Nat

It’s easy to complain about the cold (we’ve been down to -18F in Chicago today). But, I just read in the New York Times that the canals have frozen in the Netherlands for the first time in 12 years. This is a very big deal for the Dutch, who think of skating, according to the story, as “part of our soul.”

I’m thrilled for the Dutch, who have rushed out by the hundreds of thousands to skate on the canals, an old national tradition. Older Dutch are euphoric to relive their childhood memories. For many children, of course, this is a new experience. I imagine how happy, how full of wonder and surprise they must be to see their parents and their grandparents bursting with childlike excitement. How great to learn to be a child from your elders.

Just this morning I told friends that I have never really minded the bitter cold, at least on a sunny day, but that I don’t love it as much since I stopped having the chance to skate outside. And now I’m reading about a country able to skate outside, in spite of water pollution, in spite of global warming.

Can’t you imagine it, the wind pushing freezing tears from the corners of your eyes, your skates ripping into the hard, rough ice, the warmth returning to your feet in your skates as you work your legs and arms. If you are lucky, you hold a small child in front of you with both hands, feeling him feel the ice, the startling lack of friction and weight, as you glide untethered away from shore.

God bless winter.

The first major snow storm of the winter blew through southeastern Massachusetts this afternoon just before dark. Two inches had fallen by nightfall, which happens before 5:00 p.m. these days. Because her plans came together late in the afternoon, I agreed to take my stepdaughter to a friend’s house just as the storm hit its wildest point.

We probably should have turned around when I realized just how bad the roads were, but by that time we were halfway there, and it would have been disappointing to my child not to finish the trip. The drive was a little scary, but mostly because my imagination tends to kick in when things start to feel out of control. I tried to push out of my mind the idea that I might make a wrong turn in the dark on the way home and drive off the road.

It’s a good lesson to remember every once in awhile that we sometimes choose to think things are worse than they are. It’s easy to do with so many examples in the news and in our lives of things turning awful. How much better, though, to move the opposite direction and envision things being even better than they seem.

Our street lost power tonight after I ate dinner, so here I was alone in a house without lights or an internet connection. After complaining about it on the phone with my wife, I climbed into bed with my laptop and watched a silly romantic comedy with the last of my laptop battery.

I guess the point I’m making is that I can get carried away hoping things don’t take a turn for the worse, when it would be every bit as logical to hope that things will take a turn for the better. This sounds like a superficial kind of pretend game, but I mean it seriously. Where we have the chance to make things better through our determination, I think we have a duty to do it.

Nothing is more important.

The power has just come back on in time for me to finish this before bedtime.

Another inspiring story from USA Today this morning. Nancy Berry teaches first grade in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, and she draws on unusual, experiential learning techniques to instill love of learning, good manners, and curiosity in her pupils. She has an entire area of the classroom devoted to milkweed plants, which free roaming catapillars in the room eat. They eventually become free-flying butterflies.

Her classroom sounds like a thrilling discovery. I loved that she places equal weight on science and writing, and I really loved that she says of her teaching approach that she tries to give five minutes of praise each day to each student. She uses imaginary friends to help teach manners and classroom behavior.

USA Today runs a series on All-USA Teachers, and Ms. Berry certainly stands out as an innovative, loving teacher. Children fortunate enough to have this kind of teacher early (and I had many of them) start life with a great advantage: they tend to see the world as a long series of promising discoveries.

What a way to want to engage with the world. Hats off to Nancy Berry and her “berries.”

(Red Sox win Game 2 in a nail-biter, 2-1. Woo hoo.)

Today’s Boston Globe carries an AP article about a program for inmates in Missouri prisons to cultivate vegetable gardens. The produce from these gardens is donated to food pantries for the elderly poor in the state. The activity is one of the elements of a program called “restorative justice.” Under this label, which was developed in the 1970s, prisons offer inmates the chance to study the impact of their crimes on crime victims and to find ways to make amends.

In Missouri, several participants grew up on farms, and they are now teaching skills to inner city prisoners while reviving their own interest in producing food. One of the prisoners, James Burton Jr., says of the restorative justice garden, “This is almost like being free here. I like knowing I’m giving to the elderly.” The article goes on to quote a cook at one of the food banks, who says that the produce donation has cut her food costs by a third.

I love projects like these, which encourage people to make amends by doing something good. This program is so practical in meeting two needs at once. It was very inspiring.

My father-in-law sent me a great link to a video clip of a guy who has what looks like the most frightening job possible. You have to see the clip to appreciate it, and what I love is the subject’s description at the end of what fears he has overcome in life.

Years ago, my friend Ted took me camping in Baxter State Park in Maine. We did a 4-5 day trip, ending by hiking the Razor’s Edge down from Mount Katahdin. As you would expect, the trail is exceptionally narrow and plunges several hundred feet down on both sides. What’s even more nerve-wracking is that it is a prime spot for lightning strikes, and that day, we seemed to be just a few hours ahead of a storm.

