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The Motion of Balance

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Balance. It’s one of those things we are constantly striving for in all aspects of our lives, whether we are aware of it or not. Our physiology is perfectly attuned to balance or homeostasis, always adjusting on the cellular and systemic level to bring our bodies ‘back in balance.’ We know the physical act of balancing (like standing on one foot) is good for our brains, muscle strength, coordination, and stability, and is linked to a longer life. Most of us aspire to a more optimal work–life balance, active–sleep balance, and doing for others–doing for ourselves balance. Our lives are really a great balancing act!

In Minnesota this year (and most), the seasonal scales are tipped towards Winter. We’ve had snow on the ground for over five months. To be fair, late Autumn and early Spring are also the owners of below freezing temps and snowflakes, though most just call that Winter. Where there is balance, there is also a continuum. Two weeks ago, we hiked at Sibley State Park on a trail we hadn’t been on before. We began on the short Pondview Trail, circling a shallow lake, wetland, and clearing. In the middle of the pond was a fresh mound of wetland vegetation with a Canada Goose standing on one leg on top of it. His neck was twisted over his back, and his bill was tucked under his wing. He stood that way for longer than we hiked around the pond, and I marveled at his balance. Herons, shorebirds, ducks, geese, gulls, and even some hawks stand on one leg at times. It is thought to be for thermoregulation—to prevent the loss of body heat from the unfeathered legs. Yet that doesn’t explain why flamingos, who live in warm climates, are often posed on one leg, but scientists speculate they can conserve energy with that stance.

Other waterfowl were more energized by the sunlight and warmer temps—a pair of Wood ducks swam along the reeds, then flew away from the intruding hikers. A pair of Mallards cared little for who was circling their pond as they were busy feeding in a constant bob of bottoms up.

As we left the wetland area, we began to see the primary trees that inhabited this woodland—tall, stately Cedars and spreading Oaks, along with scatters of Aspens on the sunny fringes. We walked in honor of Arbor Day that would be celebrated later that week. We walked as tree-lovers, tree-planters, tree-caretakers. Chris is nearing fifty years of working with trees as his career!

As we walked farther into the forest, snow still covered the trail in places. Turkey tracks looked like arrows pointing us in the opposite direction in which they walked. Coming and going. Back and forth. The motion of balance.

We passed by an old Cedar with branches flowing down to the ground. On such an old tree, the lower branches often die back with lack of sunlight. Its sturdy trunk with flared roots as large as legs and its drooping branches created a shelter of sorts that I’m sure was used by some critters during the long, snowy Winter.

We spotted an old rock foundation in the woods and followed a well-marked! deer trail to an old homestead, complete with the rocky remains of a cellar. The forest was reclaiming what once ‘belonged’ to man.

Much later down the trail, we saw where an old Oak had literally claimed an enamel vestige of the homestead.

The trail was a wonderful combination of sunny Oak stands and shadowy, snowy Cedar stands. It is a bit unusual to see such large Cedars as a significant portion of a forest. Unusual and wonderful.

Two bright spots on the hike were a yellow, lichen-covered stick and a Snowy Egret perched in the dried reeds of the wetland.

And towards the end of the trail was a moss-marked tree that resolutely confirmed our tree-loving hike!

Walking among the trees, those great, grounded, balanced beings, is an act of balance, a balancing act(ion). There is motion in balance—one way, then the other. We usually know when we or thee are too far to one side—when things are out-of-whack. It takes considerable energy to maintain such an unnatural stance, and the cost to the organism or system is great. A balancing act can be a move (how about ‘tree pose’ or ‘flamingo pose’?), a behavior (like a hike in the forest), service (to people or our Earth), work (oh-so-many kinds), or pretend (our imaginative, fun side). It takes time and energy to ‘right’ ourselves, but once a more natural balance is achieved, life is easier again. We are ‘in the flow’ of life. The motion of our balance is measured and easy, like a tree swaying in the breeze.

