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Appreciating the Beauty and Wisdom of Nature

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Prairie Tough and Beautiful

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I was sitting in my circle of trees the other evening. The sun was low in the sky, not to be seen through all the layers of Pine trees. But I noticed that the tip-top of the tallest Aspen tree caught the twilight rays of the sun with a shining amber color. A slight breeze quivered the leaves in a soft song as the light faded away. So much of Nature is quiet and unassuming. She does her work without fanfare and most often without notice.

One of the places of Mother Nature that often goes unnoticed is the prairie. Travelers erroneously say ‘there’s nothing there’ or ‘it’s boring.’ I am a lover of prairies and will refute such talk. There is so much there! I am fortunate, not only to be surrounded by trees, but also to have a patch of prairie in the front yard. The soil is sandy and quickly dries, and whoever lives in my little prairie has to be tough. Quiet, unassuming grasses and wildflowers grow and thrive in the open, sunny spot.

One June-blooming wildflower that does garner some attention with its bright yellow-orange clusters of flowers is Hoary Puccoon. The roots were used by Native Americans to make a red dye.

A common prairie flower, one of the early bloomers, is Prairie Smoke. The bell-shaped flowers hang down, but after pollination, the stems straighten up, and the seed heads of feathery plumes form.

Pollinators are another quiet, most often unseen part of Nature that work hard and do important work. In essence, they provide the movement of male parts of the flower (pollen) to the female parts (stigma)—they help the process of fertilization so the fruits and seeds can develop. Pollinators include birds, bats, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, and most importantly bees.

Another June-blooming wildflower in our little prairie is Shell Leaf Penstemon. Its large lavender flowers whorl around a single stalk above the opposite, clasping leaves that hold rainwater like a small shell.

The flower tubes are large enough for bumblebees to crawl inside to perform their pollinator duties.

No prairie is complete without the tough, fragrant presence of Yarrow. The leaves are fern-like, as described by its species name, millefolium, meaning ‘thousand leaves.’ The flowers are flat-topped clusters of many tiny flowers, all ‘working’ together as one.

Evening Primroses do as their name says—bloom in the evenings! The stalk of flowers bloom from the bottom up, a few flowers at a time. They open in the evenings and wilt by noon of the next day. Sphinx moths pollinate them during the night, but I also see a small bee on one of the flowers.

Daisy Fleabane is another self-described name. It was used by pioneers in their beds to keep away fleas. The radiant daisy-like flowers (actually asters) bloom from Spring to Fall on leafless flower stems.

Once grown as a hay crop, this escaped plant now grows ‘wild.’ White Sweet Clover, along with its sister Yellow Sweet Clover, is a major source of nectar for the Honeybee to make honey. The genus name, Melilotus, is Greek for ‘honey.’ Can you see the bee?

A member of the Mustard family, Hoary Alyssum is an inconspicuous white-blooming wildflower common on the prairie. It pairs well with Hairy False Goldenaster—both are covered in downy white hairs (thus their names.)

June and July on my little prairie with grasses, wildflowers, silver sages, and pollinators! It is a diverse, ever-changing ecosystem full of tough, unique, and beautiful plants.

Prairie plants and their busy pollinators, in their quiet and unassuming way, remind me of all the front-line workers of this pandemic we are living through. The nurses, EMTs, police and fire workers, housekeepers, RTs, caretakers, doctors, funeral workers, grocery store workers, and all the other workers who risk their lives in order to take care of our needs. They do their work without fanfare and so often go unnoticed and under-appreciated. They are tough—they wear their masks all day long to keep the rest of us as safe as possible. Their work is hard, and it’s important. A thousand thanks to the tough, unique, and beautiful people on the front lines of this pandemic. You are the shining stars.

Our 20/20 Vision

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Anyone who needs glasses knows that a lens or two can make all the difference in the world. With contact lenses, a person can ‘look’ like they have 20/20 vision, even as the tiny lenses float on the cornea in front of each eye’s intrinsic lens. Then there are camera and binocular lenses, microscope and telescope lenses, and lenses in a lighthouse, each performing a specific function in order for us to see more clearly. Anything with a curved surface that is transparent—even a drop of water—can be a lens that focuses light.

Thursday evening I took my camera from the cooled inside of our house to the warm, humid patio to snap a picture of the nearly-full moon. The muggy, warm air fogged the lenses of my glasses and of the camera. I swiped away the moisture with my shirttail. The moon is intriguing, even in its cyclic sameness—a lunar body close to Earth that reflects the light of the far-away Sun. Even without a change in the camera apparatus, the color of the moon can look different from photo to photo—from a greenish tinge…

…to a rose tinge…

…to gray.

