Come walk with me in the peak Autumn beauty of the Northwoods. To say that I love this time of year is an understatement. Most everyone can appreciate the colorful falling leaves---it reveals the 'true self' of a tree when its leaves are no longer producing chlorophyll. Their true colors are revealed, and there is something simple … [Read More...]
Here in All Their Beauty–Then Gone
Death has imbued my mind over the last week. It was the one year anniversary of Chris’ brother’s death, and I wonder how it can be so long already. It still feels unreal, like it didn’t happen, that maybe when we go back to Kansas City, he will be there. Then a dream of walking with my cousin through a garden adorned with art sculptures of cars, then realizing it was a cemetery for people who had died in car accidents. A dream of talking to my Dad at a party, and he died almost five years ago now. Then a brother of a friend of my daughter died in his mid-30’s—so, so young. And that makes me remember with a heavy heart the death of one of my greatest friends who died at the age of 34. We worked together at church camp on the prairies of South Dakota, and we took an epic horseback ride across the state from the North Dakota border to the Nebraska border. We both loved the prairie.
We come and go, but the land will always be here. Those people who love and understand it are the only ones who really own it—for a while. –Willa Cather
Last weekend Chris and I went to Buffalo River State Park, one of the largest and best of Minnesota’s prairie preserves. Our main idea was to foil the mosquitoes who have been swarming us in the woods and go to the sunny, wind-swept prairie where mosquitoes are less likely to bother us. And then there’s the thing that happens to my soul when I face an expanse of grass and sky—I am filled with goodness and calm.
Side by side we walked the mowed path through the prairie. Occasionally there would be an erratic boulder lying amidst the grass, boulders that were deposited there by the glacier eons ago. And they are literally called ‘erratics.’
I thought it looked like a prairie gravestone.
There’s no great loss without some small gain. –Laura Ingalls Wilder
The park was actually a combination of the State Park prairie, the Bluestem Prairie Scientific and Natural Area, and Minnesota State University, Moorehead Regional Science Center Land, and through the middle of it all flowed the winding, tree-lined Buffalo River. A vast expanse of blooming Indian grass with a sweep of Little Bluestem stretched from the path to the Science Center.
Sunflowers and Liatris sprinkled the prairie with bright summer color, and Painted Lady Butterflies were everywhere!
They are here in all their beauty…
…then gone.
The ones we lose eventually fade into the background of our lives, yet they are with us always.
At times, with anniversaries, or dreams, or renewed memories, they feel much closer to us again—thus the nature of erratic, unpredictable grief.
Death is not far from anybody’s mind these days as the death count from Covid-19 ticks into the hundreds of thousands—if you are not one who is personally impacted by that, thank your lucky stars and kindly say a prayer for all those who are. Please don’t quibble about the Covid count being ‘wrong.’ A beautiful person was here, and then they were gone, and many people are mourning.
We have the people, things, and land we love only for a while—until their demise, or ours. It will soon be thirty years since my friend died. Many things remind me of him—Appaloosa horses, polka-dot hats, strumming wildly on the guitar and singing silly songs, and so many more. But being on the prairie always brings him closer to me again. I have shared this poem about the prairie within the last year—what I didn’t say before was that it was my friend Joe’s favorite. The land will always be here. May it bring you goodness and calm.
The prairie, these plains….It was as if nature had taken solitude and fashioned it into something visible, carved out the silences into distances, into short grass forever flowing and curving, a vast sky forever pressing down, nothing changing, nothing but sameness, day after day after day, as far as you could see, as far as you could go. It was like the solitude of God…as awesome, and as beautiful. –Janice Holt Giles
Butterfly Wings and Cowgirl Dreams
I have a printed meme on my refrigerator that says, ” Your time as a caterpillar has expired. Your wings are ready.” It has a photo of a horse on it with wise-looking eyes, a star on her forehead, and alert ears. I want to wrap my arms around her neck and smell the sweet goodness that only a horse lover so deeply appreciates. The quote is referenced to Unknown; the meme was posted by Cowgirl Dreams and was passed on to me by my sister. I look at it every day.
Last weekend when we were picnicking at Big Stone Lake State Park to celebrate my Mom’s birthday, Painted Lady butterflies filled the air and lit on wildflowers of all kinds to gather nectar. When I stood still, they landed on me. Painted Lady butterflies migrate in large numbers, so this ‘gathering up’ time occurs in late August into September. They migrate to southwestern United States and northern Mexico, traveling 100 miles a day and continuing to reproduce throughout their migration.
The Painted Lady is the most widely distributed butterfly in the world. They lay their eggs on asters, thistles, burdock, and legumes. (Vanessa cardui means ‘butterfly of thistle.’) The eggs are pale green and the size of a pin head.
In 3-5 days, the tiny caterpillar hatches from the egg, constantly eats the host plant, and grows quickly. The caterpillar literally grows out of its skin four times before being fully grown (each phase between molts is called an instar.) The yellowish-green and black caterpillar makes a silk nest on the host plant to protect itself from predators.
When fully grown, in 5-10 days, the caterpillar attaches itself with a silk button to the underside of a leaf. Its skin splits open to reveal a dull, brown case and becomes a pupa or chrysalis, and metamorphosis begins.
In the 7-10 days of metamorphosis, the caterpillar breaks down and becomes liquid and re-forms into a butterfly. The chrysalis splits open, and the Painted Lady butterfly emerges with crumpled wings that take a few hours to dry and straighten out. Then she/he flies away to drink nectar and mate to begin the cycle all over again.
And what does that have to do with horses and cowgirls and all of us? Well, I think everyone wants to be a butterfly. Their bright colors attract attention, their delicate, velvety wings are marvels of flight and design, and they make even the most beautiful flowers more beautiful by their presence. But nobody gets to be a butterfly without the other steps. The tiny egg of an idea—the ‘imagineering’ of becoming a barrel racer, a nurse, or a composer—begins the process. Then comes the ingesting of information and the growth of practice—again and again and again. When maturation occurs, there is a period of stillness, a breaking down of the old to rebuild the new, the metamorphosis. Like Chris always says, “You can only get ready for so long; pretty soon you have to leave.” Your time as a caterpillar has expired. Your wings are ready. But in our all or nothing thinking, we believe we, as a whole person, are either a caterpillar or a butterfly, and if we’re not yet a butterfly, then we are somehow lacking, not good enough. I propose that we are all—at any given time—a compilation of all the stages in different areas of our lives. I am an aging tattered-winged butterfly of a Mom; I am a voracious student caterpillar in learning about trauma and attachment; I am a pupa in my spiritual life—breaking down old ideas and rebuilding new ones, and I have some tiny green eggs of ideas that I want to hatch out and grow. Cowgirl dreams…anybody dreams…dreams we can wrap our arms around. We are marvels of design, bright with the colors of creativity, and we can each make the world a more beautiful place by our presence.