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An Uncloudy Day

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After a long January string of cloudy days, we awakened on Groundhog’s Day to an uncloudy day! From early morning until nightfall, the sun shone brightly on the snow from its angle in the azure blue sky. A whole day of sunlight after coveting peeks and partial showings through the cloudy days! It came with a price, though—the Arctic air that swooshed down from Canada. Not only was the air temperature at a nice round zero degrees, but a northwest wind flew in at seventeen mph making the wind chill more than 20 below. Ouch! I had a strong desire to be out in the sun, but the wind and brittle cold quickly turned my thinly-gloved fingers into icicles and stung my cheeks to rosy red.

But the sunlight was glorious! It lit up places between the trees that had been somber with grayness for weeks on end. I had almost forgotten about shadows! The contrast of bright sunshine on the snow and the blue shadows was sharp and telling. The shadows help show the story of where we are and what’s around us.

Out in the open, the snow was like the desert sand, sculpted and worn by the forces of wind. The blue shadows created their own designs.

A ‘mountaintop’ of snow has covered the roof for months. But even in the chilling temperatures of the Arctic blast, the sun’s strength and warmth begins the slow snow melt.

Winter in the North offers us an overabundance of conditions that challenge us to know who we are. How do we handle the uncontrollable cold and the harsh winds? What do we do with piles of snow and skids of ice? How do we integrate the cloudy stretches and the bright light and dark shadows? Where does it lead us? Where do we go?

After so many cloudy, gray days, the sunshine was so welcomed and wanted. Isn’t it funny how we miss the ordinary things when we are deprived of them for any length of time? Not so funny though—we are fickle humans who want what we want when we want it. But it behooves us to love our lives no matter if the sun is shining or the clouds have hovered over us for weeks or the Arctic winds blast our bodies with frigid cold. This is not to diminish the physiological and psychological benefits the sun can bring us, but a reminder that we each have the power to bring those benefits into our lives, no matter what is going on around us. So it helps to be aware of the grayness, of the blinding brightness, of the blue shadows, of the bone-deep chilliness, and to become cognizant of how we interact and deal with them all. And of course, I don’t just mean the weather.

Chasing the Sun

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I bought a Sting album a number of years ago because of one song—“Soul Cake.” I loved the traditional instruments, the Celtic sound, and the inference that cake could be good for one’s soul—“Any good thing to make us all merry.” I had never listened to anything by Sting before that. The album contains some Christmas carols, but I never listen to it until after Christmas, in the gray days of January. It is titled, “If on a Winter’s Night…” and explores the deep feelings and thoughts that the cold, gray Winter brings to our doorsteps. This year, after Mary’s death, the song that catches my heart’s attention is “The Hounds of Winter.”

“Mercury falling, I rise from my bed, Collect my thoughts together, I have to hold my head; It seems that she’s gone And somehow I am pinned By the Hounds of Winter Howling in the wind.” –Sting

Our goal last weekend was to find some sun—the gray, cloudy days had persisted and resisted any positive forecasts that promised a peek of the happy-maker. “If we go north, we should have some sun by about one o’clock,” I strategized, looking at the weather app. So we packed snacks and snowshoes and headed north to Crow Wing State Park near Brainerd. When we pulled into the cleared parking lot, there were no signs of dispersing clouds, let alone a peek of sunshine. Still hopeful, we strapped on our snowshoes and followed the Red River Oxcart Trail along the Mississippi River.

We were not far along on the trail when I saw a sliding track in the snow. Alternating footprints were on either side of the slide—River Otters had been having some fun in the snow!

Not only was the sun nowhere to be found, the gray sky made the snow look gray—only the darker gray trees interrupted the gray expanse of our visual world. It was stark. It bordered on bleak. The hounds of Winter.

Another Otter slide etched through the snow and disappeared over the edge of the high River bank—that would be an exciting slide! I shoed through the deep snow to peer over the bank and saw his slide trail go all the way across the ice to the open ribbon of water.

