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Life on the Edge
- University of Iowa Press
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All ethics rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. -Aldo Leopold [54.163.221.133] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 17:11 GMT) "Cultivate simplicity, Coleridge," Charles Lamb wrote his romantic friend in 1794. "Or rather, banish elaborateness; for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart, and carries into daylight its own modest buds and genuine, sweet, and clear flowers of expression." I spent two happy weeks spading my new garden by hand, chopping up weeds and hard clay, pulling out roots. From the angle of the garden plot I had a good view of clouds rolling over the top of the house (this is looking south), the weather patterns changing. It's a quiet, fragrant spot, half ringed by trees. But then I sat down to read about gardening, in preparation for planting. In the first chapter of Steve Solomen's Growing Organic Vegetables West of the Cascades, for example, there are seven charts and two tables with titles like this: "How Field Conditions Affect Germination Percentage" or "Effects of Soil pH on the Availability of Plant Nutrients." Arrows and x/y axes and parabolic curves go every which way, and underneath are lengthy discussions of cellulose and lignins, soil fungi, the structure and composition of earth. Even if you decide to ignore the charts as unnecessarily scientific , you still need a corresponding practical knowledge every bit as involved and precise. The practical science of peas, for example. My "Territorial Seed Catalogue" instructs me to sow seed I inch apart, I inch deep, in rows at least 12 inches apart, or broadcast seed on raised beds at I lb. per 100 square feet; 5-10 pounds of bonemeal per 100 feet of furrow or 100 square feet of raised bed may greatly improve growth. I'm not to plant non-enation-resistant varieties before mid-March (enation is a virus wilt transmitted by aphids), although the new genetically LIFE ON THE EDGE 35 engineered enation-resistant varieties can be sown throughout the summer. That all this matters I learned for myself when I planted my Oregon Sugar Pod II two inches deep, having misjudged the distance between the middle joint on my index finger and the end of my finger. I waited and waited and then consulted the catalog, reviewed the steps, discovered the misjudged joint, raked off a layer of dirt, waited again, replanted part of the bed-and finally the peas emerged in spots and patches, about half the expected crop, winding and delicate, the small broad leaves folded together like little mittened hands. It's necessary knowledge I'm talking about-and the disparity between my first green images of gardening and the complexity of actually doing it. You need to learn terms and techniques, practical if not theoretical. You need teachers, either books or people. There's trial and error, a requisite passage of time. There's always a discipline. In the interest of living a simpler, natural life, I decided to buy a bike and commute to school. I wanted the wind in my face and the sleek thighs of exercise. A trip to the library and a tour of the bike shops gave me my first lesson: a 42-tooth small chain ring, a 52T large ring, and a 13 - 23 or 13 - 24T freewheel cluster provide suitable gear selection for hilly terrain; to get the right frame fit, according to Bicycle Magazine's New Bike Owner's Guide, I need to factor in inseam length, recommended frame size, recommended bottom bracket height, recommended crank length, torso plus arm length, recommended top tube length, and recommended stem extension. All kinds of brochures displayed all kinds of equipment, glossy page after page, brilliant with hardware. And there's more than equipment involved. There's the science of pedaling. You don't just hop on the thing and ride away. "Resist the temptation to stomp on the pedals," the New Bike Owner 's Guide tells us. "Instead, feel and visualize your feet spinning in smooth circles. Position the balls of your feet directly over the 36 L IF EON THE E 0 G E pedal axles and choose gears that let you maintain a cadence of 90 revolutions per minute (rpm). You can calculate this by counting the number of times your right leg reaches the top of the pedal stroke in 30 seconds, then multiply by two." Even subtracting for the silliness of this-the...