Come walk with me in the peak Autumn beauty of the Northwoods. To say that I love this time of year is an understatement. Most everyone can appreciate the colorful falling leaves---it reveals the 'true self' of a tree when its leaves are no longer producing chlorophyll. Their true colors are revealed, and there is something simple … [Read More...]
Archives for May 2023
Heartwood
When we had a beautiful newborn child come into our lives in the mid-eighties, I remember laying her on the bed with a colorful, hand-crocheted baby blanket and taking her picture. I took the film photos of her on the same blanket once a week. By the time we actually got the film developed and saw the pictures, it was astounding how much she had changed each week in those early months of her life! That is how the last six weeks of Spring have been—an astounding transformation from remnants of snow on the winter-desiccated landscape to fully leaved-out trees, green grass, and blooming flowers! Both are sure signs of the miraculous metamorphoses of Life!
Two weeks ago, on Mother’s Day, I was happy to visit Afton State Park with our son Aaron and his girlfriend Zoe. The park is a short drive to the east of Saint Paul on the Saint Croix River. My first impression was that it was ‘crowded’ with people, as are most of the parks that are easily accessible from the Cities. It had been a cloudy, misty morning, but skies were beginning to clear by the time we arrived. The Saint Croix River is an indomitable body of water that marks the eastern border of Minnesota for part of its length and joins with the Mississippi River not far south of Afton State Park. Afton is one of five state parks that preserves the wild beauty of the Saint Croix River bluffs. We followed the North River Trail, an old railroad bed that followed the River. From the built-up height and railroad bridges, we looked down on the flood waters that crept through the trees and housed dozens of waterfowl.
The leaves of the trees were fresh and light green in their annual coming out celebration. Going from bare branches to abundant, distinctly-shaped leaves covering those branches is a Spring miracle that never fails to amaze me!
Looking over the bridge into the rippling flood waters and tree reflections was a bit disorienting.
The flood plain and riverside are perfect places for Eastern Cottonwood trees to grow tall in height and large in girth. They love having their roots so close to the water.
If my first observation of the park was an abundance of people, my second was the absence of Spring wildflowers compared to the central Minnesota parks. We saw these delightful variegated ferns emerging and found a few clumps of golden-starred Puccoons, along with some white-flowered Rue Anemone, but that was about it.
Green was the color of the day, however, and after a long, white Winter, it is a welcomed change. The flooding and movement of the River had created sandbars, pools of water, and piles of debris. The receding water left patterns in the sand, mats of old vegetation, and opportunities for new spikes of green grass. And isn’t it amazing that along with new leaves, some trees have flowered and fruited already? Winged Maple seeds had flown from their new places on the branches to the sand below.
We left the riverside and began to climb the bluff on the switchback trail that led us up to the top. We saw the distinct, pocketed cap of Yellow Morel mushrooms, the most hunted wild mushroom, I would guess.
Close by was another mushroom, colorful and cute, that I should have taken a closer look at (as in the underside), because it is probably either a Golden Chanterelle (edible and desirable) or a Jack-o-Lantern mushroom (toxic). The Jack-o-Lantern has distinct gills on the underside and has a green bioluminescence when fresh! They glow in the dark—well named!
I also loved this bark palette of blue and green lichens. Mother Nature’s beautiful art.
We climbed past a stand of Red Pines and saw a broken branch that perfectly illustrates why the innermost, oldest part of a trunk or branch of a tree is called heartwood.
At the top of the bluff was an overlook of the Saint Croix River and a backpack campground. It is where the little baby I took pictures of in our old home in Missouri, camped with her college friends.
A bright flower-of-a-bird, the American Goldfinch, flitted from tree to tree, and sitting near the top of a dead tree was a Sharp-shinned Hawk watching the passers-by.
When we returned to the trail where we began, the sky had cleared and reflected blue on the water. There was even change in a couple of hours!
Spring brings constant changes, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, as Mother Nature transforms from dormancy to vibrancy. It is exciting to see the new leaves, plants, fungi, and flowers return. Mother’s Day is a reminder to me of the pregnancy days, the baby days (and nights), those fun-filled elementary days, the incredible growth of personhood in the middle and high school days—how fast they all go! Then the winged children fly away to college and beyond, to different states, different jobs, and different loves. Mother’s Day is now bittersweet for me—I no longer see the daily, weekly, monthly growth of my dear adult children. I can no longer take the weekly photos to stash those memories—not having those reflections is disorienting at times. I cherish the time I get to be with them and mourn the ‘childless’ holidays. I can only hope that they have loved having their roots grow from mine and that they have learned to appreciate Mother Nature’s art and miraculous science. And as they change and I change, I hope they know the love of my heartwood grows with them.