As I zoomed out for another shot, I noticed a faint circle of color around the moon. The colors changed and got brighter.

I realized that the rainbow colors around the moon were only seen through the camera lens—the humid air was condensing on the lens once again and fragmenting the moon light into its spectrum of colors!

Talk about intriguing! I was mesmerized with the colorful rainbow light around the beautiful nearly-full moon.

I was so distracted by the concentric circles of color that I ignored the mosquitoes landing on my skin.

Even though I knew the phenomenon was the result of the hot, humid weather, I believed in the vision of my rainbow moon.

I mean, look at these photographs, look through the camera, how can you not believe?! (The only thing better would be a unicorn flying by.)

What kind of lens do we look at the world and our lives through? Is something condensing on our lenses when we look at other people? I lived with rose-colored glasses for a good part of my life—it was a coping mechanism I unconsciously employed in an attempt to make me feel safe, to make it look like there were no bad things or bad people in the world. In contrast, there are many people wearing dark-colored glasses who see a certain kind of people as bad, who feel like bad things are happening all around them. Neither vision is the truth, but it is our truth that we see through our lenses. Our fogged up lenses distract us from the very real experiences and happenings of life—whether it’s rainbows, unicorns, monuments, or masks. The energy is fragmented, scattered to peripheral issues that pull us away from the painful reality right in front of us. It is a coping mechanism. We all want to feel safe. Deflect and deny. In truth, the painful reality we are most afraid of is not what is in front of us but what is inside of us.

We all have lenses through which we observe the world. Many are helpful and meaningful to our life’s work, to helping others, and to our relationships. But oftentimes we have a foggy lens—what we see isn’t reality. We need to clear that lens with a clean cotton shirttail. Focus the light on our hearts. Ask yourself, “What do I see in me?” Then the rainbows (as beautiful as they are) and the fear can fall away, and we can see the moon as it is. We can see individual people as they are (just like me in many ways.) We can see harmful situations and a way to make them better. We can want for others what we want for ourselves. It can make all the difference in the world.

We’re Just Like Birds

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After last week’s post about flying dreams, I realized I had an accumulation of photos of the ‘real flyers’—the ones who inspire us to take off, fly high, and soar on the wind—in our dreams and metaphorically in our lives. They go where we cannot go without the aid of a ‘big silver bird.’ They seem to have a freedom and a reach that us ‘grounded’ creatures can only wistfully watch and long for—oh, to be as free and majestic as the Eagle!

Bald Eagle

And yet, as I looked at the photos, I realized that maybe birds are more like us than we realize (or we like them?) They like to hang out with their family and friends, and life is good on the water.

Great Egrets

Some of them/us are loners—we don’t have mates or children or even many friends. We know how to be alone and how to be relatively okay with it. Inner life can take a higher priority than outer life.

Common Loon
Great Blue Heron

Birds have curiosity, like most of us. What do I see? What do I hear? What does that mean for me and others?

Male Eastern Bluebird

They also can be startled, intimidated, territorial, fearful, protective, bullying, and loud. Sound familiar?

Birds spend a huge portion of their time and energy doing the work of providing food for themselves and their families. It takes concentration and patience, know-how and skill, and very often we and they are rewarded for our efforts. But not always…it also takes tenacity and resilience to keep trying when the opportunity slips away.

Female Cardinal

Housing is a big issue—is this going to be a good place to raise our family? Look it over, try it on, envision our future, determine the safety, can we afford it? Let’s make a nest. Let’s raise a family.

Eastern Bluebirds
Tree Swallows

It takes an enormous amount of time, energy, fortitude, worms and bugs (and their for-human counterparts), sleeplessness (and sleep), learning, humbleness, mistakes, forgiveness, patience, and love to raise that family from infancy to independence. The birds have a compacted time frame in which to do so, yet they do it time and time again in each yearly cycle of their life span. They raise their children to fly. They teach them how to find their own food, to stay safe, to expand their knowledge. They teach them to be curious and wary, adventurous and prudent. They protect them the best they can.

Brown Thrasher and baby

They try to ward off those who would take advantage of their young ones with a fierce look and a strong beak.

They are observant and alert.

They model behavior, good and bad, with and without intent and consciousness.

They are proud of their fledglings.

And they love them.

Birds don’t spend most of their time in unfettered freedom, soaring the skies for fun and pleasure. They spend their time doing the day-to-day things that we do—working for food, shelter, and a place to raise young ones, and they use their innate tool of being able to fly in doing so. Maybe we aren’t so different from birds. Perhaps our freedom and reach extend along the ground we humbly inhabit instead of the heavens—to our families and friends, to the ones in solitude, and to the children in our lives. Maybe we are like the eagles—majestic and free.

