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The Perfect Christmas Tree

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Happy Winter!  Our longest dark day of the year is over, and we inch back towards the light.  But first, in this darkest time, we celebrate the Light that was born on Christmas Day.  Part of our celebration is finding the perfect Christmas tree—and by perfect, I mean purposefully found, joyfully brought back to our house, and lovingly decorated.  We go to Golden Nursery and Tree Farm, in business since 1958.  There are no sleigh rides with Santa, no hot chocolate or holiday goodies to buy—just the experience of walking out into the fir forest, crunching through the snow, to find the perfect tree.  With saw in hand, we walked under the old oak sentries standing guard over the young evergreens that will take years to grow into Christmas tree size.  We passed by an old ‘boneyard’ of tractors, snowmobiles, and specialized nursery equipment—a rusty, three-dimensional history of the tree farm.  We saw strips of standing corn and wondered if the available corn was enough deterrent to keep the deer from destroying the young trees.

The Balsam fir forest was lined with towering pines that must have been pioneers of the tree farm.  A light dusting of snow had turned the forest into a winter wonderland, and as we wandered through the rows, we wondered, “Which tree?”

Many of the trees were way too big—they had escaped the saw for decades beyond their prime size.  Some had been cut off chest high, taking the pyramid-shaped top and leaving a sprawling, bowl-shaped vesicle from which a branch grew from the side of the trunk into another Christmas-worthy tree!

Some of the trees were too small.  They had been carefully planted into a hole in the forest where a larger tree had been cut down.  Their development was fresh and promising.

We wandered for a long time—the cold nipped my toes and nose—but the forest was quiet and serene, peaceful and soothing.  Chris later joked with the tree man that if he charged by the hour, he would make more money from us.

Finally, we found one that was just right, though we still ‘topped’ it a bit, for what looks relatively small in the big forest will be large in the corner of the living room!

The perfect Christmas tree!  Natural, not sheared.  Fresh and pliant.  Fragrant with the heady smell of Balsam.

Chris sledded the tree gently over the snow, back to the shed where the tree man put it through the baler to wrap it up in twine.

Feel free to breathe deeply!  Breathe deeply to feel free!  The cycle and circle of life provided by a tree.

 

Finding the perfect Christmas tree is an experience in and of itself.  I derive great pleasure from the process.  It also evokes memories of Christmases past—when I was a child, when Chris and I were young newlyweds, when our kids were young, when the three of them, as adults, came to Golden Nursery with us—so many memories of the history of our Christmases.  But as we acknowledge and remember the past, we look at the present and give thanks for every breath we breathe (and also thank a tree!)  If we are old sentries, how are we looking out for the young ones in our midst?  If we are in the prime of our life, how are we serving our families and communities and the world at large?  If we are fresh and promising in our development, how do we plant goodness to keep our dreams alive and protected?

I wish you all a Merry Christmas.  I wish you purpose, joy, and love.  I wish you peace, serenity, and freedom with each breath you take.  And in this darkest time, I wish you Light.

The Bringer of Hope and Light

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“We live in a world of constant juxtaposition between joy that’s possible and pain that’s all too common.”   —Marianne Williamson

I have been burdened by pain lately.  Pain is a funny thing—it can be the physiological reaction to a purely physiological phenomenon—you burn your finger, and pain is the messenger that automatically pulls your finger from the heat source.  You don’t have to think about it.  Pain is your friend in this instance.  Emotional pain can also be ’embodied’—emotional anguish, especially prolonged, can sink into your tissues and find a vulnerable spot.  From there it calls out for attention with inflammation and pain.  Eventually it can wreak so much physical havoc that disease occurs.

I like the word ‘juxtaposition’—an act or instance of placing close together or side by side for comparison and contrast.  Artists consciously do it or use it all the time in their act of creating.  Nature and Nature with the influence of humans, create scenarios where side by side comparisons and contrasts are sometimes subtle, sometimes glaring, sometimes puzzling.  Human nature, as Marianne Williamson alludes to, is no less likely to contain a myriad of juxtapositions where we stand between two ideas or possibilities and have the power to choose.   