Despite the lack of sun, it was a good day for snowshoeing. The temperature was in the low teens, and as long as we kept moving, we stayed warm but not sweaty.

Another Otter slide started on one side of the trail on a little hill, crossed our trail, then zoomed down the River embankment after a little hiccup with a snow-embedded branch. Otters slide on their chest and bellies, and when gravity doesn’t pull them along, they push themselves along with their hind feet.

We stopped for some water and a snack as we looked out over the frozen Mississippi River at Chippewa Lookout, then circled back towards the Old Crow Wing townsite where we had begun our hike.

A circle of Lichens

The history of this park includes the sites of three different mission churches, including one from the Catholic Church, where now stands a small, granite chapel. As we snowshoed past the outdoor alter, the words “Hail Mary, full of grace” came to my mind.

We never found the Sun. The gray Hounds of Winter found us. After the initial shock of a loved one’s death, grief can harry us, like Sting says “the Hounds of Winter, they harry me down.” Everyday life has a different feel, even as there are times when a day’s routine takes our mind away from the bleakness. There are even moments of joy that penetrate the grief like a ray of sunshine. Imagining the otters sliding in the snow gave me that ray of happiness. There is something to be said for living in the grief, in the stark grayness. For in the midst of the gray grief is the reason why we even feel that way—love. With each step forward, the grief is acknowledged and integrated into our being. With each step forward, the love is remembered and held up in gratitude.

The Mystery of Life

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Three days after Chris’ sister’s death day we were confronted with Chris’ birth day. Not that we ever really know ‘what to do’ after the death of a loved one—with our distance from her, we had no physical busy-ness to attend to, and without an impending funeral, no travel plans. We were alone with our thoughts, our memories, and our sadness. And a birthday. It ‘should’ have been a celebration, and when the day arrived, we could not gather our energy enough to do…anything.

I’ve always liked to ‘know’ things—my curiosity naturally led to my studying science. Questions, experiments, data, knowledge. Human nature is just as intriguing to me as the nature of our world, albeit a bit more difficult to explain. But there are things in our world that remain as mysteries, and birth and death are two of them. We know quite a bit of the ‘mechanics’ of both, how babies are made and develop, and even the cellular signaling that takes place before labor begins, and we know the physical signs and signals of impending death. But so much of both of these life transitions falls into the realm of mystery. We cannot get the answers or even gather much data about either one because of the very ‘nature’ of the occurrence.

And then it occurred to me that many of the death days of my relatives fell within days of birth days of my kids—brother-in-law, dad, grandmother, and grandfather. Maybe December is a bad month for dying. Or maybe these mysteries were more linked than we know. But how does a person ‘celebrate’ a Happy Birth Day so close to a Sad Death Day? We did resign ourselves to our understandable low energy on Chris’ birthday, and we figured out a way to honor Mary and our sadness and to celebrate Chris the next day. With no surprise to anyone who reads this, we took to the woods. It was another beautiful snowy day, though some would argue with me about the beauty of yet another cloudy, gray day. We took our snowshoes up to Charles Lindbergh State Park, crossed the bridge, and began our trek through the quiet forest.

But first, we stopped on the bridge to gaze at the ‘ice art’ that had formed with ice and snow and open water. Black and white abstraction.

A snow-laden tree branch had leaned low over the creek and seemed to be a shelter place for animals, as the snow was packed with tracks.

The snowy, abstract creek path cut through the trees, providing life-sustaining water to the winter animals and beauty to the passers-by.

We were not the only ones on the midday trail that day—two young men wearing police vests snowshoed the circular trail, easily passing us with strong strides and pleasantries. We met a wizened old man in only a thin gray sweatshirt that exposed his bumpy, wrinkled neck. He stopped and talked about the young policemen and about his new snowshoes. He wouldn’t want to be a policeman these days and warned about all the drug dealers, even as the distinct smell of alcohol emanated from his body. He didn’t think his snowshoes were working the way they should. We politely tried to troubleshoot for him, but he insisted he would have to return them. Not our usual trail mates.

