their schedules, and taken good care of their mother. Their two younger sisters -- mine by way of a second marriage -- had also provided much-needed support. Although the boys’ mom and I split up more than a quarter of a century ago, we were good friends in recent years; my daughters really liked her, and she enjoyed spending time with them.

The day after she died, one of my close friends had a couple of medical tests come back bad, and he is going to have open-heart surgery in a couple of days. Then, the day before the funeral, one of my siblings had troubling news, and was diagnosed with yet another serious illness.

In theory, everyone who is born will eventually die. I leave room for myself to be the exception to this, but I try to be realistic, by assuming there is at least a 50-50 chance that I will die before reaching 200 years of age. I keep in mind a Woody Allen quote: “I’m not afraid to die; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

After picking up the artifacts, I turned to walk back to where I had left my automobile. As I looked at the river, I thought how human beings had enjoyed an intimate relationship with it for thousands of years. Even in the time period when my childhood took place, lots of people were connected to the Susquehanna. They fished, canoed, and swam in its waters. Today, most people in my area don’t tend to notice that river, unless its waters are either extremely high or low. They see it through their car’s windows as they drive by it.

I try to make a conscious effort to take nothing for granted. Not people, not water, not anything. We are all part of a bigger cycle, involving a bigger system. At times, it is filled with pleasure; at other times, its painful. But its all part of the miracle of life. We shouldn’t take it for granted. Nor should we view it from a disconnected seat, through the false lens of the mechanical world.

Peace,
H2O Man