View from a cabin in the Maine woods where the author of "Was It Hard, Our Year in the Woods? Yes and No" installed a game camera on a tree last October. This week's Poetry Pairing matches W.S. Merwin's poem "To the Light of September" with "Was It Hard, Our Year in the Woods? Yes and No," a Green blog post about a year living "off the grid" in Maine. The poet Edward Hirsch has described the poems of the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner W.S. Merwin as "concerned not only with what to renounce in the metropolis but also what to preserve in the country." Mr. Merwin, whose writing is often connected to nature and the environment, has noted that "The world is still here there is a need to pay attention to the things around us while they are still around us." To the Light of September By W.S. Merwin When you are already here you appear to be only a name that tells of you whether you are present or not and for now it seems as though you are still summer still the high familiar endless summer yet with a glint of bronze in the chill mornings and the late yellow petals of the mullein fluttering on the stalks that lean over their broken shadows across the cracked ground but they all know that you have come the seed heads of the sage the whispering birds with nowhere to hide you to keep you for later you who fly with them you who are neither before nor after you who arrive with blue plums that have fallen through the night perfect in the dew In the blog post "Was It Hard, Our Year in the Woods? Yes and No," Craig Leisher shares his observations on, among other things, the changing of seasons: When our nearest neighbors in Maine (two miles away) saw us for the first time after the winter, they said, "Oh, you're still here." I wasn't sure if it was a statement or a question, but I was sure that many doubted our ability to cope with the shift from a suburban New Jersey life to an off-the-grid cabin in the woods of Maine for a year. Toilet problem and broken ankle aside, our year in the woods has not been that hard. Many parents who want to spend a year living someplace spectacularly beautiful, introducing their kids to the natural world and enjoying the pleasures of rural life could do what we did. Firewood hauling and snow shoveling were the hardest physical parts. Stuck in the cabin during an ice storm was the hardest mental part (at least for me). We had four seasons of different challenges, but all were surmountable with patience, a cellphone on which we could call friends for advice and a big toolbox. The longer-term benefits are not yet clear, but the near-term ones are. The view just outside the cabin never failed to inspire and energize me. It was as good as two extra cups of coffee a day. We are even closer as a family, and our three boys play together for hours now. All of the boys have become good readers, and the outdoor lives of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn finally seem believable. The community in the small town nearby advised us at every turn, and we now appreciate the importance of community more than we did in our suburban lives. Our carbon footprint over the year, however, remained much higher in Maine than in New Jersey because we drove far more this year than last year, even excluding the trip from New Jersey to Maine and back. In Maine, we produced about 14.2 equivalent tons of carbon dioxide this year, which is below the United States average of 20.4 tons per household. But last year in New Jersey, we produced roughly 4.9 tons. Even with solar energy and burning wood for heat, which has a minimal carbon impact, our rural lives were more carbon-intensive than our suburban lives because of the additional driving. Yet our year in the Maine woods was closer to being environmentally sustainable than our suburban lives - and far more beautiful. If one has a job that can be done with high-speed Internet, a cellphone and the occasional airport trip, why not live at least one year someplace spectacularly beautiful? Rent the house, find a cabin in a stunning location, and make it happen. All it takes is a sense of adventure and a lot of patience. And a fearless approach to plumbing problems. To find more about the collaboration and see ideas for using any week's pairing for teaching and learning, read our introductory post, from 2010. Or read this year's first post to see what other teachers say about using the feature. W.S. Merwin's "To the Light of September" is from Poetry (September 2003).