Prior to that trip, I had struggled with a sort of low-grade but annoying fear of heights, but once you are there, you really have no alternative but to walk across it. We were both pretty ragged by that point–Ted had had to talk me up a mountain face on our first day, which I really didn’t think I had the strength to manage.

Still, needing to cross over, and with the scenery spectacular down to lakes and forests, we pressed ahead. I can’t remember for sure if we saw other hikers while we were out on the trail, but we knew that others had crossed ahead of us all summer. Knowing that it is possible, we just did what all the books tell you to do: one step at a time.

Usually I am only happy with overcoming a challenge after it’s done. This time, though, I was conscious all the way across of walking past my fears.

So watch the video clip and ask yourself what you fear that you could confront. There’s no better feeling.

My family and I leave for a week’s vacation on Friday. We go to the same place in Carefree, Arizona, each April school vacation. The weather is great. We rent a nice little house on the golf course, and we play a lot of tennis.

Then, when we’re tired, we sit by one of the five pools and read our books. My wife and stepdaughter love to read, and every time I watch them, it makes me happy to share a love of reading with them.

Another reason I look forward to this trip is that usually the cacti are in full bloom this time of the year. Two years ago, on our first trip, the desert bloom was the best in 30 years because of unusual, sustained rains in March. There is nothing more spectacular than brilliantly colored flowers on rough, prickly cacti. The flowers are coral, pale yellow, lilac, magenta, even Key lime.

What a metaphor for finding joy after struggle, I always think. But mostly I think that what is beautiful is always striking for its beauty. I’ll think that as I walk to the gym in the morning and to the pool in the afternoon. It will make me happy all week.

It’s my last morning on Amelia Island, so rather than go to the gym, I walked on the beach. The sun rises very late here at this point, so I walked from dawn until the sun was fully up. There were a few dog walkers and joggers on the beach, but not many. The tide was coming in from just past low tide, and I stuck close to the water line.

Before I turned to come back toward my hotel room, I saw a line of birds, large ones, not seagulls. I’ll have to look up the name. The flew one after the other and dropped down from the sky, parallel to the shore. They were flying away from me, and the dropped like a heavy thread until they skimmed the crest of one curling wave, the way a surfer rides it inside the curl, but working less obviously.

Mankind has watched birds like this for tens of thousands of years, I’m sure. Yet it’s surprising and breathtaking every time. Beauty is, in some of its forms, inarguable.

It reminded me that there are simple routines I have that can make me feel fortunate to be who and where I am.

Amelia Island, Florida, where I arrived this afternoon, has my favorite kind of beach. The beach here is wide with 15 yards of hard sand exposed at low tide, and it’s several miles long in front of our resort. I went for a walk before dinner, up the beach for 15 minutes and then back. A woman was walking her golden retriever. He was a large male with a thick coat and a tennis ball.

I rolled up my jeans and walked just at the water line. A family of sandpipers scampered about in the very shallow water, poking in the sand with their beaks. Flecks of sea foam covered the wet sand up and down the beach. I thought I would walk to the end of the beach and then turn around, but it didn’t end.

As I said, it’s my favorite kind of beach, the kind you can walk up and down until you’re tired, before you’ve run out of beach. There’s a beach like this at the Cape Cod National Sea Shore, and another like it at Hilton Head, South Carolina. There is nothing like the open space, which you can share with wild animals and young families. What a reminder that the world is beautiful.

I fly to Amelia Island, Florida, tomorrow morning for a business conference. I hope I will have just a little time off the clock to walk the beach. The weather forecast calls for sunny, highs in the 70s, which is heaven since it’s snowing here, again.

There is nothing like a trip to a nice place I’ve never been to make me hopeful. Just a simple change of routine helps me appreciate the simple pleasures of fresh air, sunshine, and listening to the birds singing in the morning.

My new job has me traveling more than I have in a few years, and it’s invigorating to visit new places again. I think it’s that any new scenery reminds to look at the world and really pay attention. I’ll be on the lookout for anything new. Stay posted.

My not-so-secret guilty pleasure is that I love lots of mediocre TV. Tonight’s rerun of “Men in Trees” has a great bit of dialogue. Anne Heche’s character tells how troubled she is by small, short earthquakes in Alaska, and she asks on her character’s radio show, “How do you people deal with living on shaky ground?”

It’s an absolutely great question, since that’s what we all have to do eventually. Or always. When I lived through two very large earthquakes in California in 1987 and 1989, I found the experience very odd and unsettling. For starters, all of the car alarms go off at once.

But metaphorically, it’s an even harder question. How do you learn to handle finding out that things in life are not as durable or solid as they appear to be?

So tell me, How do you deal with living on shaky ground?