I don’t know about you, but there have been a number of times in my life when I have been stuck.  Not stuck in the mud or snow—though that has happened a couple of times, too—but stuck in my life.  To be fair to myself, most of those times the stuckness was only in a certain area of my life while there was movement and growth in other areas—all at the same time.  Like one boot sucked down into the mud so far that your foot comes out of it as the rest of your body propels forward, but you falter because you want to save your boot.  And you don’t want to take the next step into the muck with only your sock on.  Being stuck isn’t a good feeling, and I would venture to guess that no one chooses it.  There is a convergence of thought, belief, and circumstances that stop us in our tracks—and keep us there for a while.

Chris and I, after wandering around St. Cloud trying to find the parking area, went hiking on the Beaver Island Trail that follows the Mississippi River south of the University.  It is a biking and hiking trail that follows the old railroad path and the area of the River that contains the fifteen or more islands known as Beaver Islands, as named by Zebulon Pike in his expedition up the River in 1805.

One of the first places where we were able to get close to the River, we saw a log stuck on a rock.  The water was rushing around it, and we laughed about how it ended up there.  It almost looked like a sculpture of some sort!

We walked farther to another island with a sandbar of rocks that was populated by crows, not beavers.  They were noisy and chippy with one another.

As we walked on, we saw a ghostly dead tree among the varied greens of the other trees.  We saw pretty, but noxious Purple Loosestrife swaying in the wind beside the water.  And we saw another log stuck on a rock.

The paved bike path was getting farther away from the River, and with all the trees and horrible Buckthorn, we couldn’t see the water.  We did see a historical marker that commemorated where the original St. John’s Benedictine Monastery was located in 1857 to provide for “the spiritual and educational needs of German immigrants.”  Ten years later the monastery was relocated to its present location in Collegeville.  We saw the belltower of the Catholic-run St. Cloud Children’s Home high on the hill above the tree tops.

Flowering Sumac and robust Poison Ivy grew along the tree-lined bike path.

We took a narrow trail off the bike path to go down to the River, trying to skirt our bare calves around the poison ivy.  There were large Jack-in-the-Pulpits under the huge, River-fed trees.  The air was humid and warm, like a storm was brewing.  Once down to the River, we saw Canadian Geese on one of the islands and a pair of granite boulders stuck in the sandbar of another.

And another log stuck on a rock, perfectly balanced, in the middle of the mighty Mississippi.

I walked on a huge tree that had fallen into the water and caused a log jam of debris.  Scum folded into accordion pleats against the logs, stuck between the current and the unmoving dam of logs.

The River was wild and interesting in this Beaver Archipelago, and I had a strong desire to explore some of the islands, even as I wondered if I would have the courage to take on the current in a canoe.

We headed back to the bike path, back to the car, back to the City and saw that there was indeed a storm brewing.

In our short Friday afternoon walk, Nature provided plenty of examples of the art of being stuck.  The ever-flowing, ever-changing Mississippi River was the reason logs ended up in sculpture-like poses on rocks protruding from the water.  It would also be the reason, with a torrential storm and rising waters, that the logs would become un-stuck.  The boulders illustrate a different story.  Perhaps it was a glacier that deposited them there—it is more of a mystery.  Would the most powerful flooding waters move them?  I’m not sure.  The huge, fallen tree will hold back the current, the logs, the debris, for years, but will eventually rot away and succumb to the movement and power of the River.  Life is our River, ever-flowing, ever-changing.  It is the reason for our stuckness and the reason we move on.  Sometimes the dead ghosts of our past stop us in our tracks, and we are afraid to step into the muck of our feelings.  We stay stuck as Life flows past us.  But the current of Life or an ominous, brewing storm can propel us from our rock, from our muck, from our hidden place behind an old log.  Once again we enter the River and feel the exhilaration of that life-giving force that quietly supports us in our static pose of stuckness and steadies us in the joyous, tumbling current of Life.