Our Unique Arithmetic Assignment

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Part of our life learning process is embodied in the statements “I’ve seen this before,” or “I’ve heard this before” or most importantly, “I’ve felt this before.” It goes beyond the situational ‘deja vu’ (literally ‘already seen’) when a person feels like they have experienced something before. This is more concrete, a simple arithmetic of sorts. In the early part of our lives, we do it unconsciously; it is how we learn. ‘I’ve seen this round object before and people say the word ball.’ Fast and furious learning takes place in the next decades with things we’ve seen, heard, and felt. As we grow into middle age and older, we begin to notice patterns in our lives that have become rote. ‘I’ve heard those same words before,’ and we may add ‘too many times.’ We are becoming aware and discerning how those words impact us. And this is when the simple math becomes conscious and truthful—‘I don’t want to hear those words again,’ ‘I’ve seen this scenario before, and I don’t want it to happen again,’ or ‘I am going to change so I don’t have to feel this same way anymore.’ Subtraction. We also have greater awareness of what we want more of in our lives, those sparks of desire that may have been muzzled with responsibilities, time constraints, and unawareness. ‘I’m going to take some classes to feel the thrill of learning again,’ or ‘I’m going to learn the words to that song I love so I can sing it anytime.’ Addition. It is a profound lesson in authenticity when we become aware of our unique arithmetic assignment and incorporate it into our lives.

On Thursday I drove to a place I have seen before. The prairie–wetland–woodland trail at Saint John’s Arboretum is familiar to me. I don’t really remember how many times I’ve hiked it, which is of no consequence to any further time I am there, for each and every time there are new things to see along with the familiar friends that bring me joy. This was the first time I had been there with so much snow, the first time I had snowshoed the trail. It was a crisp 23 degrees. We had had rain two nights before, so the deep snow had an icy, pockmarked crust. The metal on the snowshoes s-c-r-i-t-c-h-e-d against the snow with each tread. My noisy steps alerted the waterfowl in the open creek, and I heard them before I saw them. It’s a great, wonderful sound I’ve heard many times before—the heralding honking of Canadian geese, the throaty warning of Trumpeter swans, and the more indistinct chattering of Mallard ducks.

There was another sound I had heard many times before—the rattling trill of a Sandhill Crane. He stood on the frozen embankment of the flowing creek, looking like an unhappy camper, wondering why his return flight to Minnesota had landed him in the frozen tundra. He ruffled his feathers and called out in irritation.

I was the intruder everyone was talking about—the geese voiced their faux alarm, but not one flew away. The Trumpeter swans were more sensitive and took to flight along with their vocal dismay.

Mr. Sandhill Crane kept up his rattley chatter as he surveyed me walking closer and all of his waterfowl friends below him in the creek.

Then he slowly ambled away from the creek into the stalks of cattails, pretending to find a morsel of food to peck at but moving on with disappointment.

I left the wetland and shoed through drifts and a broken, uneven path to the forest. With a deep sigh of contentment, I knew I had felt this way before, and it was good.

The dark-trunked Maple trees threw shadows on the deep snow, but I knew they were warming up for Spring. With daytime temps reaching above the freezing mark, the sap was beginning to stir in their roots. The below–freezing temps at night settle it back down, and that temperature gradient becomes the ‘pump’ that gets the sap flowing, ready for the harvesting for Maple syrup. I also imagined the Spring Ephemeral wildflowers under the soil, under the snow, that would be blooming before the trees could even unfurl their leaves. Old friends that are always a joy to see.

Circling around to the other snow-covered boardwalk that spans the wetland, I heard the waterfowl chatter again, along with some nearby Crane talk.

This time, there were three red-headed cranes in the cattails! It looked like a mated pair and their colt from last year. The offspring may migrate back to their usual spot with the parents, but once the nesting begins, he will be ‘chased away’ to begin his solitary life for two to six more years before he finds his lifetime mate.

Addition and Subtraction. The way of Nature. The way of Winter into Spring. The way we learn and discern. Most everything I saw, heard, and felt on my Thursday snowshoe hike was familiar to me, and I welcomed it into my life once again with a resounding “Yes!” At the same time, new details of deep snow, new birds, and Spring clouds made my experience ‘something more.’ We have to be careful not to fall through the ice of expecting our surroundings to change because of our displeasure. Mr. Sandhill Crane had some unfortunate seasonal timing in his migration and nesting schedule, but he will have to ‘wait it out’ while the sun and tilt of the Earth do their work. We want to be conscious and truthful about our own lives, our own words and actions. It is the responsibility and privilege that Life bestows upon us. Good luck with your assignment!

