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Archives for November 2017

When I Breathe, I Thank a Tree

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“For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.”   –Martin Luther

Have you ever felt like you couldn’t breathe?  Whether from asthma, smoke, pneumonia, or fear, the strangling, helpless feeling of not being able to replenish the body with oxygen kicks us into survival mode.  The only thing that matters in that moment is to breathe.  The physiological processes of breathing, delivering oxygen to all cells of the body, and removing carbon dioxide waste are miraculous!  Just as miraculous are the processes of trees and other green plant materials taking our waste of carbon dioxide, using it to provide nutrients for themselves, and in turn, providing oxygen for us.  We and trees are partners in this thing called Life.

Our Black Friday consisted of heading to Warner Lake County Park, spending energy via leg muscles, and buying a great day at a bargain price.  It was unseasonably warm with sun and chances of passing showers, and we eagerly hit the trails.

The wooded trails were eclectic with areas of conifer and deciduous forests, which is common in this area of Minnesota.  One uncommon aspect of this park was the high population of mature Red Cedars that grew among the mighty Oaks and Pines.

A small walk-in campground area in the mixed forest seemed like an enticing place to camp.  Deciduous trees were like ghost trees among the evergreens.

The sun broke through the clouds and shone on the butterscotch bark of a Scotch Pine tree.

We walked on, and then this…

” And into the forest I go to lose my mind and find my soul.”  –John Muir

The tall Pines were mesmerizing as they swayed and whispered in the breeze.  Chris said this is the place to take a sleeping bag and spend the night!  Imagine lying on a bed of pine needles, safe in the bosom of Mother Earth.

Breathe.  One tree provides 260 pounds of oxygen a year, while absorbing more than 48 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  The burning of one gallon of non-ethanol gas produces 20 pounds of carbon dioxide.

After we left the Pine forest, we saw other interesting trees and a grove of Birches.

When we circled the lake, we looked across the ice-covered water to see the Pine forest rising above the other trees.

 

It is great fun to discover a Pine forest of such beauty and serenity.  I’m thankful someone created the park around the small lake and big trees.  The deciduous trees in our area are not contributing to the oxygen levels in the air we are breathing during their dormancy, and the evergreen trees have slowed their production of oxygen in their non-growing state.  But trees around the world are doing their part in their active, green growing state to provide us with what we need to breathe and to clean up and recycle what we do not need.  This is a world-wide endeavor.  Silver and gold, shopping and gifts, spending and gadgets are moot points if we do not have clean, oxygen-rich air to breathe.  Trees are our real treasures, if we rightly consider—their gift to us is the only thing that really matters.

 

Mystery and Gratitude

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“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature.  And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”                     –Max Planck, physicist

Mystery: anything that is kept secret or remains unexplained or unknown.  I’m not sure which is more mysterious—Nature or human nature.  I guess it’s because they are one in the same.  I drive Chris nuts sometimes with my wonderings: I wonder why they decided to put that there?  Why did you cut the vegetables that way?  Why in the world would people throw their trash out the window?  I wonder what happened to that tree?  Why do people have to be so mean?  I’m not making a judgment on his vegetable cutting—I just want to know the reasoning behind it, if there is one.  I’m curious, and I would like to understand the things I see and try to make sense of them.

My mystery thinking began this week after Chris put burlap around the Arborvitae.  It is no mystery that deer love Arborvitae and will devour a good-looking tree into a malformed eyesore in one short winter.  And thus, our very own mysterious Stonehenge, or Burlaphenge, rather.

I was also wondering why the leaves haven’t fallen off the Ninebarks, Lilacs, and Apple trees yet.  They are the later ones to drop their leaves, but after snows and hard freezes, they should be down.  But maybe that’s the exact reason they aren’t down—that it all came too early.

It is no mystery that November is grey and brown and kind of bleak looking.  The summer vibrancy of Hosta leaves fold and dissolve into nothing, like the water-doused wicked witch of the west (now that’s a mystery!).

But all is not bleak on the November front with the interesting seedheads of Goldenrod, Hydrangea, and Purple Coneflowers.

I was wondering, of all the logs we have used as ‘steps’ in our hilly woods, why the pileated woodpeckers have suddenly attacked this one.

