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The Burning Houses of Our Lives

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I was mindlessly mowing on the John Deere a couple summers ago, listening to subpar country music on the headphones, when a song came on that instantly caught my attention.  It was haunting and beautiful, so unlike everything I had been listening to.  The song was ‘Burning House,’ and the singer was Camaron Ochs, known simply as Cam.  The song was written based on a dream she had had about a former boyfriend and how guilty she felt by the way she had treated him.

  “I had a dream about a burning house/ you were stuck inside/ I couldn’t get you out/ I lay beside you and pulled you close/ And the two of us went up in smoke”

During our December trip to Texas, we hiked through Bastrop State Park which had gone up in smoke on September 4, 2011, after months of drought and excessive heat.  It was the most destructive wildfire in state history, burning 32,400 acres, killing two people, and destroying 1,696 homes and businesses.  Ninety-six percent of Bastrop State Park was affected by the wildfire with thirty percent being intensely burned.

The Bastrop area is part of the Lost Pines ecosystem, the western most area of the United States where Loblolly Pines have grown for over 18,000 years.  Seven years after the fire, the destruction was still so evident—the missing trees, the standing ‘ghost’ trees, the charred wood, and the fallen logs.

Fire kills trees in two ways: by destroying the cambium or living tissue layer that is under the protective bark or by consuming or damaging the needles, leaves, or buds.  Ponderosa Pines and Western Larch are the most hardy trees when it comes to surviving a wildfire, which is dependent on the speed and intensity of the fire.

The 2011 Bastrop Complex Wildfire burned for 55 days.

This photo shows the various levels of damage, and the ridge gives us a visual of what the area previously looked like before the fire.

Another fire swept through the area in the fall of 2015—the Hidden Pines Fire.  We drove through that smoke-filled air when we went to Austin for our daughter’s wedding that October.  Eyeliner-black tree trunks define the destruction.

“I’ve been sleep walking/ Been wondering all night/ Trying to take what’s lost and broke/ And make it right”

To add insult to injury, on Memorial Day, 2015, after excessive rains, a dam on a 10-acre lake in the park failed and flooded this low-lying area.

We saw burnt trees that had acted like a snow fence, causing the roaring flood waters to dump the rocks on the downside of the tree.  (Erosion is an ongoing problem in the park as it tries to reestablish the lost forest.)

“Wish that we could go back in time/ I’d be the one you thought you’d find”

 

The Bastrop Fire of 2011 and the preceding drought was devastating for the park and surrounding community.  Trees that had taken multiple decades to grow were gone in a flash of fire.  Homes and businesses—gone.  Like the wildfires in California and other places around the world.  Hiking through the park on that warm December day was a bit haunting—the evidence of what once was stood stark against the blue sky, and the loss was a reality hard to grasp.  Even after seven years.  Just like the burning houses of our lives.  We find ourselves, or put ourselves, in a place that is going up in flames—guilt licks at our ankles, confusion fuels the fire, indifference smothers the air from our lungs.  “I’ve been sleepwalking/ Too close to the fire”  Our protective bark is breached, and the fire gets to our living tissue and causes us pain and death of what once was.  We wish we could go back in time, but everything has changed.

On Friday, sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland about Climate Change.  She said, “But I don’t want your hope….I want you to act as you would in a crisis.  I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is.”

We’ve been sleepwalking—in the living emotional areas of our lives, in the political and financial arenas of the world, and in the very real existential crisis that we face with climate change.  How do we take what’s lost and broke and make it right?

 

 

‘Burning House’ lyrics written by Jeff Bhasker, Tyler Johnson, and Camaron Ochs

The Influencer and Her Dreams

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My special cause, the one that alerts my interest and quickens the pace of my life, is to preserve the wildflowers and native plants that define the regions of our land—to encourage and promote their use in appropriate areas, and thus help pass on to generations in waiting the quiet joys and satisfactions I have known since my childhood.  –Lady Bird Johnson

Lady Bird Johnson, wife of our 36th President Lyndon B. Johnson, along with actress Helen Hayes founded the National Wildflower Research Center in 1982 on 60 acres of land in East Austin, Texas.  It moved to its present location in southwest Austin in 1995 and now includes 284 acres of native trees and plants, Texas architecture, a family garden dedicated to nature play for children, and thousands of species of insects, butterflies, birds, and mammals.  It also has numerous art installations like this rock and glass sculpture glowing in the sunlight in front of luminous grasses.