One of the most striking juxtapositions we encountered on our hike at Warner Lake County Park was the sandy swimming beach and the ice-covered lake water.  The sand extended up from the water into trees that would provide shade on a hot, summer day.  Benches were tucked under the trees for moms and dads to sit on while the kids built castles in the sand and splashed in the water.  But at this time of the year, the ice crawled up the beach, and instead of kids and castles in the sand, there were sticks and leaves.

Ripples in the sand, sculpted by wind and waves, are now preserved and displayed under a layer of clear ice.  From movement to stillness.

Most of the time we think of ice as relatively smooth, but the sheltered north side of Warner Lake had an intricate design etched into the ice.

The white brightness of a piece of birch bark lay among the brown, fallen leaves in the woods.  The postcard size and shape made me imagine that it was a harbinger of season’s greetings, a bringer of hope and light in the dark and ‘dead’ time of year.

One more puzzling juxtaposition we found at Warner Lake Park was a stairway in the middle of the woods.  Stairway to where?  The lure of the answer compelled me to climb the leaf-covered stairs.  At the top was….a parking lot!  From the top, it made perfect sense to have a stairway from the parking lot to the fishing pier, but from the bottom, it looked like a stairway to nowhere.

 

I took a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) class.  The program began at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center almost forty years ago as a way to empower patients with chronic pain and disease.  Six weeks into the program we had a retreat day with six hours of meditation, movement, and silence.  As I lay on my back on a mat during a body scan meditation, all I could think about was the pain in my back and how uncomfortable I was—silence and pain, breathing and pain, relaxation and pain.  MBSR teaches awareness and acceptance—including of pain, but I just wasn’t having it.  The pain was too big.  But as I stayed with it and gave it the attention of my breath, something shifted.  All of a sudden I felt deep gratitude for my body and for all it had been through over the decades.  The feeling of deep gratitude reached over to Chris for his love and loyalty to me through all those years.  The deep gratitude grew and enveloped our children and the rest of our families.  It spread over our teacher and the other people in the class who were challenged by this MBSR process in a myriad of ways.  And then….I felt joy!  The juxtaposition between pain and joy.  There I was—right in the middle of the two, right in the midst of them both.  And the pain lessened as the gratitude grew. 

We are each an intricate design of creation—our physical bodies are the most amazing living mechanisms, yet paired with our mind, emotions, and spirit, we transcend even our most abundant, far-reaching definition of ourselves.  If we become curious about the juxtapositions in our lives, curious about the pain, aware of our breathing, aware of connections, and accepting of where we are right this moment, we have a better chance to see our lives from the top of the stairs where things make perfect sense.  The Bringer of Hope and Light can suddenly appear and chase away our pain and darkness. 

Where is Your Winter Dwelling Place?

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“For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, for love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends.”

This prayer of thanks is attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson whose family celebrated an extended Thanksgiving with family, friends, feasting, and fun.  Shelter and sustenance.  Protection and nourishment.  Dwelling place and daily bread.

When Winter comes, the importance of shelter and sustenance is magnified, not only for humans but for all creatures.  Where are their dwelling places, and how do they get enough food to sustain them during the sometimes harsh conditions of snow-covered land and frigid temperatures?  On our Thanksgiving trek to Warner Lake County Park, we passed a corn field with a flock of Trumpeter Swans grazing on left-over corn kernels.  Their aquatic home is the Mississippi River, just miles north, where the warmth of a power plant keeps the River free from ice.  Some swans and geese stay here for the winter, while most migrate to warmer places in the south.  Do you migrate to a warm winter climate or hunker down in the frosty North in your toasty house?  Do you have a preferred ‘winter’ food?

Animal homes come in all forms.  We wondered what lived in these holes on the bank of a creek near Warner Lake.  The burrowed home among cedar tree roots gave the resident critter quick access to the water.  Where is your refuge from the elements?  What environment gives you security and happiness?

Pileated Woodpecker holes in trees provide protection and nourishment for these hard-hitting birds as they search for insects and construct (destruct) nest holes.  The holes they make in dead trees are often used for shelter by owls, bats, and pine martens.  What is the source of your livelihood?  How do you stay healthy?

As we walked through the pine forest on our trail, we saw little pathways of trampled-down pine needles diverging through the woods.  What paths do you travel in your daily life?

In the sandy mud by the creek, we spotted a Raccoon track.  Many of their meals are acquired in the water—crayfish, frogs, and insects.  Raccoons store fat through summer and fall and spend much of their winter asleep in a den made in a tree or fallen log.  How do you spend your winter?  What do you do in this season of rest?