Flying Dreams

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Love it seems, made flying dreams, so hearts could soar. Heaven sent, these wings were meant to prove once more, that love is the key. Love is the key. —‘Flying Dreams’ written by Jerrald Goldsmith and Paul Williams

I have had flying dreams my whole life. Many times I am in a room with tall ceilings, and I can just leap into the air and fly to the ceiling, then push off the wall with my feet to change direction. Perhaps it is more like weightlessness, like floating, like an astronaut in space. Other times I am flying outside, skirting high-line wires and trees, steering Peter Pan-like with my arms, and looking to my side to see birds flying with me. Whether inside or out, my flying dreams bring an immense sense of freedom and an indescribable feeling of joy.

In spite of the ease of flying in my dreams, in ‘awake’ life, flying isn’t always easy, especially the getting-off-the-ground part—or in the case of a dragonfly, the getting-out-of-the-water-climbing-up-any-available-vegetation-to-dry-out-wings part.

A little over three weeks ago, my friend and I went to Saint John’s Arboretum to try to find the hawk’s nest I had discovered before the leaves were on the trees—but this time we were unable to see it in the camouflage of leaves. We did find some beautiful ferns, spring wildflowers, a tannin-stained Trumpeter Swan, and….

Maidenhair Ferns
Foam Flower
Marsh Marigolds
Trumpeter Swan

…lots and lots of dragonflies! Most of them were not flying however—they were clinging to the shrubs and trees that lined a small lake. They were ‘tenerals’ or newly emerged from the aquatic larval stage. Dragonflies begin their life cycle in the water where an adult will lay eggs on a plant in the water or in the water itself.

The larval or nymph stage can be one to four years of growing and molting under the water. Water temperature and length of growing season determines maturation of the nymph. Emergence usually happens in the early morning when the nymph crawls out of the water up a stem of a plant. Some crawl several yards to a vertical plant to begin the final shedding of the larval skin to become the adult dragonfly.

During this transformation time, the dragonflies are vulnerable to predators, mainly birds. Even rainfall at this time can damage their soft body tissue. Up to a 90% mortality has been observed in one emerging population. Their legs are the first to harden so they can hook their claws into a plant or tree. Their wings are colorless, like shiny saran wrap.

Eyes of the ‘tenerals’ are reddish-brown above and gray below. Both the wings and eyes will develop more color as they mature.

The newly-emerged dragonflies did fly from their drying posts when we walked by, but their flight was weak, and they only flew a short ways to other shrubs.

Along the edge of the lake on the shrubs and trees, when we looked closely, were thousands and thousands of dragonflies climbing and sunning and drying. When we walked by, a swirling frenzy of flying circled our heads until they once again settled on the branches. Practice flights to ready them for their short adult life of only weeks. Once they are ready, the fairy-like flyers are graceful and powerful. They can hover in the air and fly in all six directions as they capture mosquitoes and flies for their food.

Flying dreams represent having our own personal power, a new perspective, spiritual connection, and freedom—freedom of expression and possibilities, and hope. Dragonflies represent transformation, adaptability, joy, wisdom, and illumination. Flying dreams release us from our perceived limitations; we break free from those things that tether us to earth, that hold us down. I love how our dreaming minds can give us a sense of freedom, power, and joy—a flight map for ‘awake’ life. The dragonflies have a vulnerable time—when their new, soft bodies are susceptible to weather and predators. They need time to settle into their bodies, to ‘harden’ their vulnerabilities, and to feel and know the intrinsic power of their wings. We all go through vulnerable times in our lives. What is most helpful to you during those times? Some are culturally vulnerable, when the walk to freedom is long and difficult, when history tethers them down with invisible ties, and when breaking free of those ties is thwarted at most every turn. We all need flying dreams. We all deserve flying dreams, and we deserve powerful, grace-full people to model, mentor, and mediate a flight map to freedom, power, and joy. Love is the key.

When I Wasn’t Looking

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How much does the internet rule our lives? What would we actually do without it for a day, a week, or a month? (Maybe I should back that up to an hour also.) Even those of us old enough to remember that we had full, awesome lives before the internet, get caught up in the necessity of it. Like when we weren’t looking, it sort of took over our lives. This post began in my head more than a week ago and ended a week ago when I could not open my webpage to upload pictures and write. Not enough power or signal, or there was interference or disturbance. Whatever.

After Paul’s memorial service over Labor Day and sweet times of relaxation and mourning-tempered fun with the Brake family, we headed home to Minnesota. Our wrecked hearts were a little less wrecked, bandaged over with hugs, precious memories, and laughter. The healing had begun.