The Wildflower Center has a rain collection system that is capable of storing 68,500 gallons of water!  Rock pillars have an aqueduct on top to bring rainwater to the round cistern at the entrance.

We climbed the Observation Tower, a brown sandstone landmark that offers spectacular views from the top, a seating area midway up with green roof, and is itself a 5,000-gallon rainwater cistern.

The Woodland Garden—and many other areas of the Center—was lined with luminaries for their winter light festival.

As we followed the stream, Emily noticed a snake slithering alongside of us.  He crossed the stream to the other side, and then I noticed the name of the tree he crawled under: Eve’s Necklace, a small tree with compound leaves, clusters of pink pea-like flowers, and fruits of a slender string of shiny, black beads that contain the seeds.

The environment is where we all meet; where we all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share. It is not only a mirror of ourselves, but a focusing lens on what we can become.  –Lady Bird Johnson

We marveled at all the structures and fences that were made from cedar posts and poles and at the trees and plants that were so unfamiliar to us.  We came across some Texas versions of familiar species—Bushy Bluestem and Mexican Buckeye.

As we entered the Woodland Trail, we heard chimes long before we saw where the sound was coming from.  It was a windy day, so the music in the woods was loud and boisterous!  Three or four trees along the trail had the large wind chimes dangling from their bare branches.

Sculptures of woodland creatures lined the trail, almost as surprising as if we had met a live one.

My heart found its home long ago in the beauty, mystery, order and disorder of the flowering earth.  –Lady Bird Johnson

Lady Bird Johnson grew up in East Texas but was captivated by the fields of Bluebonnets she saw when she flew to Austin in 1930—and by the tall Texan named Lyndon Johnson.  Seedling Bluebonnets grew all along the trail—what a spectacular sight they must be in the spring!

Prickly Pear cactus is everywhere in and around Austin—the wild, spiny kind with bulbous red fruits and the spineless, landscape varieties.

Hello, Armadillo!  (Would love to see one ‘in person.’)

I loved the Century Plants!

Dinosaur Creek flowed from a waterfall and pond to these tributaries.

Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them.  –Lady Bird Johnson

The children’s nature play area was fun and adventurous—we didn’t see many children since it was a school day, so we explored by our adult selves.

I first heard the word stumpery just this year when we watched a British garden show—apparently they are popular and originated in England.  This stumpery at the Wildflower Center is for children to climb on.

A line of Arizona Cypress trees were covered with colorful Christmas balls with a tree skirt of yuccas.

A rendezvous-like fort area was missing just one thing—the kids!

Beautification is far more than a matter of cosmetics.  For me, it describes the whole effort to bring the natural world and the man-made world into harmony; to bring order, usefulness — delight — to our whole environment, and that of course only begins with trees and flowers and landscaping.  –Lady Bird Johnson

This beautiful little tree is called Huisache or Sweet Acacia.  It’s often multi-stemmed, has feather-like leaves, fragrant bright orange flowers in spherical clusters, and small, brown seedpods.  They categorize it as semi-evergreen, which is new to me.  It was strange to come to Austin in December and see some of the trees still holding on to their green leaves while others had dropped their leaves.

Two seasonally festive trees and shrubs with red berries dotted the landscape of the gardens—one, the Possumhaw tree and the other, Yaupon, shown below.  Both are types of holly.  The Yaupon shrub is evergreen, and the leaves were used by Native Americans as a drink in purging rituals, thus its name Ilex vomitoria.  It is now known that the tea made from the leaves does not cause vomiting.  Good thing!  I have some in my cupboard!  It is the only native North American plant that contains caffeine, and it is rich in polyphenols just like tea and coffee.

For the bounty of nature is also one of the deep needs of man.  –Lady Bird Johnson

 

Long before Instagram there was a shy, young Texas girl who became a powerful influencer.  Her dream and intention of conservation and beautification took her from Karnack, Texas, to Austin, to the White House, and back to Austin.  She was the major influence for the 1965 Highway Beautification Act and many other environmental bills during her husband’s administration.  She joined the President’s War on Poverty by founding Head Start with Sargent Shriver.  She was the business owner of an Austin broadcasting company.  She was a major influencer in the development of the Town Lake Trail in Austin, and urged The Nature Conservancy to buy Enchanted Rock so it would be preserved for all to see.  She dreamed of a research center for conservation, native plants, and wildflowers and made it happen!  The environment—the land, the people we surround ourselves with, the things we say and do—is where we all meet and greatly influences who and what we become.  As Lady Bird said of children, so it is with all people—we are likely to live up (or down) to what is believed of us by leaders, influencers, authorities, and loved ones.  Lady Bird Johnson’s website says of her:  She was bold.  She was compassionate.  She was visionary.  She was an adventurer.  She was generous.  She believed in the power of healthy landscapes to transform lives.  #BELIKELADYBIRD  

