Country Mouse, City Mouse

On Tuesday afternoon, I took a ride to New York, to visit my niece for her birthday. A drive that could have normally taken under two hours found me in the car for about four hours. Rain, traffic, construction and bad luck kept my car under 30 miles an hour for most of the journey. It was worth it----I love my niece, and her excitement to see me made it all worthwhile. (Plus, she deserved a few piggy backs and Auntie Em twirls...)

I realized, while driving, that in my local life here in NJ, I hardly ever experience traffic. When I do, it's usually linked to a slowdown because of deer in the road, or a tractor trying to make its way down a county road. On my way to work, I don't pass any traffic lights; although, my hunch is that in the next few years the stop sign at the intersection of crossroads for my hamlet will probably transform into at least a blinking yellow light. Here, I live in the most densely populated state--and the traffic is just not an issue. (With gas prices approaching $4, that's a good thing.)

I've always been interested in infrastructure. Although the view below (of Manhattan) isn't beautiful to me like the view of my stream, I appreciate the planning and science and math and social-research that went into making the city work. I've always said that if I didn't love people so much, I'd love to be the person who anaylses traffic patterns to figure out the locations and timings of traffic signals. There's a rhythm to the flow of people that just fascinates me. It's a music of its own!



I also like reminding myself to observe the structures around me. If you're interested in this, there's a great book, Outside Lies Magic, but John Stilgoe. It inspired me to look outside at the telephone wires, curbs, fences and other structures in our society to figure out their contexts and meanings.

Here's a structure that is not man-made; in fact, just about now, most of my friends and colleagues are growing very frustrated with the abundance of these gypsy moth caterpillars all over the school grounds!

Isn't it extraordinary how they congregate, then spread out and populate just about every crevice of a few select (doomed) trees? I've been watching one cocoon at school get bigger and bigger; you can see in this picture that there are the caterpillars inside AND outside. Do they sing like the mining dwarfs in Snow White? Do they communicate with one another? I'm curious! (And I don't want them to land in my hair. Ugh.)



Anyway, I called this post "Country Mouse, City Mouse" because when I was little, my sisters and I had a copy of the book pictured above and we read it often when we were up in our Vermont house. I don't know why I remember it so vividly, but it told the courtship of s country mouse and a city mouse, and had a recurrent line: "Is this the house of Mistress Mouse"? (I just noticed that it's the title, too!). I'm realizing this year that I am a mix of city and country mouse. Right now I live in the countryside, and yet I am different from a lot of the people who live near me because I appreciate the diversity, culture, hubbub, creativity and possibilities of the city. But when I go back to NY (even to the suburbs where I grew up), I am different because I yearn for green space, open fields, and parking that isn't parallel parking!

Well, those are my thoughts for today!