The silence of the snowy forest allowed us to just be as we needed to be. Sometimes we talked—about the wizened old man (kudos to him for getting out there with new snowshoes!), about the policemen (were they on duty?), about Mary (remember when…)—and sometimes we were as silent as the trees. Moving through the snow, working our muscles, helped integrate the musings, memories, and feelings. The questions, the sadness, the low energy, the longing for connection with those who were feeling the same feelings were all accepted, were all okay, were all confirmed and blessed by the Spirit of the Trees.

Towards the end of our hike, Chris noticed the sky was loosening up—patches of blue began to show. The sun eventually shone through the trees. Chris stopped and faced the low-lying sun, letting the winter-feeble warmth hit his face. It was just what he needed.

Abstraction is ‘the process of generalizing complex events in the real world to the concepts that underlie them.’ It’s not just about art. It’s about life. It’s about birth and about death. It’s about relationships and about ourselves. It’s about simplifying the dizzyingly complex issues that confront us in order to try to make sense of them and attain some peace. Nature is a nurturing domain that facilitates that process of sense-shaping and peace-making.

After our satisfying snowshoe hike, we warmed up at a cozy little restaurant in Little Falls that serves delicious food. We celebrated Chris’ birthday with burgers and carrot cake.

We managed to celebrate a birth day in the aftermath of a death day. I wouldn’t call it a Happy day, but it was a productive day, a satisfying day. There is mystery in death, in birth, in art, in creation, and in God. There is mystery in brokenness, in beauty, in ugliness, and in healing. There is mystery in how they are all connected. The simplified expression of them all just may be Love, which paradoxically may be the most complex entity of all.

Begin, Again, at the Beginning

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I wanted to begin the New Year at the beginning of the Mississippi River—it seemed like a wonderfully symbolic way to leave the old year behind and begin again with the new year. It was the antithesis of the Times Square chaos of people, noise, and celebration; it was the three of us—Chris, Emily, and me, it was unbelievably quiet, and the fiesta was a frolic in the frosty forest on snowshoes. We walked out of the old year and into the new year with hope and the renewal that comes from a flip of the calendar. It is like a universal ‘permission’ to lay down the things we no longer want to carry and an ‘encouragement’ to begin again. Little did we know on that day that in one week’s time we would have to ‘pick up’ what we did not want to carry and begin, again, with another round of January grief.

With the beginning of the Mississippi River is the start of the Great River Road—3,000 miles of National Scenic Byway that runs on both sides of the River at various places through ten states. Here at Itasca State Park is the beginning of the Great River Road; it is the same road we turn off from to get to our home in Sartell; it is the same road that goes through St. Paul where our son Aaron lives; it is the same road that goes through tiny Cassville, Wisconsin where Chris’ folks were born, raised, and buried; and it is the same road that goes through the metropolitan area of St. Louis, Missouri where a little girl named Mary Brake lived at the beginning of her life.

By our second day at Itasca—New Year’s Day—we were getting our bearings. It takes a while to do so when in a new place. It takes a while to do so when death impinges on our lives.

The Great Mississippi River begins at a pile of rocks where water flows from the North Arm of the wishbone-shaped Lake Itasca. It flows north for a time, then arcs east, southeast, southwest, then southeast again until it maintains its southward flow. It took a while for it to get its bearings, too, I guess.

What a fascination (or is it merely function?) we have for ‘crossing’ a creek, a stream, or a River. In the summertime, thousands of people cross the source of the Mississippi on the rocks or by wading in the shallow water. Not fifty yards downstream was a thick wooden plank placed across the mighty maiden river. I wasn’t the first to walk the snowy plank. A little ways down the trail was another bridge where I could see another bridge from which I saw a fourth bridge! I wonder how many bridges cross the 2,552 miles of great, winding River?!