 

The Partnership of Art Between Kelly and Nature

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The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.  –Michelangelo

From Kansas City we flew to Austin, Texas, home to our first-born and her husband.  It had been three years since we were there for their wedding, and we were all excited to do more exploring of this city and landscape that had captured their hearts.  One bright, sunny morning we drove to the University of Texas campus where the Blanton Museum of Art stands in grand Texas style.  Our destination was the recently completed standing work of art and architecture by Ellsworth Kelly, appropriately entitled ‘Austin.’  The artist gifted the design concept to the Blanton in 2015 before his death, and it was completed in 2018.  Kelly was enamored by the architecture of cathedrals in Paris when stationed there in World War II.  The structure is shaped like a cross, igloo-like with curved roof lines and brilliant white exterior.

The south, east, and west sides of the building are adorned with colored glass windows—the ‘color grid’ at the entrance, ‘tumbling squares’ on the east face…

…and ‘starburst’ on the west.

The shining white exterior is covered in 1,569 limestone panels from Alicante, Spain—each block a story and work of art in and of itself.

The entrance door is made from native Texas Live Oak, repurposed from some other life.  I like how the metal handle is burnished from expectant hands reaching for entry.

Once inside, I was shocked by how empty it was, though I don’t really know what I was expecting.  Straight ahead was the fourth, north-facing arm of the cross, and nestled in the curve of that arm rose a totem made of Redwood logged in the nineteenth century and reclaimed from the bottom of a riverbed.  New life and rich patina from a century-old, forgotten log of a beautiful Redwood tree!

The colored glass windows were made from handblown glass by Franz Mayer of Munich.  The ‘color grid’ was a theme used by Ellsworth Kelly in much of his other art…

…as was the spectrum of colors used in the east and west windows, reminiscent of refracted light through a glass prism or millions of drops of water that creates a rainbow.  The outside light directed the colors onto the interior ceiling and walls…

…and even reached over to its opposite window to reflect yellow on purple, blue on red, and pink on blue.

The ‘starburst’ was my favorite, here along with two of my favorite people.

The real partnership of art between Kelly and Nature morphed into being when the sun shone directly through the ‘color grid’ windows onto the walls, onto the floor, and onto the black and white relief panels that line the walls.  The panels are made from marble—the white marble sourced from Carrara, Italy where Michelangelo chose his stone and the black from a quarry in Belgium.  Kelly, a life-long atheist, conceived the fourteen panels as abstract versions of the Catholic Stations of the Cross.

The black and white non-colors represent something basic and elemental and often oppositional, such as light and dark or good and evil.

The floor of ‘Austin’ is black granite from the state of Georgia.  The sun-shining colors illuminate the dark stone with a rich, almost neon effect.  Whatever the time of day, the art, the picture of color on granite or marble, changes, morphs, and becomes new again.

 

Artists and Nature have been partnering for eons—from cave dwellers with pigments made from minerals, charcoal, and limestone mixed with spit or animal fats to Native people with dyes made from barks, leaves, and flowers to Michelangelo with his huge blocks of marble. (“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”)  Nature has been the inspiration, the means, or the medium for practically every artist.  Ellsworth Kelly’s ‘Austin’ displays the rocks, wood, and rainbow colors in a simple, naturally elegant, and compelling way.  He envisioned his work of art as a site for joy and contemplation—the same qualities that Nature or a chapel offers to all of us.  What happens to us when we immerse ourselves in art of some form or in Nature?  What parts of ourselves do we consciously disown yet display in full sight through our art?  I think art offers us a reflection of the rich patina of our lives, complete with the building blocks that have pieced us together—each a story and work of art, in and of itself.  Each one of us is a refracted ray of light from divine perfection that shatters into some unique color, and together we partner to create a true work of art.