Threading the Needle
This spring I participated in a Lenten book study at our church on conflict. The book was ‘Redeeming Conflict’ by Ann M. Garrido. As a conflict-averse person, it felt a little like stepping into the flame (okay, make that the fire). It was not at all comfortable or familiar to me, (but isn’t that what the Lenten season is supposed to be?) As a middle-child peacekeeper, I would much rather everybody just all get along, and then we wouldn’t even need this book or have these difficult conversations! The premise of the book is similar in that people may think there isn’t conflict in churches—that everybody all gets along in Christian love—but the author and the pastor who led our class knowingly pointed that out as a fallacy. Both also argued that conflict could be a ‘good thing!’ (Anybody else feeling uncomfortable?)
As a scientist, the subject of conflict was never on my list of classes. I readily believed that science is science is life—there are ideas (hypotheses), methods, protocols, experiments, data, results, and always those tentative conclusions with ‘further study is needed.’ There could be disagreement on the integrity of the hypothesis or the methodology, but it just meant that things needed to be honed and adjusted. And that there would always be more experiments! (I would like to acknowledge my naivete on conflict-free science with due respect to those of you who know that I am wrong about that.) As uncomfortable as the book topic was, it was also fascinating to me! I was stepping into a new universe of awareness. One of my favorite parts of the book was the idea that we tend to conflate the problem with the person we are having the problem with—the problem then becomes the other person or the other side, as in politics. Blame is a cheap and easy way to inflict pain and not take care of the issue. But we can step out of that by identifying the problem (which is often the hard part) and standing side by side with the person in unity to solve the problem. (I have shared this fascinating concept with a dozen people…and now all of you…in my enthusiasm that this should change the world!) But how do we thread that needle?
Last Sunday Chris and I went up to Crow Wing State Park by Brainerd. Most of the parks by major rivers in the state are still dealing with flooding, and when we checked the website, it said the south trails and the Red River Oxcart trail were impassable. We hadn’t been on the north trails for quite a while, so we set out to do that. We parked at the campground that had recently opened and headed north. The needle-like, green-as-can-be Sedge grass was blooming, as were the Bloodroots with their protective capes of curled leaves. Both are perennial pioneers of Spring.
After following the ridge for a ways, we began to descend the hill towards the Mississippi River….and found that our trail had ended in the floodwaters. This was a problem even the bridge couldn’t resolve.
We backtracked, then took a trail by the River that led to the boat launch. Another Spring pioneer, Prairie Buttercup, shone its little ray of sunshine in the brown leaf litter.
The River was full (of course, out of its banks), but the current had slowed from the fury of the tumultuous ice and snow melt. The puffy white clouds and the dark tree shadows were reflected on the water.
And then we got to the boat launch and parking lot. Both were full of water.
We backtracked again. We talked about how the River looked fairly calm, and suddenly Chris said, “Let’s walk out on that log.”
My first reaction was “You can do that” and then I looked more closely at the fallen tree the rushing water had unmoored.
At the base of the tree was a Garter snake stretched out in a patch of sunlight. The wind was cool from the northwest, so we were all enjoying the sun!
We tried another trail from the campground that connected to the Paul Bunyan State Bike Trail. We successfully navigated a low spot that had wetlands on either side. The Spring Peepers were singing loud and strong—it sounded like a million of them! But I could not spot a single one of the singers as I zoomed and scanned the marsh.
We hiked on the bike trail up on the ridge for a little while but knew we wouldn’t be able to loop around on the trail by the River, so once again we turned around. The valley below held the flood waters that spanned a half a mile or so from the bridge we couldn’t cross.
We took a trail that ran parallel to the flood waters to see how far we could go. Willow blossoms were perches for Red-winged Blackbirds, and trees that literally could not stand another flooding tipped and fell into the water.
Then in the brush of Willows, Red-twigged Dogwoods, and old, exploded Cattails, I saw the ‘eye of the needle’ embodied in a fallen log and its reflection. Anyone who has threaded lots of needles would recognize that shape.
The valley was vast when viewed from the reflections of the flood waters—it was another natural place that accepted the extra Spring water from the Mississippi River. I wondered how many places along the 2,340 miles of the Mighty Mississippi have been the overflow areas for all these millennia.
We hiked up the ridge cross-country to the campground when the trail became covered with water.
We drove to the south trails parking lot to see what the River was doing there. It is where the Crow Wing River meets the Mississippi River as they merge around the island of Crow Wing.
This convergence of high water from two rivers takes over the lowlands on the peninsula that is circled by the Red River Oxcart Trail. The trails were blocked in two directions, not far from the old townsite.
But the waters had receded from their highest mark, leaving behind a mat of debris.
So we headed for higher ground again, above the old townsite, above the flood waters, into a peaceful, sun-dappled pine forest. It seemed like a good place to stop and rest and breathe in the wonderful pine smell.
