001 - Exploring Structures, Just A Single Part
bog bridges, boardwalks, and puncheon
welcome to 001
Structure: a complex system considered from the point of view of the whole rather than of any single part.1
I believe many of us need to better understand structure. Not the organize your day sort of structure, that is scheduling.
Consider the interlocking pieces that form the border of a puzzle. That frame is a structure. So are the innies and sockets2 of each individual puzzle piece that make up the edge. Likewise, are the pieces that connect each interior piece to another. The whole might be 1000 individual pieces but, might it too be one piece?
With that in mind, welcome to 001 – Exploring Structures, Just A Single Part. Let’s investigate this idea.
decking planks
Last summer, a gentleman who owns a big house with a view of Lake Champlain, tore up the planks and deck where chairs sat, and people rested with oversized views. For $100, the property owner encouraged anyone who would pay the fee, to take as many of the boards that could fit into a pick-up truck. My husband filled the bed of his truck with 135 four-foot-long pressure-treated boards he could recycle for projects.
On our property we have a section of walking path we call the Ghost Trail and another segment we refer to as the Brook Trail. Both are low-lying features. Vermont is that way. Its abundant rainfall saturates. Proof that Mother Nature likes the mossy and hummocky mix of marsh-cedar forest, flowing creeks, and beaver dammed ponds.
Many of the boards brought home were converted into bog bridges. Risers, when attached on the bottom of two or three of those recycled planks, raises the platform out of the wet pools. The drier path just wide enough for a single walker.
As sturdy structures, these boardwalks or puncheon, limit negotiating the boot stealing muddy holes that grow deeper and wider when trying to stay the trail. Construction enables a path to wiggle and wind its way through changing ecotones. One way to observe something other than my own feet, which truly need no supervision when I walk.
Most every day I walk these bog bridges. I slow my steps when the wood looks slick, speed up when the lumber looks dry, avoid all together when the snow is deep, and the planks are hidden. But always I find myself taking a moment to appreciate the secondhand planks, their sturdiness and support. I am grateful for the buoyancy of their structure. How this small addition to the land gives me moments to look beyond where I need to place a foot to instead observe nature’s subtle shifts. This week, instances when I touch the budding fern foliage, stare at the deep maroon of trillium, or stand to listen to the rancorous honks of geese in the pond. Sometimes day-to-day surprises grab my attention with dry feet. The round top of a mushroom just to the side near a downed log, scat of a bobcat that I must step over, or a tree uprooted from last night’s windstorm, its narrow trunk leaning over the walkway. Building on the connections of where I walk, I also wonder what else might travel this planked path. Maybe the raccoon I catch on the game camera each week or the momma bear with her cubs that pass this edge of the property to reach denser forest.
All this possibility from standing on the discarded planks recovered from a guy who wanted a newer deck to watch the water. His own form of observing nature. It does not matter that his structure is different but that we are both looking and witnessing.
explore structure, just a single part
Murky water surrounds. You can choose to stand on the structured safety of the decking planks or might you decide to dip your toe or brave the height of your muck boots to investigate a bit farther.
Your homework for this week is two-fold.
First, investigate your outdoor physical space. Look around, identify one structure which aids your observation of the outdoors. This can be a physical thing or an emotional feeling. Then, determine one structure you wish you had access to. Share in the comments what you find as a part of your exploration.
takeaways
Structures can be the action of building or constructing necessary pieces for a purposeful whole.
Structures can be the device to keep one afloat.
We can support our intention by determining what parts and parcels are already available and what needs to be acquired.
As to structures in my daily outdoor life, you mentioned it yourself. The daily walk through routine paths. This is not a scheduling exercise (I never schedule mine). It is a structure to body processes getting daily exercise. It is a structure to thought processes getting outside of the porthole view of inside a windowed house. It is a structure for mindfulness exercises.
As to the structure I would like to have access to outdoors? The structure of my 24 year old body. Like all structures, bodies need maintenance. Like all structures, bodies wear down, too, and it gets harder and harder to maintain and repair and keep them going until at some point we are forced through the brutal depreciation of RNA replication errors, oxidizing radiation and environmental damage to declare a total loss. For now I am keeping the structure in shape, but it would be easier if it were 40 years younger.