On the trip home, we stopped for a walk and a break at Sakatah Lake State Park near Waterville, Minnesota. It was a nourishing detour around the rush-hour Cities traffic. The first thing I noticed when we started walking were dark, leaping little toads all over the place. It had rained quite a bit while we were gone (and much of the summer), so the frog and toad populations were booming.

Upper Sakatah Lake was full to the rim and evidence of flooding was everywhere. Trees along the shore had toppled into the water, and debris was high in the lower spots. This area was named Sakatah by the Wahpekute tribe of the Dakota Nation. It means “the sights and sounds of children playing on the hill,” and sometimes translated to “Singing Hills.” Don’t you love that!?

Looking out over the lake, the most striking view was to the east where Double-crested Cormorants had perched and made nests in dead trees on tiny islands of Wildlife Management Areas. Cormorants are colonial nesters and often perceived to be messy, nuisance birds.

They are fish-eaters, so do not make good game birds, and their community living seems to make them messy and troublesome. (For whom?) But we saw much preening and cleaning going on as they perched in their alabaster tree-houses together.

The vegetation in the woods had decidedly turned to Fall. It seemed to happen when I wasn’t looking. Clusters of red-fruited seeds of the Jack-in-the-Pulpit, amid the tattered leaves, shouted out to passers-by after two seasons of discreetly hiding in the forest.

Sunflowers, Asters, and Goldenrods grew from every sunny spot along the edge of the woods, and juicy Wild Plums hung from the trees.

The forest gave way to wetlands and prairies as we hiked along the Singing Hills State Bike Trail that traversed the Park.

It was a short but welcome break to get into the woods after driving the Interstate for hours through the fields of Iowa. And when we were home again, our Fall visitors began to boldly traipse through the yard. The Wild Turkey population seems greatly diminished this year—only four babies with two, sometimes three females. Other years we have had twelve to eighteen young ones trailing behind their mamas.

The spotted baby fawns are now big enough to graze in the open and look for apples that have fallen to the ground.

Our surprise this year, is that there are triplets!

This Spring and Summer have slipped by me—when I wasn’t looking—when insidious, unseen influences sort of took over our lives. We blindly believe that all-or-nothing technology is in our best interest (all=good, nothing=bad). But what are we losing in the process when we are complicit to the ‘lifestyle’ of the internet and our ‘smart’ phones? How have we isolated ourselves from our community of people for the (and I don’t know the word for this exactly) thrill/ satisfaction/ seduction of all that the internet supplies? I spent many days in the last two weeks not looking at the internet. It was a relief. I’m not so attached to technology that it was uncomfortable for me to do so. In fact, it actually felt like I became more of myself. As the Brake family mourned the loss of a Dad/ brother/ uncle, we didn’t do so on social media—we did it in person. It was the face-to-face, the tears and laughter, and the hugs and stories that sustained us. When we weren’t looking for it, the healing had begun, and we were a little bit less wrecked, thank the Good Lord. So, where are the disturbances in our lives? What interferes with us feeling like ourselves in a grounded, nurturing way? I say don’t let the power in our lives be about the internet—it is unsustaining and in fact robs us of our energy and creativity in the long run. We need more Sakatah in our lives—the sights and sounds of children (and we are all children of God) playing and singing in the hills.

Wrecked

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A week ago Thursday we loaded the van and were on the road at the respectable leaving time of 5:30 a.m. Chris was ready before that, and despite the fact I had hardly slept a wink that night, I was still the one who ‘held us up,’ so to speak. We headed south to Missouri on I-35, this time for Chris’ brother’s memorial service. With wrecked hearts we drove much of the time in silence—Chris glad to skirt most of the rush-hour traffic in the Cities, me trying to catch up on a few hours of sleep. We were close to the Missouri border in Iowa when I woke up because we were stopping, right on the Interstate behind a long line of cars and trucks already stopped. Not creeping, not stop and go, but stopped. We idled for awhile, then longer, but when truckers began to get out of their trucks to stretch their legs, we turned off the car and opened the windows and then the doors. Two massive semi tow trucks passed us on the right shoulder—it must be a huge wreck. We waited for over an hour. A trucker came up to talk to us—he said a semi had jack-knifed to avoid hitting a car, and there were a couple of cars that had gone into the steep ditch. Amazingly, nobody was hurt. He checked to see if we needed water or anything, then went on to talk to others. When we finally got going, we slowly drove by the wrecked tractor-trailer, saw the driver securing things as it lay on the tow truck, saw the huge ruts in the median where he had reined that big beast of a semi to a skidding, sliding stop, saw the police cars, etc. We wanted to see what had disrupted a major highway and so many people’s lives for that ‘long’ of time.