Threading the needle, besides the literal meaning, is defined as skillfully navigating between conflicting forces or interests; to find harmony or strike a balance; to find a path through opposing views. In football and other sports, it means throwing or hitting a ball through a narrow gap, all of which take an abundant amount of practice and dedication. On our hike, we were trying to find a path through the woods but were stymied in almost every direction by Mother Nature’s floodwaters. Even the bridge of connection had been washed away. Sometimes the power differential determines the path (and therein lies much of ‘the problem’). Conflict is the same way, despite my desire for fairness and mutual cooperation in identifying and solving a problem. Redeeming conflict may not work with those who have no desire for redemption. In facing the flood, we backtracked and tried again and again. We took the high ground to find peace for ourselves. We were happy with our day regardless of the setbacks. Redemption is the act of making something better or more acceptable. We can all do conflict better when we know better and dedicate ourselves to harmony. We can be perennial pioneers pushing towards a better life with our protective capes, sunny faces, and the ever powerful grace and mercy of God.
The Motion of Balance
Balance. It’s one of those things we are constantly striving for in all aspects of our lives, whether we are aware of it or not. Our physiology is perfectly attuned to balance or homeostasis, always adjusting on the cellular and systemic level to bring our bodies ‘back in balance.’ We know the physical act of balancing (like standing on one foot) is good for our brains, muscle strength, coordination, and stability, and is linked to a longer life. Most of us aspire to a more optimal work–life balance, active–sleep balance, and doing for others–doing for ourselves balance. Our lives are really a great balancing act!
In Minnesota this year (and most), the seasonal scales are tipped towards Winter. We’ve had snow on the ground for over five months. To be fair, late Autumn and early Spring are also the owners of below freezing temps and snowflakes, though most just call that Winter. Where there is balance, there is also a continuum. Two weeks ago, we hiked at Sibley State Park on a trail we hadn’t been on before. We began on the short Pondview Trail, circling a shallow lake, wetland, and clearing. In the middle of the pond was a fresh mound of wetland vegetation with a Canada Goose standing on one leg on top of it. His neck was twisted over his back, and his bill was tucked under his wing. He stood that way for longer than we hiked around the pond, and I marveled at his balance. Herons, shorebirds, ducks, geese, gulls, and even some hawks stand on one leg at times. It is thought to be for thermoregulation—to prevent the loss of body heat from the unfeathered legs. Yet that doesn’t explain why flamingos, who live in warm climates, are often posed on one leg, but scientists speculate they can conserve energy with that stance.
Other waterfowl were more energized by the sunlight and warmer temps—a pair of Wood ducks swam along the reeds, then flew away from the intruding hikers. A pair of Mallards cared little for who was circling their pond as they were busy feeding in a constant bob of bottoms up.
As we left the wetland area, we began to see the primary trees that inhabited this woodland—tall, stately Cedars and spreading Oaks, along with scatters of Aspens on the sunny fringes. We walked in honor of Arbor Day that would be celebrated later that week. We walked as tree-lovers, tree-planters, tree-caretakers. Chris is nearing fifty years of working with trees as his career!
As we walked farther into the forest, snow still covered the trail in places. Turkey tracks looked like arrows pointing us in the opposite direction in which they walked. Coming and going. Back and forth. The motion of balance.
We passed by an old Cedar with branches flowing down to the ground. On such an old tree, the lower branches often die back with lack of sunlight. Its sturdy trunk with flared roots as large as legs and its drooping branches created a shelter of sorts that I’m sure was used by some critters during the long, snowy Winter.
We spotted an old rock foundation in the woods and followed a well-marked! deer trail to an old homestead, complete with the rocky remains of a cellar. The forest was reclaiming what once ‘belonged’ to man.
Much later down the trail, we saw where an old Oak had literally claimed an enamel vestige of the homestead.
The trail was a wonderful combination of sunny Oak stands and shadowy, snowy Cedar stands. It is a bit unusual to see such large Cedars as a significant portion of a forest. Unusual and wonderful.
Two bright spots on the hike were a yellow, lichen-covered stick and a Snowy Egret perched in the dried reeds of the wetland.
And towards the end of the trail was a moss-marked tree that resolutely confirmed our tree-loving hike!
Walking among the trees, those great, grounded, balanced beings, is an act of balance, a balancing act(ion). There is motion in balance—one way, then the other. We usually know when we or thee are too far to one side—when things are out-of-whack. It takes considerable energy to maintain such an unnatural stance, and the cost to the organism or system is great. A balancing act can be a move (how about ‘tree pose’ or ‘flamingo pose’?), a behavior (like a hike in the forest), service (to people or our Earth), work (oh-so-many kinds), or pretend (our imaginative, fun side). It takes time and energy to ‘right’ ourselves, but once a more natural balance is achieved, life is easier again. We are ‘in the flow’ of life. The motion of our balance is measured and easy, like a tree swaying in the breeze.