How do animals find their winter dwelling places?  This tree probably had a small hole at its base, and some little creature has been working hard to make a home for itself.  Sawdust and wood shavings line the floor of the tiny cavern at the foot of the large, moss-covered tree.  Where is your dwelling place?

Life and nourishment are a little easier for the birds and squirrels who live close to our home.  This Black Squirrel and his friends come for a meal of black-oil sunflower seeds on a near-daily basis.  How do you ask for and receive your daily bread?

 

Our literal dwelling place may change completely in Winter, but most often the home we live in during the Summer is also our Winter home.  But there is a change—we are boarded up, bound up, and bundled up.  There is a quiet security in the dark evening with the fireplace crackling and throwing out heat, while a pot of soup on the stove sends out delicious smells of onions and herbs.  Rest and sleep seem to come easier with the longer night, and the morning light is welcomed and appreciated.  Nourishment is extended from food for our bodies to food for our souls.  Time for reading, meditation, prayers, and self-care is available if we make the decision and commitment to ourselves.  Time with friends is more about being than doing—tell me about your struggles, your joys, your sweet memories, and the dark burdens that may re-surface with the long, dark nights.  We can wrap it all up in a bundle of understanding, compassion, and forgiveness.  Our dwelling place can be Love.

Inhaling the Color

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When the kids were younger, we spent hours each day on art projects—finger paints, crayons, sidewalk chalk, markers, watercolors, acrylic paints at the Fisher-Price easel with stubby, color-coded brushes, and many more.  Emily was a visual learner and artist from a very young age.  She held a pencil correctly when she was one year old, she drew detailed pictures of our family, and she would come home from kindergarten and describe the color and style of clothes and shoes her teacher wore (fast forward to Stitch Fix!)  I can’t remember how old she was at the time, but she went through a period when she was coloring with crayons that she would put one in her mouth and pretend she was smoking.  When I gently admonished her for emulating smoking, she replied that they were special good rainbow ones with vitamins and fruit!  That memory was recently revived for her when she saw an ad for rainbow-colored personal essential oil diffusers—cylinder-shaped diffusers of essential oils that you inhale into your mouth and out your nose—just like her childhood idea!

Color is a scarce commodity in Nature as late Fall morphs into Winter.  Our Thanksgiving weekend hike at Warner Lake County Park was devoid of much color, but we were able to find some interesting hues by looking closely at the gray-brown landscape.  Red berries of a woodland perennial persisted among the pine needles.  Red-violet branches of Red-twigged Dogwood brightened the lake shore, and scarlet berries of a Viburnum looked enticing against the sleepy gray background.

Rusty orange leaves cling to the understory Ironwood trees through most of the winter, making them easy to identify.  Bittersweet vines produce vibrant red-orange berries perfect for Fall decoration.

Happy yellow-gold seedheads remain from a prolific-blooming wildflower.  Golden stands of grass lined the ice-covered Warner Lake.

Healthy green moss covered a fallen tree, outlining the upended roots and trunk.  A fallen cluster of green pine needles, thanks to a nibbling squirrel, intertwined with the brown needles that were shed earlier in the season.

The hiking day began with blue skies and active, fluffy clouds of white before a front of gray clouds and sprinkles covered the cerulean.  A few days later the day ended with a rainbow-colored sunset painted on the western easel of sky.

 

One of the gifts of Winter, when the landscape is devoid of color, is the simplification of sight.  With the leaves gone, the structure and essence of a tree is obvious.  There are less things to look at—no flowers or colors to capture our attention for a second before it moves to the next thing.  Time seems to slow a bit.  The things that do capture our attention are worth noting and examining.  Late Fall and Winter open up the opportunity to look closely at ourselves—what is our structure and essence?  What is the understory of our life that has been covered up with the exuberance of Spring and Summer and that is now easier to identify?  How do we outline a healthy life?  How do we intertwine the old parts of ourselves that need to be shed with the green, growing parts that need to be expressed?  The season of my life when the kids were young was busy, fun, full of laughter, love, and creativity—an exuberant, colorful Spring!  Emily taught me that we can look at things differently, that we can re-create a negative into a positive, that we can breathe in the special healing rainbow goodness of Life.