But there are times when we don’t want to see the wreckage.

On our trip to Lake Superior and then Wisconsin in early August, we planned to stop at Pattison State Park, just south of Superior, to see Wisconsin’s highest waterfall. The Black River begins at Black Lake, 22 miles southwest of the park. It drops 31 feet over Little Manitou Falls at the south end of Pattison.

It winds its way into Interfalls Lake with its necklace of Cattails and Swamp Milkweed.

From the lake, the River flowed through a spillway under the highway; we walked from the welcome center, past the old CCC buildings, and through a tunnel that also went under the highway. The park worker told us that hiking trails around the lake and to Little Manitou Falls were closed due to severe storm damage and flooding over the summer of 2018. Large swaths of the park were wrecked from the storms of over a year ago. Some cleaning up and re-building had begun, but the damage was everywhere. Orange caution-fencing roped off areas that were too dangerous to navigate. Large chunks of macadam from the washed-away highway and trail were scattered all over at the topside of the falls. Water had gouged away the soil and plants from the side of the tunnel, the spillway, and the River. Exposed tree roots, like ghost towns, reminded us of what once was. I didn’t want to look at the wreckage; I wanted to see the beautiful falls. So I tried to ignore the wreckage, even as I stepped over it. My camera was pointed only at beauty.

We took a short trail through tall evergreens to the fenced-off precipice. The falls were nowhere in sight, but a little Fir tree with its candle cones caught my eye. The cones were adorned with dripping, hardened sap, lighting up the cloak of greenery around it.

We backtracked to the other side of the River where another short trail led us down to a wooden platform that hung over the rocks to view the white-water River.

At one point the water disappeared into the dark, basalt rock, the ancient lava swallowing the brown, tannin-rich water. We walked down to a second platform and finally saw the full glory of Big Manitou Falls!

The hard igneous rock contained the powerful water that had wreaked havoc on the soil, trees, and highway above it.

The Black River slowed and calmed as it wound its way through the bottom of the amazing gorge to meet up with the Nemadji River for their final leg of northern travel to the great Lake Superior.

So what does one do in the midst of wreckage, whether of heart, health, or home? In the face of overwhelming rubble, I cry. We are built that way; our physiology uses tears to reduce stress and process emotions. Often we need silence and contemplation after the chaos of wreckage in order to work through the myriad of feelings and oftentimes skewed thoughts that our brain’s negativity bias wrongly confirms. Cleaning up after the wreckage takes time. Sometimes a long time. We need to allow the process to unfold, not force it—it’s like sleep, in that way. As much as we want to sleep at times of unrest, we cannot force it to happen, but we can do things to allow it. In the midst of wreckage, I, like this Mourning Cloak Butterfly, feel the need to hide, to camouflage my wounded self, to remain roped off from the precipice that seems too dangerous to navigate. My emotions and body feel raw and exposed at the loss of what once was.

We step into our futures and relationships with good intentions and hope—that is probably not true for all people, but I would hope that for most. We begin with a clean heart and a strong body. Our humanness is like the water of lakes and rivers and falls—it is the wreckage and the beauty of our lives. Love is the rock that contains our humanness. It is what helps us step over the wreckage as we move slowly forward, even when we can’t bear to look. Love is what allows us to finally confront the wreckage and the reasons behind it, when we can. Love is what cares for and sustains the wounded and dying in the midst of heartbreak and grace. Love is what gives us the strength to get up in front of a crowd of people to tell the story of a brother, even as our hearts are wrecked by his death. Love is the light that guides us as we wear the mourning cloak. Love is the foundation for all we have been and for all we are going to be.

The Day it Snowed in July

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The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. –John Muir

This post is not about clarity or the forest, and I am backing us up in time to the middle of July. The hot, humid middle of July. We had just gotten back from our trip to Missouri, Chris was back to work, and I was desperate to get away from some overarching, insistent, persistent bad feelings. Hot, humid weather never makes anything better, in my opinion; in fact, it magnifies madness, swells cells, and creates chaos. I walked down the road to the little lake on Hummingbird Lane. I don’t even remember how bad the mosquitoes and deer flies were as I sweated up the hill. And then as I saw the usually-pretty lake, I was even more disgusted when I saw how the vegetative scum had overtaken the open water.