And so it begins….

With our map, our bearings, a good night’s sleep, a wonderful cabin-cooked breakfast, and our enthusiasm for the New Year, we strapped on our snowshoes to follow the two-mile loop of Dr. Roberts Trail. It was narrow and ungroomed, a perfect snowshoe trail. The first stretch was on a boardwalk through a bog. Patches of tannin-orange and brown bog water showed through the snow, and even with its lazy flow, I wondered why it wasn’t frozen like the large Lake Itasca we walked beside.

Beard Lichen that had fallen from a tree

A boardwalk bridge lifted us to a little hill where the Old Timer’s Cabin overlooked the Lake. It was the first building project of the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) at Itasca, which began in December 1933. Also notable is the size of the logs—a cabin built with only four logs!

The trail followed the east arm of Lake Itasca and climbed a high ridge. The trees were ghostly with frost in the cloudy, foggy day.

Green Lichens and red Highbush Cranberry berries were almost shocking in their brilliant color compared to the vast white/gray/brown landscape we ‘shoed’ through.

After our climb to the ridge, we descended to a small lake about halfway around the loop. It looked wild and remote.

We continued to pass by giant White Pines, the ‘ancient’ ones in the diverse, frosted forest. It was a snowshoe hike that opened my lungs and strained my legs. When we stopped to rest, the snowy quiet bathed my senses, and it all felt so good.

Towards the end of the trail we saw this little snowman tree—an evergreen wrapped in a blanket of snow—surrounded by his young deciduous friends.

A cluster of Paper Birch trees epitomized our old year/new year weekend. The old Birch had wounds and peeling bark, layers of lichens and moss, and had lost the white luster of a young Birch. The young ones grew from the base of the elder and had been nourished by the extensive root system of the old one. Old and new ending and starting from the same place.

We ended our year in the same place we began our new year, and yet, it still had a different feel from one day to the next. The Mississippi River runs deep in the heart and soul of those who lived and died on and beside the River like Chris’ family had in the little village of Cassville. Chris feels it when he sees the River. My feelings about the River are more primitive, I think. I see it as life-giving water, a metaphoric trail of our life’s flowing journey, a barrier and boundary that stresses us in our quest to ‘move on,’ and a rich source of unbridled beauty. The Great River Road, complete with all its bridges, seems to be our human solution to encompass all of those things. I didn’t realize until I was writing how the The Great River Road, along with the flowing River, has connected our present living location to the Brake homeplace in Wisconsin and to the place where Chris’ only sister Mary began her life.

Mary was born with Down Syndrome, and in the mid-fifties, it was common practice for the medical community to recommend and facilitate the institutionalization of babies like Mary. She never came home from the hospital but was sent to a place on the other side of the state—by the Great River. Imagine the shock and trauma of every member of the family, especially for Mary and Chris’ Mom. Mary eventually returned to the west side of the state, closer to home, and she spent holidays and vacations with her parents and five brothers. Finally, with the social emergence of group homes, she had a real home to live and work in—she flourished at her vocational services job for thirty-seven years and built friendships with her cohorts and caregivers with her loving and outgoing personality. She was a joy to our family and to all who met her in so many ways. Mary’s life ended one week after the beginning of the New Year. She will be buried high on a hill that overlooks the Great River in Cassville. We will travel the The Great River Road to be there.

