{Caveat: This post is a distraction from what’s really happening in Nature right now in Minnesota.}

The night sky and stars have been amazing the last couple of nights!  Orion is front and center out our living room window when I turn out the lights and have my last look out at Nature.  Most of our snow has melted, so it is darker outside than it usually is at this time of year.  The stars are crisp and bright, and I inevitably start singing to myself, “The stars at night are big and bright….deep in the heart of Texas.  The prairie sky is wide and high….deep in the heart of Texas.  The sage in bloom is like perfume….deep in the heart of Texas.  Reminds me of the one that I love….deep in the heart of Texas.”  My Dad used to sing this when I was growing up, especially when we were riding in the car at night when the stars were shining brightly.  I remember joining in and clapping loudly on the four counts between lines.  Our wide and high prairie sky with the bright stars was in South Dakota, and I used to imagine that Texas couldn’t be any better than our prairie sky.

Deep in the Heart of Texas was written in 1941 by June Hershey with music by Don Swander.  It was first recorded by Perry Como, then soon after made into a film by the same name and sung by Tex Ritter.  Gene Autry, Bing Crosby, Roy Rodgers and Dale Evans, George Strait and Nickel Creek have recorded the song over the decades.  The University of Texas Longhorn Band performs the song before each football game, and right down there, in Austin, Texas, lives one that I love.  Our daughter Emily lives deep in the heart of Texas.  The last time we saw her was for her Texas Hill Country wedding sixteen months ago.  So now the stars remind me of the song, the song reminds me of my Dad, and the words remind me of Emily.

I’m looking forward to summer when Emily and Shawn will be coming north for a visit!  I hope it won’t be too hot and humid like it was for parts of last summer.  Too hot and humid in Minnesota terms, that is, because we can usually sail through summer without air conditioning.  (We had six days of 90 degrees and above during the summer of 2016.)  Of course Austin is a hot place to live, in more ways than one.  Winter temperatures are often warmer there than summer ones here, so maybe I have nothing to worry about.

Distraction—the state of being diverted or drawn away; mental distress or derangement; that which distracts, divides the attention or prevents concentration; that which amuses, entertains, or diverts; division or disorder by dissension or strife.

It is unnerving for me to be writing this when the mid-February temperature outside in Central Minnesota is 57 degrees, nearly 30 degrees above average, with a forecast for five more days in the fifties.  It troubles me that I see green grass when we usually have a snow pack of at least half a foot in February.  It disturbs me to read that we have had above average temperatures for eighteen months in a row now.  Two weeks ago lake ice was sturdy and thick and now there’s open water.  This is where distraction comes in.  We all do it—social media, tv, computer, phone—those ‘entertaining’ things that take up our time and divert our attention from what is happening in real time in our own space.  We think about the past, how ‘good’ things used to be, and wish we could get back those feelings we think we had back then.  We dream about the future, imaging the great things that are going to happen….someday.  We affirm our own feelings—I love this warmer weather, no snow to shovel, no bitter cold—not looking beyond ourselves at the big picture.  We dismiss the facts—those meteorologists never get things right or back in 1889 it was this warm on this day; it happens.  We appease ourselves with ‘at least’ and ‘could be worse’ and ‘you worry too much.’  Nobody wants to feel troubled or unsafe or disturbed.  No one wants to feel that sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.  It is horrible to feel helpless in the face of anything too big or overwhelming.  Nobody likes to acknowledge the red flags that are flying in our face.  So we distract ourselves with things that ‘make sense,’ with noble causes, with food, drink, or other addictions, with fun things, with relaxing things that we deserve.  

So what should we do?  One thing is fairly certain–the problem doesn’t go away while we are distracted.  It lurks in the background of our lives and shows up at inopportune times.  Gabor Mate writes that we need a balance of positive and negative thinking.  He says, “Negative thinking allows us to gaze unflinchingly … at what does not work.”  “Genuine positive thinking begins by including all our reality.  It is guided by the confidence that we can trust ourselves to face the full truth, whatever the full truth may turn out to be.”*  Awareness of what is, acceptance of what is, and autonomy to take action and do the right thing.

*From the book ‘When the Body Says No’ by Gabor Mate, M.D.