It is at times like these when we need and crave some clear reflection of reality. Why is all this crap in the way? The reason for our trip to Missouri was to spend time with Chris’ brother Paul who was dying of pancreatic cancer. This brother who was just two years older, the one who played in dirt piles with him, went to Boy Scouts camp, and drove him to high school. We watched some Big Valley on TV, walked to get the long-neglected mail for him, got an Icee that cooled his throat, and cleaned up the kitchen a little bit. Paul joked about it all with his dry one-liners, and we laughed. It was as good and normal as ever, even as we talked about end-of-life things. The brothers reminisced about boyhood memories, and Paul held his arm over his stomach and rocked ever-so-slightly.

As we sat together, there were layers of feelings—fresh in-the-moment ones, surface take-care-of-business ones, deep, dark feelings about what was to come, and a forest of sweet memories.

I had listened to a Rob Bell podcast where he talked about the struggles and irritations in our lives, and I had written a line he said on a post-it note where I could see it every day. “This is all part of it.” This is all part of it. This pond scum is part of a hot July summer. The mosquitoes and deer flies are a part of a still, humid day. Dying is part of living. We can look a little closer at what clouds our vision, what’s getting in the way of our clear reflection. The Duckweed is actually kind of pretty close up, and do you see the three damselflies who live and fly above the Duckweed?

The flat, floating Yellow Pond Lily leaves send up surprising stalks of flowers. How did I miss them before? This is all part of it.

The intricate cluster of pink balls to open stars of the Milkweed flower housed ants and a tiny caterpillar. This is all part of it. It was a comforting mantra for my nervous body and unsettled soul.

And then, as I walked home in the July heat and humidity, it started to snow! Out of the blue sky drifted snowflakes—snowflakes of Cottonwood seeds. It was somewhat of a miracle to me—‘snow’ in July!

A month and a day after the snow in July, Paul passed from this world. He and his dear family caregivers had a week of the very serious business of dying. I can’t even imagine, though we waited for texted updates and prayed for…. oh my gosh, the things we prayed for changed as the week went on. On Sunday, it would have been ‘easy.’ Each night after that, we wondered how he was holding on, why he was holding on, who he was holding on for. I have so much respect and honor for our family members who were by his side every hour of that long week. But from my distance, it struck me like a lightning bolt that Paul’s dying wasn’t only about his letting go, seeing people one more time, saying and hearing the words that would never be said or heard again, and holding on for whatever reason—it was about us all. We are all part of it. Everybody who loved him and who he loved was a part of his dying. We all longed to see certain faces, say certain words, take away pain, if only we could, pass on peace, and change the way we do certain things in our lives. What did each of us need to let go of, say or hear said, promise to ourselves and God? How did I not notice that before? What is getting in the way? What is really important in this life? The last time I saw Paul, I kissed the top of his bald head, he said, “See you later,” and we smiled. Exquisite grace, precious moment. Snow in July is a miracle. Life is a miracle. Death is a miracle. We went through the wilderness of dying with Paul to get to the Universe of Love. All the while God is holding us all in the palm of his hand and smiling. This is all part of it.

The Question of Up North

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I was talking to a wise man recently about a controversial issue that he had been adamantly opposed to for most of his life. He told me about a number of personal experiences as well as those by people close to him that informed that issue. And then he said, “It has re-opened the question for me.” His simple, calm, and humble statement was like a wave of cool, fresh water on the hot division of our country.

When people in Minnesota talk about ‘up north,’ it can mean anywhere from Alexandria to Brainerd to Bemidji to the North Shore or to Ely and the BWCA. Even the ‘North Shore’ stretches from Duluth to Grand Portage, 145 miles along Lake Superior. Up north can be about deer hunting, skiing, weekends on the lake, hiking the Superior trail, or canoeing in the Boundary Waters. Our trip up north began with Duluth, the shipping port city on the magnificent Lake Superior. We stayed in an Airbnb high on the bluff overlooking the Big Water. In the early morning light and mist, the water, cloud bank, and sky melded together into a monochromatic panorama of simplicity.

We drank in some Nature while in Duluth—literally! We stopped at Vikre Distillery, makers of gin, vodka, whiskey, and aquavit—a Scandinavian distilled spirit. They use local grains, herbs, rhubarb, and wild botanicals including juniper berries, spruce buds, and staghorn sumac—all distilled with the clear, cold water of Lake Superior.

pic by Em Brake

We also visited two Duluth breweries—Bent Paddle and Ursa Minor, both unique experiences made better with the knowledge and energy of the four young people with us who know a thing or two about visiting breweries.

