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Ansel Adams called the Monterey Peninsula a "Place, with a capital P." He felt that the peninsula's intersection of sea and sky and cliff conjured a mystical world, powerful, almost magic. He'll hear no contradictions from me. And part of the magic is how Adams's photographs capture the Place so brilliantly that they merge with, augment, maybe even replace, our own less focused, memories of that enchanted stretch of coastline.
I spent a couple of hours today wandering around the J A Ralston Arboretum here in Raleigh. As a place it may not warrant the peninsula's capital P, yet a number of characteristics argue for it being a place best defined by something other than lower case. I haven't spent much time here in the last few years. Oh, we have had some faculty retreats in the Education Building, but after spending several hours doing "business meeting behavior" the inclination to remain longer in the neighborhood fades. Today's meander reminded me that I need to return more often to this "place with a greater than lower case p," for it is the kind of place that Fosters Harmony.
Fostering Harmony is to a great extend modeling, demonstrating harmonious options in thought and behavior. In this way, demonstrated Harmony flows from ones own Harmony, an internal emotional storehouse from which one draws, and from there, out into the world in which we live. But you cannot go to the well of Harmony over and over again without depleting, to some extent, the supply. At least I cannot. People like Nelson Mandela seem to somehow possess an inexhaustible supply of personal Harmony, that enables them to make endless withdrawals while existing in horrible conditions. Most of us deplete our personal harmonic reserves far more swiftly; a realization that brings me back to a consideration of the value of places like my arboretum, "places" with something other than a lower case p.
The arboretum certainly cannot claim the breath-taking beauty of Monterey, but then few places in the world can. A fairer comparison can be found with the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. and the Morton Arboretum outside Chicago. I have visited both many times over the years, and they both boast more acres and a broader variety of plants than our local version. They also possess, in my mind, a fatal flaw - people. Lots and lots of people. Many of the young and unsupervised variety, barely beyond ankle-biters. Harmony serves as a shield against the inevitable friction that is generated when urban assumptions confront agrarian environments, but only with conscious effort.
On the other hand, I spent most of my time at the JA strolling in pleasant solitude, recalling earlier visits that never failed to replenish my inner stores of Harmony. I remembered anew that I used to come here to grade papers, back when they were actually papers, handed to me in manageable clusters of 20 or 30. I used to bring books, again made of actual paper, here and read them on benches secluded in bowers of extraordinary leaves and flowers. I would read, and doze, and write.
Today, as I stroll and gaze, I realize that Fall has found its way again to the South, and the arboretum reflects the changes. The deep greens and multi-hued blooms of summer have largely given way to cross-stitched hedges of straw-colored stalks still interrupted by an iris or late blooming rose; blooms that seem to have distilled the hues of an entire bush or bed into one last, outrageous, burst of color. Squirrels troll the leafy understory, plowing in search of the varied seed pods that will add spice to the leavings of winter's well-intentioned visitors who will ignore the signs and scatter nuts and popcorn along the pathways.
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