And thus, we begin, again, at the beginning of a New Year with hope and expectations. We also begin, again, at the beginning of another January of grief at the loss of a sibling, the same as we were just one year ago when Chris’ brother Jon died. But we aren’t really starting at the beginning—the slate does not get wiped clean—but it is a new beginning, nonetheless. Our grief over Mary’s death gets added to the grief over Jon’s death and brother Paul’s death, and Chris’ parents’ deaths, and my Dad’s December death seven years ago, along with the ongoing grief of broken relationships that have a deep river flowing through them with no bridge in sight. What does one do with such grief? It will take a while for us to get our bearings again, but we will. With each grief-filled experience, we have learned that we will get through it, even when the hurt feels unbearable. We have become resilient in a way that wasn’t planned or wanted. It has strained our hearts and made them stronger. It has opened our awareness to the tragedy, joy, heartbreak, goodness, chaos, and peace of living these lives we have been given. And every time we walk in the forest, we will be bathed in unbridled beauty and quiet, and it will all feel so good.

Walking Out of the Old Year

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It was particularly apparent to me this year—perhaps because we were staying the night at a cabin or because it was exceedingly quiet and contemplative: we were ending the old year at exactly the same spot that we were beginning the new year. Obvious, right? But we don’t often think of starting over or being a ‘new you’ or taking a ‘leap of faith’ as happening from the exact same place as ‘old ways’ or being ‘stuck’ or even ‘routine and repeat.’ But I actually liked the idea.

Chris and I, along with our daughter Emily from Texas, ventured to Itasca State Park on New Year’s Eve. It was cloudy, foggy, and frozen as we drove north and west. We checked into our two-room cabin, complete with indoor plumbing, and rented a pair of snowshoes for Emily. There were only half a dozen people or so who had had the same idea as we did. After unpacking, we set out to snowshoe a loop called Dr. Roberts Trail, but even with map in hand, we promptly ‘got lost’ and took a trail we later figured out was the Ozawindib Trail. There was so much snow and frozen haze, closed-down log cabin buildings, and new-place-disorientation that it took us some time and exploring to ‘get our bearings.’ The trail we found ourselves on had been groomed for cross-country skiing with snowshoeing on the sides. It was so very quiet that the noise of the snowshoes on the crisp snow seemed loud.

Itasca is the oldest state park in Minnesota (established in 1891) and protects over 32,500 acres of forests and lakes, including a large area of old-growth Red and White Pines. They have seen many decades of old years go and new years come in their long lives.

Even in the winter season, there is evidence of the sloughing of old ways—leaves, opened pine cones, and peeling birch bark—and the promise of new things to come—millions of tiny, protected buds of new growth.

We trekked to a larger road closed to vehicle traffic for the winter, and there we discovered Mary Lake, which helped us get our bearings, find our place on the map, and turn around when we saw we were nowhere near Dr. Roberts Trail.

Old growth forests have been protected from catastrophic disturbances such as logging or forest fires for over a hundred years and provide a complex biodiversity of plants and animals in all stages of development—from new life to maturing to declining.

We snowshoed back to the empty lodge area and followed a road past the fish-cleaning house, under a walking bridge, to a parking lot with a huge tour boat docked on land for the winter. We walked out onto the lake ice that was covered with deep snow, confident in our safety when we saw the ice road, ice houses, and trucks of ice fishermen.

We climbed a hill up to the walking bridge where we joined the trees mid-height for a different perspective far above the ground and close up to a colorful Red Pine.

Our first snowshoe trek was orienting and invigorating as we explored our surroundings, but we also had plans for a luminous walk that evening. We returned to the cabin for a toasty crockpot supper, rest, and warmer clothes. The illuminated walk was three-quarters of a mile around the Bear Paw Campground. The only vestiges of a campground were the snow-piled picnic tables that were occasionally seen in the background of the strings of lights, but even those looked uncommon and foreign in the foggy, frozen landscape. One young couple with a small child was finishing up their walk when we arrived; otherwise, we had the place to ourselves. It was so incredibly quiet and still. We stopped at various points along the trail, suspending our talk and halting our crunching footsteps to soak in the silence. It was a bit disorienting to be in the dark, in the frozen fog, and in the noiseless forest, but as time passed, it became more comfortable and peaceful. From far away, the lights looked contiguous, but as we walked, we realized there were sections of light and sections of dark. The illuminated spots were light enough to get us through the dark places.