There is one mystery that I never question—I just take it in with gratitude—the amazing sunsets!

 

How do we problem solve and make our world a better place?  First we have to be aware—we need to notice things, see things that are not working or are working beautifully, and get curious about it.  We also have to step outside ourselves, put our biases and prejudices aside, and look at the situation with new eyes.  We have to be our own third party.  (What a difficult thing to do, I know.)  Then we need to gather information and communicate—who are the experts and what do they say about this, what’s the data about this subject over time and many sources, where does this truly have an effect, when does a certain thing happen or in what situation, and then, the question of the mysterious why.  Does that sound too scientific or experimental?  Or like too much work?  My hypothesis is that we all do it all the time but leave out some of the important steps.  We make the results and conclusions fit the way we already think, slap our hands together, and exclaim, “Done. Well done.”  But what is the impact to ourselves and others if our conclusion is a lie or has only a thin line of convenient truth in it?  Are we willing to engage in dialogue about our conclusions?  A mystery is anything that is kept a secret or remains unexplained or unknown.  There are many things in life that should not remain a mystery—secrets that serve one and hurt others should be brought forth into the light of inquiry, examination, and illumination; unexplained conclusions that tout magnanimity but in essence do much harm should withstand a thorough and vigorous cross examination and accountability; and unknown things that we do not want to know should courageously be brought forth through the fences of resistance so we can stare them in the face, feel the full force and cost of their hidden, yet flawed power, and find relief and peace in finally knowing our truth.  So get curious, gather information, communicate, examine, be courageous, and for those things that are truly a mystery—like sunsets and the pure wonder of Nature (and probably even cutting vegetables)—have gratitude!

Nature and Nurture—Who We Are

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She was a listener from a very young age.  Her large brown eyes and beautiful, expressive face shone with excitement, cast woeful sadness, or conveyed a myriad of other emotions, all without the use of words.  In fact, she didn’t talk much at all early in life, even when I knew she knew how to do it.  Her older sister was a words person at a young age, and with her caring, intuitive spirit, she ‘interpreted’ for Anna.  It was apparent that Anna allowed it—she would look at Emily to answer, and I could see the approval in her eyes when Emily got it right.  I was never worried; I knew she would talk when she was ready.  And she did.  It was soon evident that she was an articulate auditory learner—she would be playing on the floor with toys and suddenly sing a complete jingle that she had heard on tv.  All of our kids were exposed to music from birth—classical music, fun Raffi songs, cultural songs and lullabies, my singing songs at bedtime, interactive song/story tapes and books (remember Abiyoyo?), along with the Emmylou and CCR records in our collection.  Anna showed a special affinity for all music and instruments—she loved the toy piano passed down from the cousins, she taught Aaron how to play the toy xylophone, we bought her a beautiful wooden zither for Christmas, and she would play songs for us—and this was all before she started school.

How do we become the persons we are born to be?  How do all creations end up where they are in order to do the work they are intended to do?

Why do the gold-leaved Cottonwoods and Willows prefer to grow with their roots near water instead of on an arid hilltop?

Do muskrats choose to live near the cattails in order to use them for food and building material or is it happenstance?

Rango’s herding instincts apply to cattle, geese, or people.  He enjoys his work and takes his job seriously.

And yet, the geese have their own sentries doing their job to keep an eye on him and us.

What makes one dog a herder and another a retriever?

What happens when opportunities for doing one’s work dry up or are never available to begin with?

We live and grow in this complex, multi-layered environment with synergism and competition, support and censure, dependence, independence, and interdependence.

 

We returned to Brookings to meet our grown-up listener and to hear her musical voice being presented as a flute solo at a faculty recital.  Anna is what she has always been and more—a listener, a lover of music and instruments, a composer, and a music scholar to name a few.  She learned to play the clarinet, sang and played in church, pleaded for piano lessons, began composing, participated in band and orchestra, learned to play many more instruments, went to music camps and on to college to major in composition.  She has written a book and is now in graduate school—all the while composing new music from her creative, brilliant inner being.  Doing what she was born to do.  Being who she was born to be.