pic by Em Brake

We enjoyed a mouth-watering BBQ meal delivered by a friendly staff person from OMC Smokehouse, located a block away from Bent Paddle. A Celtic band played in a corner of the taproom as we sat on the patio across from them. A trip to the restroom was like trekking through the North Woods—mosaic tile waterfalls tumbled from the bar, a dark hallway ceiling was lit up with tiny lights in constellations from the night sky, and the wallpaper in the women’s restroom featured friendly woodland creatures. Look at those faces!

pic by Em Brake

Ursa Minor is the ‘Little Bear’ constellation in the Northern sky that contains the Little Dipper. The bright star at the end of the handle of the dipper is Polaris—the North Star! We enjoyed wood-fired pizzas made from ingredients that were snipped from the raised-bed garden around the patio. Now, I know I said nothing about the beer, although I do appreciate Ursa Minor’s marketing of ‘comfort beer!’ Beer is something I have never liked or drank—until my adult children and the craft beer industry united with a “taste this one.” Most still made me shudder, until I tried a really dark Oatmeal Stout. My comments included ‘that’s not too bad’ and ‘there’s a lot going on there!’ So I have now claimed the darkest beer (without coffee, that is—another common drink that kind of makes me shudder) as my favorite, and that just makes me laugh!

pic by Em Brake

The destination of our short Duluth stay was up the shore of Lake Superior, past Two Harbors and Split Rock Lighthouse to Black Beach. A protected cove surrounded by rock cliffs and North Shore trees has an amazing beach of tiny black pebbles. It is visually stunning, especially since the cliffs are red rocks. How did this happen? There is a mixture of larger red and black rocks in the clear water, but the beach is mostly black. This area used to be privately owned and was a dumping place decades ago for the tailings or waste rock of taconite mining. Taconite is an iron-bearing sedimentary rock that is crushed and ground to get the iron out of it. The iron powder is then rolled with clay into pellets, dried, and baked. The pellets are loaded into huge ore ships that travel the Great Lakes to steel-making towns. During those years, local fishermen complained about the poor water quality because of the mining waste, and they wanted the dumping stopped. A long ‘fight’ ensued between miners and fishermen and their supporters. Eventually the fishermen won, and the dumping stopped around 1980. So the black beach is man-made, the remains of iron ore mining, the previous dumping grounds of waste now made beautiful by decades of wind, water, and ice.

pic by Em Brake

The water was e-x-t-r-e-m-e-l-y cold! Two of us just dipped a foot or a hand in to feel it for ourselves. One walked in for a picture. Two stood knee deep longer than I thought possible, and one brave adventurer plunged his whole body into the frigid Wim Hof experiment. Luckily the sun-warmed black pebbles helped everyone warm up again.

pic by Em Brake

‘Up North’ encompasses a huge territory of lakes, forests, towns, and wild places here in Minnesota. It means different things to different people—the experiences are unique and meaningful to each individual, all while within the comforting clause. Each person defines and holds dear their own ‘up north.’ Lake Superior is the anchor, the expanse, the shining beacon of the North Shore—it is our ‘ocean’ of water. It makes up the body of the spirits and beer we tasted. It epitomizes the power of Nature. Who was the ‘correct’ group when it came to the waters of the Great Lake—the fishermen or the miners? Ideals and lifestyles have been the clashing grounds for eons. So what changes us? My wise friend recounted his personal experiences and those of people he cared deeply for and asked the question, “How do these experiences mesh with my admittedly rigid view of the issue?” It re-opened the question. Is cold water therapy a thing? Dive in and re-open the question. How can anyone drink beer? ‘Try this one’ and re-open the question. Just like the black beach, we can be changed and restored. It’s not about the answer per se; it’s about the question. It’s not about other people; it’s about ourselves. It’s not about correctness; it’s about possibilities. Perhaps the next time we meet on the North Shore I will be drinking coffee—who knows?!

We The Spiritual People

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One of the ways you know you’re on the prairie is the huge expanse of sky. Save for a lone tree or two, nothing impedes the view of the blue dome, the clouds, the sun and stars. Stretched out at your feet is a waving sea of grasses with golden seedheads, interspersed with a colorful variety of wildflowers.

On our way home from Missouri, we took old U.S. Highway 71 instead of the Interstate, and we navigated the old-fashioned way—by map. When we crossed the line from Iowa into Minnesota, I noticed a place on the map called Jeffers Petroglyphs. That sounds interesting! It was nearing seven in the evening by the time we saw the turn-off but decided to check it out anyway. Just four miles off the highway, we pulled into an almost empty parking lot. One man on a motorcycle was just getting ready to leave. He instructed us to find a booklet about the petroglyphs on a picnic table at the backside of the interpretive center, which had closed at five. We walked through the prairie grasses and flowers to a red rock ridge and began a scavenger hunt of sorts, to see and identify the rock carvings that had been cataloged in the booklet and on the signs. We stepped back in time by thousands of years!