photo by Emily
photo by Emily

That’s how the old year was—stretches of grief, heartache, and worry, then periods illuminated with joy, fun, and laughter. The dark times came from death, illness, and disharmony, and much of the illumination came from our grown-up children spending time and energy with us. At the end of an old year, we can honor the past, whether we considered it difficult or wonderful, for in reality, it is both. It is helpful to explore our interior landscapes in order to get our bearings after a disorienting event. Seeking and soaking in the silence can mute the noisy self-talk that often undermines our well-being, and we can return to peace. Winter strips away many of the distractions—the noisy and beautiful distractions—that sweep us up in the rest of the year. Allow the illuminated times to get you through the dark spaces, and allow the quiet and beauty of Winter to bring you peace as you walk out of the old year.

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.

Blessings and Crack-ups

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I know a blessing when it presents itself to my life, and I can even spot a few that are in disguise. I know how to count them, accept them, savor them, and be grateful for them. I’ve had a few plaques hanging on my walls over the years proclaiming the goodness of blessings and offering that sentiment to anyone who sees it. I am equally familiar with the crack-ups, the break-downs, the pile-ups, and the mishaps. No Thanksgiving or any other day, for that matter, has one without the other.

Last Sunday’s hike at Mississippi River County Park was chilly and windy. The temps had dropped into the teens the previous few nights, and ice had formed on the River in record time. (We had hiked at the park across the River two days before, and the River was open.) A layer of snow had fallen after the ice formed, and then the wind blew! The wind and current sent the River ice into a crack-up! There is a dam a couple of miles down river from the park where the water becomes still and full. When the water slows down, the ice forms more smoothly. At this stretch, the north winds stirred up the current and the chaos, breaking up the ice that formed overnight. The River was a mash-up of smooth ice, piles of chards, open, flowing water, ice floes, and ‘warm’ spots that had melted and re-froze. Does any of that feel familiar?

We left the River bank and followed the trail ‘inland.’ The trail had already been groomed for skiing, and ski tracks intermingled with the footprints of humans, dogs, and deer.

The bright sunlight filtered through the trees, lighting up the ‘snow arches’ of the bent trees that live incognito during the summer.

The backwater pond, even and shallow, had smooth ice with a layer of snow that revealed the tracks of some brave animals that had already ‘tested’ the ice. I wondered how they knew they could make it across.

The beaver has been busy felling trees. I have yet to see where his lodge is, and I wonder if he is new to the neighborhood. His industriousness is impressive! Chewing down the tree isn’t even the hardest part—‘cutting up’ and dragging the chunks of wood to his building spot is the most labor-intensive.

Living in this world has given me an appreciation for the blessings in my life. It also makes me realize that blessings befall us all—they are not just doled out to a favored few. The hardest part is being grateful, humble, helpful, and beneficial to others with the gifts that come our way. The more difficult learning curve of the decades is appreciating the crack-ups, downfalls, pile-ups, and break-downs. They also befall us all. We cannot eschew them if we want to abide in a more peaceful place. The hard part is not getting tangled up in the chaos and the destruction, though that is easier said than done. But slowing down smooths things out and soothes the pain of the inevitable crack-ups and break-downs. So take it all in and be thankful. Be still. Be full of love—for our beautiful Earth, for ourselves, and for others.

The Snow is not Finished With Us Yet

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When we are young, we are mostly oblivious to the things we carry or the burdens we bear. Not a child gets through childhood without shouldering the responsibilities or the feelings of someone else. It is so universally prevalent that I have come to accept this anomaly as the norm, even as I balk at the idea that that should be so. But to rail against something that ‘should not be’ when it is actually ‘the way of the world’ is plainly unproductive. My idealism gets covered over by realism.