We sat in the Performing Arts Center waiting for her piece to be performed.  It was the same place we had gone to school choral concerts.  It was the same room where we had sat in awe as Itzhak Perlman played his violin.  It was the same stage with the Fazioli grand piano where Anna recorded her first cd of compositions as Chris and the sound guy watched from the control room.  I proudly present Anna Brake’s composition performed by Dr. Tammy Evans Yonce.

Program Notes
“Oh Rapturous Hour! Is this Fulfilment?” is a monologue for flute.  The poem, “Fulfilment” by Harold Monro (1879-1932), serves as the skeleton for the contour and articulation for the music.  The romantic poem has intense emotional changes and the characterizations are key to this piece.  I use word painting throughout with techniques such as breath tone, whole tone scales, flutter-tonguing, trills, multiple staccato and key clicks to represent words or themes in the poem, such as wind, nature, laughter, etc.

Nature—our genes and innate gifts, the spirit of who we are when we enter this world.  Nurture—the complex, multi-layered environment we grow and develop in.  The interaction and synergy of Nature and Nurture form who we are.  Later, there are choices that steer us in certain directions, while at the very same time, happenstance—those things we have no control over—can change the course of our lives in an instant.  It takes a hardy soul to navigate it all.  That’s how we all do this thing called Life.

Call of the Wild Geese

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We were heading home again when we traveled through the storm.  The last time we were home was two Januarys ago for my Dad’s frigid funeral.  My body and soul love the prairie, the clear blue sky, and the call of the wild geese—all of which run down my nervous system like a calm stream and fill my soul’s cup to frothy fullness.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

–Mary Oliver

The cows have left my Mom’s pasture for the season, leaving behind the geese who gladly claim this domain as their own again.

They graze and lay on the cowpie-strewn grass, decorating it with their own little fertilizer pellets and down confetti, and loudly chatter to one another as we humans approach.

What is it about the prairie?  On the surface, it’s simple—sky and grassland.  Many travelers call it boring or lonely.  I think the prairie allows a person to see one’s Self.  It takes away the distractions of busyness and gives away freedom in its openness.  We ask ourselves the questions, “Who am I in relation to the expansive blue sky?”  “What is my place in this green, good Earth?”  Many aren’t ready for the questions or the answers, but the invitation is there.

Meanwhile, the geese have made the prairie their home.  Most will be traveling on to warmer lands for the winter; some will find open water and stay despite the cold.

Unlike most animals and birds, geese are at home on land, in the water, and in the air.  Wherever they are, they claim it for their own.

Meanwhile, the sun moves over the prairie, moves over the unnamed water…

…moves over the geese swimming in sunshine.

 

The geese have staked their claim in their temporary home, and they will carry that assurance and presence with them as they travel through the air to other lands and other lakes.  If only I had their assurance.

When I first read Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese poem, not that many years ago, tears welled up in my eyes with the first line.  “You do not have to be good.”  ‘Being good’ had been my internal mantra, motivator, manager, and ball and chain for a handful of decades.  And I had walked many a mile on my knees in self punishment for not being ‘good enough.’  Oliver was gently and with assurance stating that I don’t have to do that anymore.  I could lay down my black and white thinking that if I wasn’t ‘good,’ I was ‘bad.’  ‘Being good’ in this sense is not the intrinsic, God-given goodness we are all born with—it is the man-made, mind-made perfectionist roles and rules that society or family places upon us or that we place upon ourselves in order to get the love and attention we need.  Oliver was saying to just let my mammalian body be present and love what it loves.  I could decide, from my own inner, God-given goodness.  Oliver tempers any egoistic instructions with the fact that we are always in relationship with others—there is a give and take—tell me about your despair, your loves, your struggles, your joy, and then, I will tell you mine.  Built into that exchange is a container of safety—that we will be listened to, protected, believed, and beloved.  (Therein lies the grounds for betrayal.)  Then Oliver pulls us out of our little worlds to remind us of the big world.  In our despair, the world goes on.  In the midst of our struggles, the sun moves over the land and water.  In the energy of our joy, the wild geese call.  Not only are we in relationship with one another, we are in relationship with all of Nature!  The wild geese are calling to all of us announcing our place in the world—it is our job to claim it for our own.