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Archives for December 2022

Black and White Wonderland

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“If one more person says ‘Winter Wonderland’….” and he trailed off to silence. I knew the frustration he was feeling—we had been through this for years. I am that person who happily calls this snowy scenario a ‘Winter Wonderland.’ But this was the third day in a row of substantial snow, ice, and sometimes rain—as beautiful as it was, it was also extremely messy and difficult to ‘remove’ from all the places that need to be cleared on a college campus. The snow was heavy, laden with moisture as temperatures hovered for days and nights around the freezing mark. Chris gets up long before the five o’clock hour in order to be on the road—sometimes plunging through unplowed snow, other times following snow plows—to get to work. Then he bundles up to get in the snow removal machine and begins to clear the sidewalks. He and his two full-time workers have a carefully planned ‘execution map’ of their routes. The student workers are taking their finals or have already left for home, so the hand-shoveling gets pushed back on the to-do list. Sometimes the equipment breaks down, and sometimes people all over campus are emailing him to tell him about slippery spots. Welcome to Winter.

Before I worked on our own long driveway of snow removal, I walked out into the black and white Winter Wonderland world. The sky was dark gray and large crystalline flakes fell slowly and softly on the already heavily–flocked trees. It was so incredibly silent. And it felt good—we hardly notice how we are inundated with noise for most of our waking hours and for the toll it takes on our nervous system. Silence is a gift from Mother Nature. But in the midst of the snowing Winter Wonderland was the reality of a black and white world—black tree trunks and branches covered in white snow, black evergreen trees wearing coats of white, the gray sky and white ground.

Our vision and perception of what we see in the world is so fascinating to me. In physiology we learn that the retina in our eyes contains specialized cells called rods and others called cones. We are taught that rods are for night vision—they distinguish size, shape, and brightness but do not perceive color. Cones are for day vision, are highly concentrated in the central part of the retina, and distinguish fine details and all the colors we see. Black and white functions, right? Except why do our retinas contain 91 million rods and only 4.5 million cones when we are basically diurnal animals? What are our rods doing on a day like this one when what we ‘see’ looks black and white?

We do see the size and shape of an Elm tree with its fine, lacy branches…

and how these young, squat Jack Pines covered in snow look like toddlers in snowsuits…

and how the flexible branches of a Paper Birch bend and bow under the weight of the wet snow.

One has to look closely to notice any detail in the black and white snow globe. The snow obscures most of the defining features we see in the other seasons.

Black and white thinking is an ‘easy’ way of thinking. Things are right or wrong, good or bad, helpful or unhelpful. I’m a pro at it. (And notice I did it with the word ‘easy.’) It’s actually an immature way of thinking that we all go through in our development. As we grow, our developing brains are better able to detect nuances, comparisons, contrasts, subtleties, ‘gray areas,’ diversity, patterns, details, and connections—the ‘cone-like’ qualities. (This is what good education teaches us.) But as ‘mature’ as we are in our adult, educated brains, when we are emotionally triggered by unprocessed traumas and wounds, we revert back to our ‘rod-like’, child-like, black and white thinking. Our primitive reptilian brain takes over—it is ’91 million’ strong compared to our ‘4.5 million’ pre-frontal cortex. We are complex and wonderfully made creatures with both rods and cones, with both limbic and cortical regions of the brain, with both immature and mature skills and qualities. But we do not have to be at the ‘whim’ of our triggering emotions—we can use Mother Nature’s gift of silence to calm our bodies and brains in order to notice details, to see all the colors of our situation, and to know that two opposing things can be true (and okay) at the same time. We’ve had a beautiful Winter Wonderland week and a really messy, difficult, time-consuming clean-up. Welcome to Winter and Life!

Addition and Subtraction

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Have you seen that commercial where the man is stoically and rather cheerfully walking around with a enormous bear trap on his foot? It will be alright, he says. No big deal. He can handle it… Well, I can relate. Stoicism has its merits, including self-discipline and perseverance, but it can also become ridiculous. There seems to be a fine line between stoicism and self-inflicted suffering, and I have walked that line. I have also voluntarily veered into the suffering field and set up camp there. In fact, I was pretty comfortable in my suffering. But not anymore. I see the bear trap I’ve been dragging along on my foot—it’s heavy, and it hurts, and there’s no reason for it anymore.

So I have made a decision to subtract some things from my life, starting with that bear trap. I am taking away a few things I dearly love and fervently believe in, but I have realized that I can get so wrapped up in them that I neglect other things I should be paying attention to. My decision-making took long swaths of time and lots of angsty jumping back and forth across the line—should I or shouldn’t I? The process became as long suffering as my stoic self. But I finally feel like I’ve shaken some things off, and I’ve got to say, it feels….strange and rather exhilarating (in a stoic kind of way.)

Saturday was a day right on the line of freezing, give or take a degree or two. The air was heavy with humidity—at times it sputtered as snow, other times a misty sprinkle. Would we add snow or subtract it with rain? We hiked at the Little Elk area—it was a pretty spot where the Little Elk River opened up and flowed into the Mississippi River. But now both Rivers were iced over—the shallow parts had strong–enough ice for sleds and tent houses used for ice fishing. Each cold day and night adds ice. Each day above freezing deteriorates it.

Large White Pines and Oaks lined the River trail, along with little patches of prairie grasses in open areas.

For a pretty picture: just add mushrooms and a cap of snow!

We soon saw evidence that a beaver had been busy subtracting the number of standing trees along the River, and I wondered if the slushy footprints belonged to him.

I think beavers must be stoics considering their impossibly hard job of gnawing trees down in order to build their homes and make their dams. Try, try again and again and again. Perseverance and self-discipline.