Following a roped-off pathway, at first we had a hard time seeing anything but rock. As our eyes adjusted to what the carvings looked like in texture, we began to see shapes and forms. There’s a hand print and an arrow!

Is it a bird and a buffalo?

Interpretive signage told us about an ancient dart-throwing weapon used before bows and arrows called an atlatl that was used as early as 12,000 years ago. There were many carvings of atlatls, most with an exaggerated-sized stone weight on the shaft. Historians speculate that it was a ‘vision’ to increase the spiritual power that guides the hunter’s shot. Hunting, their literal livelihood, is a common theme—whether documenting actual hunts or visions of hunts to come.

The red rock is Sioux Quartzite, the oldest bedrock formation in Minnesota, where a shallow sea deposited sand and mud for millions of years, and heat and pressure formed the metamorphic rock. It was exposed again by glaciers, wind, and water. The long scraping lines on the rock face are from the ancient moving glaciers.

In 1966, the Minnesota Historical Society purchased 40 acres to preserve this site and later added more for a total of 160 acres. It has been and still is considered to be a sacred site for Native American tribes, including Ioway, Otoe, Cheyenne, and the Dakota. Sacred ceremonies are still performed here amidst the carvings depicting the spiritual power of people and place over thousands of years. Horns or lines radiating from a head often indicates wisdom or the ability to communicate with the spirit world. The circle feet may represent a place of powerful spirits. According to the Plains Indians, the Thunderbird is a sacred spirit, giver of life and death, that can be heard as thunder as it flaps its wings and seen as lightning bolts from its eyes.

Parts of the rock face are preserved as they were 1.6 billion years ago—as sand ripples and mud flats. These interesting geological formations are a treasure that the prairie never covered up.

The carvings were done over a span of thousands of years—it is estimated the earliest were 7,000 years ago and the most recent 250 years ago. (Though there is some ‘graffiti’ by early twentieth century persons.) Another theme of the carvings were kinship ceremonies—how the bonds of kinship and social life were nurtured and strengthened. There are dozens of symbols in these next three pictures, the last, of a large carving of a woman in a shawl.

One area looked like a map, perhaps a hunting map or record of some kind of journey. Dots were carved between figures of people and other places or animals. Besides pictures of buffalo, other animals and tracks were carved in all areas of the pictographs, like birds and bear.

There are 33 acres of native prairie here, undisturbed for thousands of years. Most of the other acres have been restored to prairie. The Earth and Sky are represented in the rock carvings also. The many shapes and figures in parts of the rock face are not known—perhaps they are warriors hunting buffalo, figures of the underworld, or constellations from the starry prairie sky. Other shapes may be butterflies or dragonflies—it’s all part knowledge from the elders and historians and part imagination.

We were at the site for a little over an hour, and we were actually there at a good time, as the signage said mornings and evenings are the best time to see the carvings.

Interpretation of the carvings, along with the ongoing spiritual importance, was documented by elders from different tribes. (see MN Historical Society) Although the historical and archaeological aspects of the site were important in its preservation, it is the input from the Native Americans whose ancestors lived here that highlights the incredible significance of this place and what we can learn from it. (Italics in the following quotes are mine.)

“…and the last thing I would suggest to a visitor who wasn’t a tribal or indigenous person… somewhere back down your family tree, if you can go back far enough you’re going to find out you came from a tribal people and if you let that part of you speak… maybe you’ll find something out about yourself and your own history and your place in the world.” -Tom Ross, Dakota Elder, Upper Sioux Community Pejuhutazizi Oyate, Minnesota

“And when you walk around out there and just take your time and it’s like everything you feel is you’re walking amongst the spirit of all our people. And I know that they do enjoy our company. And the things, the signs, everything that they had left out there for us -is to remind us of who we are.” -Carrie Schommer, Upper Sioux Dakota Elder, Upper Sioux Community Pejuhutazizi Oyate, Minnesota

This site is where Minnesota’s recorded history begins, but it tells the story of the whole continent before it was named. It illustrates sacred ceremonies and important events, visions and dreams, prayers and messages, spiritual and social life. It depicts the daily substance of livelihood—the means of securing the necessities of life. It portrays the map of life’s journeys, both lived and envisioned. It demonstrates the inexplicable connection we humans have with Earth and Sky and all of Nature. It describes how imperative kinship is to our well-being and to that of our society. And finally, it illuminates that we the people—all of us, no matter our livelihood, no matter where we come from, no matter the color of our skin—are spiritual beings living in a spiritual world.