Art in Nature

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There are two people in my life that know Art (with a capital A) in a way that my ignorant and scientific mind will never be able to fathom.  I don’t ‘know’ it or ‘get’ it, but I try, by association, to appreciate it at some level.  One of those people is my sister-in-law Julie.  She has worked as a docent at the Nelson Art Museum in Kansas City for decades, and her home is full of amazing art that is strange and foreign to my untraveled, untrained mind and eye.  But there is something that links me to her taste and ability in the arts—Nature.  She is also a skillful gardener, talented designer, and Nature-lover.  Her whole backyard is a garden of delights with unique plant material, beautiful design, interesting sculptures and urns, and unprecedented plant pairings, yet looks natural and artfully wild all at the same time.  We were fortunate to spend a couple of days with Chris’ brother and Julie, and they took us to the Overland Park Arboretum and Botanical Gardens on the western outskirts of Kansas City.  The day was warm with a crisp breeze—warm compared to the snow we had left in Minnesota, and crisp enough to need a jacket and hat.

The first wonder that greeted us was the strange, unique protuberances under a Bald Cypress tree.  Thanks to Chris, our intrepid tree man, we learned these were cypress knees.  The knees grow up from the roots of the Bald Cypress tree and have been the wonder of botanists for centuries.  Bald Cypress trees are deciduous conifers (like our Northern Larch or Tamarack) that typically grow in swamps where the roots are waterlogged for at least part of the year.  Some have theorized the knees provide the roots with air for gas exchange; others proclaim them to be structural to keep the shallow root system strong, and the tree upright.  They are one of Nature’s wondrous mysteries!

Our next surprise was Monet painting at the edge of the pond!  The French Impressionist painter Claude Monet was an advocate for plein air painting—in the open air—in order to capture the lighting at different times of the day and the colors during different seasons of the year.

We encountered a trio of Lacebarks as we strolled along the winter paths—Lacebark Elm, Lacebark Oak, and Lacebark Pine—all with interesting, exfoliating works-of-art bark.

Alight and rest for a moment on a dragonfly bench!

High in a Sycamore tree sat a hawk who seemed unconcerned with the passersby below.  The American Sycamore grows stately and tall and holds its seed clusters most of the winter, like tiny balls decorating the bare tree for the holidays.

We walked through a tall, metal gate that fenced the deer out of the Gardens and entered the dry, wooded swales, a low-lying area by Wolf Creek where Cottonwood and Sycamore trees grew into giants.  Flooded creek waters had washed the soil away from the roots of nearby trees creating tangled works of art.

One common workhorse of a tree in the mid-plains is the Osage Orange or Hedge Apple tree.  The Osage Indians made superior bows from the tough, flexible wood.  The yellow wood resists rot, burns hot, and is used for fence posts and railroad ties.  The trees themselves were used for living fences before barbed wire was widely available and less expensive—the low branching trees with strong, sharp thorns grew ‘horse-high, bull-strong, and pig-tight’ as a hedge.  The yellow wood extends into the roots…

…and the large yellow-green hedge ball or fruit ball contains a messy, milky sap that is supposed to repel insects and spiders.

We returned to the Gardens through another high gate after our hike through the woods and found ourselves on the Sculpture Garden trail.  Elaborately pieced fairy houses—miniature natural architecture with colorful trinkets and stones—were placed at intervals along the trail.

Beautiful sculptures were tucked into the trees along the paved path, a melding of Art and Nature.

 

Like Monet, I appreciated the colors of the winter season at the Arboretum and Botanical Gardens—the muted green grass, the rusty oak leaves, the ice-blue sky and water, and the honey-colored hydrangea blooms.  A painting in the making.  I love how Mother Nature is the ultimate artist—the color and form in the feathers of a bird, the patterns and designs in the bark of a tree, the making and dispersal of seeds, and the color and contour of the inner characteristics of a tree.  I liked the juxtaposition of whimsical, woodsy fairy houses made from the materials that surrounded them with the bold concrete and metal sculptures that had found their new homes among the trees.  I am thankful for the time we had with family and friends on our trip south.  There is something sacred and life-giving in sharing space, time, food, laughter, perspective, ideas, and talents.  It’s what links us together on the wondrous, mysterious journey of Life.

New Year’s Day—Not in Texas Anymore

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As I awoke on this New Year’s Day, it was very apparent that we weren’t in Texas anymore!  The temperature was six degrees below zero, and snow, beautiful snow, covered the ground with a nice, thick blanket!  We had been gone for seventeen days visiting family and friends in Kansas City and Austin.  Seventeen days of real social time—no digital social media needed or wanted.  You know, just like the ‘old days.’

In the upcoming weeks, I will write about some of our outdoor adventures in the warmth of Kansas and Texas—so many amazing things to see, even in winter!  Until then, I want to wish you beautiful mornings and beginnings…

…abundance in all areas of your lives…

…and time with friends and loved ones around the campfire, around the dinner table, and out in Nature!  Happy New Year!