Big couple of days in the garden! New curved corner bed, bird nets over two beds that have sprouted. New drip system in the corn and peas. Oh, and picked up some fabulous blue-green granite rock from a rockery in the city to try out for the bed borders.
Worms make fine twisting holes. Roots like them. I've always been into how root systems look river estuary patterns look like nerve ganglia look like blood vessels look like mandelbrot sets in math look like wind scarred sand look like northern lights look like lightning bolts look like brain neurons.
Look like energy in movement...or rather the tracks of energy in movement. I think that's what it really means in the good book when it says we are made in the image of God. Not that someone dug a hand in and pulled out a rib, but that the physical world is a grosser manifestation of subtle, beautiful, cosmic, patterned, alive, moving conscious, infinite seas of energy. The Lakota Souix have a wonderful word for God. Wakan Tanka. It means literally "spirit in movement". That's how they think of it, directly experience it.
Speaking of brainways, my daughter worked at a top destination spa resort outside Tucson, AZ called Canyon Ranch. Very cool, expensive exclusive place. After being there one year her family members could come for $125 a day all included (fabulous food!) instead of $1000 so I went down to visit her and the spa.
We wanted to experience one of the evening class lectures so chose one given by a resident psychiatrist/researcher whose work focused on chronic habit and addiction. She is a principal in the educational facility at Canyon Ranch that helped people understand and overcome weight issues, addictions, cravings, etc. She spoke of the most modern brain science which is now understanding that while true we don't grow new brain cells after a certain age, we can (and often do) grow extensive neural connector systems which is just as good.
As we get older, we tend not to so much. But activities like exercising and always learning and trying something new encourage this growth. What grows are called dendrites. It's one thing to have a lot of brain cells, but a more important issue actually is how robust the “highway” system of interconnections between the cells is. A brain cell without lots of communication paths is basically worthless. Like a computer chip with no wires connected. In late 2005 a study came out proving that the “structural remodeling of neurons does in fact occur in mature brains”. The scientists who did the study actually believe that someday we may be able to grow new neuron cells to replace ones damaged by disease or spinal cord injury.
I was trying to explain to Lisa's son N. how soil "grows" just like plants just like us. How different long time mulched, natural soil in the forest is as compared to the clay hardpack we encounter most the time. I used the word “honeycomb”. It's got areas of air, microorganisms, water, sand, clay, a low density almost crytaline structure like the desert “crusts” that take 10s or 100s of years to create that are full of alge, lichens, mosses, fungi—some of the oldest life forms on the planet. One boot print and bye-bye, its gone.
Back to brains. The scientist showed us amazing MRI pictures of the development of dentrites (yes, perfect, it's from the greek word for “tree”) in babies. You can actually see the branching expanding day by day. Day one the brain nerve picture looks multiple yet somewhat solitary little “sprouts”. Day 30 it looks like the root system of a 1000 year old redwood!
The teacher explained that when we do the same sort of activity (good or bad) over and over again we develop super big dentrite roadways for that type of thing...kinda like freeways as compared to two lane highways or suburban roads. That's why its SO, so hard to change...to diet, overcome habitual moodiness, exercise regularly, or overcome addictive behavior. Much easier to jump on our old dendrite freeway than battle traffic and stop lights all thru town.
She said it takes around 30 consecutive days of daily, focused, constant activity to lay the foundations for a substantial new dentrite roadway. Now that's the good news and the bad news. Good news, it can be done! Bad news, once you do it, now you have two equal branching roads, the old habit road and the new one. And it's just as easy to go down the one as the other. It will take months, even years more until that old highway crumbles completely.
So it's after 30 days that the real challenge arises. It becomes a daily issue of choice. I choose today the new, healthy road to growth. And I'll have to choose again tomorrow. And then again the next day. And again. And again.
I am about 30 days into this garden. I chose it not just to get some great healthy food to eat. Not to impress my neighbors or you. Not to loose weight. And not just to have something creative to do creative with my hands.
I chose it because I deeply want to change something in me.
I'm going to have to choose it again tomorrow morning.
Think Robert Frost was way ahead of the neural scientists when he wrote his timeless "roads" poem.
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both...
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
michael, for a barefoot garden
No comments:
Post a Comment