I get a shiver of excitement when I rise in the morning, and as the light slowly wakes the day, I see the brightness of ‘snow light.’ The first substantial snow of the season fell early Monday morning and continued for the next couple of days. It was a slowly accumulating snow, lazy and small-flaked with the stingy, lingering drought. But the moisture–laden snow (thanks to the 30 degree temps) stuck to the trees, transforming the gray November to white. The sky remained cloudy and heavy when I walked the back trail—the snow was not finished with us yet.

As I walked, I noticed how the different plants ‘wore’ the snow. The stiff seedheads of the Yarrow flowers each had elaborate, conical headwear, like a fluffy ermine hat fit for royals.

The short needles of the Jack Pine trees held little cotton balls of snow and looked like they were wearing puffy coats….

but it was a different story for the tall Jack Pine that had died the year before. Brittle branches and old cones stiffly held the snow in long lines. Some things we carry are cozy and comfortable; others should be held at arm’s length or left to die.

A little Eastern Red Cedar tree almost disappeared under the blanket of snow, for its young, supple branches were able to carry the load.

The older Cedars, still sturdy and tough, drooped with the weight of it, but were also able to bear a tremendous load of snow. Some things we carry make us strong.

The Honeysuckles were clothed in an intricate maze of lacy white, each delicate branch outlined with snow. More pretty than heavy. Some things we carry help to make us beautiful.

On the trail, a newly-fallen Jack Pine partially blocked the way. Green and brown needles, old cones, new cones, and dying branches held up a canopy of snow. Some things we carry are ambiguous.

On the other side of the trail, small Sumac trees that had borne their first small flowers and fruits, were bent over from the weight of the seedhead and wore a crystal shawl. Some things we carry were ingrained at a very young age, yet protect us in a delicate way.

I was not the first creature to walk in the fresh snow—the deer had already made tracks down the trail (and through the yard). Their stealth visits are now recorded in snow, along with…

the wild turkeys…

and the squirrels, all of whom dig through the snow and leaf litter to find food. With snow and burdens come accountability.

The Red Oak leaves that cling to the branches for most of the Winter are cloaked in the contrasting snow. Some things we carry become the antithesis of who we want to be.

The burden of snow bent the branches over the trail, blocking the way. There was no way of passing without shaking the snow off the trees onto myself. Some things we carry block our pathway of life, covering us in ways that seem insurmountable. Part of the learning journey is figuring out how to shake it off.

Even the spikey Mullein seedheads sport the snowy attire. Unlikely solutions can present themselves to us when we least expect it.

It was truly a silent Winter wonderland for me and the creatures who had passed through the woods before me.

Each tree, structure, and plant held the snow in its own unique way.

Snow in the North is a way of life. I cannot help but smile when I see snowflakes drifting from the sky. It is still a child-like wonder to me. But there are plenty of distractors, disdainers, railers, and complainers. How do you ‘wear’ the snow? And how is the snow an analogy for the things we carry, the burdens we unwillingly bear? It doesn’t have to be ‘snow in the North’ that ‘shouldn’t be’ according to us—it can be ‘the government,’ ‘the libs,’ ‘MAGAs,’ ‘the church,’ ‘heathens,’ ‘the super wealthy,’ ‘poor people’—all a realistic, present, integral part of ‘the way of the world.’ We all have our own ‘scapegoats’ that bear the burden of our own burdens, knowingly or unknowingly. We want to shake them off onto somebody or something else. It seems easier that way. But the snow shows us our tracks. We are accountable to ourselves for the burdens we find draped across our shoulders and for the journeys we take in life. And that brings me back to my acceptance of the anomalies of life—those ‘out-of-the-normal’ norms. As prevalent as the struggle is for each and every one of us, I now regard it as our work—the spiritual work of our lives. It takes the pressure off of us in a way, while at the same time, our struggle-work becomes our very own—our power is not co-opted or controlled by the other person, the media, the government, the priest, boss, or partner. No need for scapegoats. It’s just me and Thee. We are beautiful and strong, and the snow is not finished with us yet.