As we followed the River, I began to wonder how many beavers were actually working in the area, especially when we got to this (de)construction site. Many of the trees were young Oaks—very hard wood to chew through, but what a sturdy structure they will make!

As in any forest, time, weather, insects, and diseases can subtract the number of large trees that make up the forest. Their loss is impactful. Their death and downing makes a cracking, crashing wail of letting go of what was a beautiful, productive life.

And yet, as those old beauties die, the young ones are sprouting up to take their place. Subtraction and addition.

At a point by a curve in the River was a fenced-in area that had been excavated by an archeologist in the 1980’s and 90’s. He found three dwellings of a French fort from the mid 1700’s. The area is listed with the National Register of Historic Places as the oldest European outpost in the Mississippi River headwaters region.

Logs were floated down this section of the River back in the logging days of late 1800’s/early 1900’s to local saw mills. Log jams were common and would take weeks or even months to clear. Interestingly, some of the logs sunk, caused a jam that didn’t get cleared, and created an island over the years! Addition of islands!

We left the River trail and circled into the Pine forest that followed a ridge. Red Pines joined the old White Pines, both towering above our heads. It was such a good feeling to be walking among them!

Nature is all about addition and subtraction. Birth and death. New things and old, failing things. Mother Nature also shows us how old things can be transformed into new things—downed trees into a new island! Humans seem to resist these natural transitions and transformations. At least I do. But when one is closer to the cracking, crashing wail of the end of life than to the sprouting vigor of a newborn, it is easier to let go of the things that feel like subtractions to our lives. Why carry around the heavy things just because we can? I know that I am strong enough, persistent enough, and disciplined enough—all good qualities of stoicism. But I also want to add loving enough (to myself), empowered enough, and peaceful enough. Subtraction and addition—it’s simple math.

The Way It Should Be

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My prejudice about these particular trees has been with me now for almost three years. I wrote about them in a February 2020 post, “I co-exist along with them, messy or not, ugly or not, worthy-in-my-mind or not.” I literally stare at them every morning and evening when I sit down at our table to eat. They have always been ‘not right.’ Like the Sesame Street song (modified), “Four of these things are not like the others, four of these things just don’t belong…” I don’t know who planted the Lombardy Poplars—their one ‘redeeming?’ factor is they grow quickly—up to six feet a year, so they are used for a fast screen or wind break. Neither of those reasons seem relevant here. These tall, columnar trees are native to Italy, so they do have a place in the world. The most fascinating thing about them is the word that describes how the branches grow more or less parallel to the main trunk—fastigiate. But they are messy (branches die and fall easily), ugly, and not so worthy in my mind. They are short-lived and very susceptible to pests and diseases, especially fungal diseases in more humid climates, and they have a shallow, wide-spreading root system that throws up suckers anywhere along that route, making them invasive and terrible for any kind of drainage system, including septic systems. So you won’t be surprised to hear that I was not sad at all when the trees started dying last year. As the last one put out some leaves this Spring, then slowly withered and died, I was already contemplating their removal. But Summer and most of Fall slid by without me gathering the troops to help bring them down…until the perfect solution…Thanksgiving!

I baked and cooked all day on Thanksgiving—rolls, pies, cranberry sauce, croutons, gravy, etc. and prepared for our Friday feast, and Chris lined up chainsaws, safety glasses, ear protection, and rakes out on the garage floor. I was much more excited for the after-dinner activities than a person really should be, considering it was a holiday!

Our Thanksgiving meal was wonderful, and I dangled dessert like a carrot on a stick for ‘afterwards.’ Our son Aaron and his talented, professional chainsaw instructor of a partner Zoe, along with my brother Scott and his partner Kris were our co-workers on the felling of the Lombardys. The chainsaw wizards felled the tall trees with precision, saving all the young Pines growing in their midst. Clean-up was swift and fun with six purposeful people and gratefully, two young and strong bodies to carry logs. I was happy.

As we commented about how much better it looked with the Lombardys gone, I anticipated that the neighborhood deer would be very curious about the change to their territory. Sure enough, the evening after, the little herd showed up. First two, then three, then four….

They munched on the brush in the pile, the one pile that may have had some semi-tender green branches from the last live-ish tree. Then they wandered one-by-one through the trees to the stumps and checked them out.

From the southeast, a young buck emerged from the trees, watching the others munching and exploring, then watching me when he saw me through the window. He wasn’t concerned. He took his turn through the trees, noticing the changes to their wandering grounds.

So now my view is the ‘way it should be.’ The native Pines are growing and will soon fill in the gaps left by the big Lombardy Poplars. They will not be missed.

I am not the only person who is so prejudiced against Lombardy Poplars. Michael Dirr, the author of the tree bible ‘Manual of Woody Landscape Plants’ wryly writes, “if anyone plants poplars they deserve the disasters which automatically ensue.” So maybe prejudice is not the correct word since there are plenty of valid reasons for the rejection of this tree, especially in Minnesota’s northland. We have our own native poplars—Quaking Aspens, Big-toothed Aspens, and Eastern Cottonwoods. They grow and flourish among the evergreens.

When something seems ‘not right,’ we owe it to ourselves to investigate that feeling. Do we carry a bias or a prejudice that is invalid or erroneous? Do we feel that way because others around us feel that way or impel us by their words? Do we really know what we’re talking about? Experience, facts, and reason are valid ways we navigate our inquiries—whether that’s all the downfalls of a species of tree, the actual workings of an election system, or the character of our neighbors. Anyway around it, the Lombardy Poplars lost.