Knee-deep in Snow and Peace

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I have always been intrigued with people who say they don’t take any stock in people’s praise of their work….if they did, it would follow they would also take to heart the criticisms. Just think about the ramifications if that is expanded to praise and criticism of who we are as a person. This opens up so much about who we are and how we operate in the world. At one level, it sounds like a lofty, enlightened realm-of-being, when one is so grounded in who they are and what they do that it truly doesn’t matter what others think. They do their good work regardless. On the other hand, there are callous, uncaring people who do what they want to do for their own purposes, who couldn’t care less about what others think or the very real consequences their actions may have on other’s lives. It’s kind of a mind-boggling philosophical humanity question, but I bet most of us have struggled with the themes of praise and criticism at some time in our lives and how it relates to our work and to our being.

I have inadvertently been a people pleaser most of my life—I didn’t consciously choose such a role, but I actively wanted people around me to be pleased—with themselves, with the circumstances, with me, with everything. I doled out praise thinking everyone wanted and needed to be affirmed. (Not sure that’s really in the past tense.) Exhausting work, as it turns out. Thankfully most of us age out of that to a great extent as we choose whether our ‘limited’ energy goes to others or to our own well-being. My challenge has been how to do that and still be a force of goodness to the people around me and for the world. I know I’m not alone in that rigorous challenge.

As overwhelming and existential as these questions are, I have slowly realized (and was recently reminded by my friend Mark) that the inner quality that needs to be cultivated is peace. It’s not about giving and receiving praise. When I was younger, I really had no idea what ‘peace’ even meant, let alone how to manifest it in my own life. I take that back—I did want to be a peacekeeper in my people-pleasing role. I did desire external peace—no conflict, no chaos, no discord, no disturbances. No kidding. My job is easier now that I can work on bringing internal peace to myself. A big part of that is accepting and respecting all the former iterations of myself with all the flaws and foolishness that I embodied. Another part is actually experiencing peaceful places. I love the stripped-down winter woods that lays bare the essentials—blue skies, brilliant white snow, and textured gray-brown wood of the trees.

The clear sky and sunshine illuminated another essential—our shadows. To come to peace, we must know and accept our shadow side. Easier said than done.

For peace, we have to allow decay and death to happen—to old ideas, to old ways, to old things and people who have lived their lives with valiant strength and their God-given goodness.

For peace, we must come to terms with the people in our lives—those in the past and those who surround us now. That may be an uphill climb.

Peace is living into who we have become with age and experience. The travails of life may swirl around us, but they don’t overwhelm us as much as they did when we were younger. Humbly accept the power of you.

Peace is climbing the hills, letting the shadows slide down behind us.

Peace is letting the sunshine soothe and warm us like a humming lullaby.

Peace is turning a corner when others choose a different path.

Peace is having faith in the seasons of life.

Peace is glimmering silence for thought and introspection.

Peace is being curious, moving forward through fear, and letting your creativity imagine finding an enormous praying mantis in a snowy forest.

Peace is standing knee-deep in snow along with the wild things that are just as curious about us.

Peace be with you all.

Bent in Suffering

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“We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.” –Winston Churchill

We cannot escape suffering in our lifetimes. We will all have to endure pain, distress, or hardship in some form. Many of us can get a couple decades under our belts before we know the harsh reality of suffering; others are well aware of it as children. Watching the news this week has once again made me acutely aware of suffering around the world. The earthquakes in Turkey and Syria have caused such extreme physical destruction and pain, and therefore emotional and mental suffering, for hundreds of thousands of people. Like the Russian war on Ukraine did a year ago and continues to inflict. Like the Covid-19 pandemic did in the last three years across the globe. Like the drought is in East Africa. It seems like suffering itself is becoming a pandemic.

Last Sunday was an absolutely beautiful day! The sky was that startlingly pure blue color that lifts spirits into freedom and possibility. The air was clean and clear, nourishing my lungs with each intake. The temperature was a delightful twenty-three degrees, and the sun was bright and warm. We snowshoed at Northland Arboretum in Brainerd that has 7.5 miles of immaculately groomed trails for classic and skating cross-country skiing and over two miles of trails for snowshoeing.

The heavy, wet snow we had had earlier in the season still blanketed large areas of brush and brambles like elaborate snow forts. The small creek was covered with slushy ice after our extreme cold spell the week before.

As we shoed into the area of the Jack Pine Savanna, I noticed some young Pines were completely bent over from the heavy snow that had originally fallen almost two months prior—and then added upon. The weight of the snow had bent their young trunks, not broken them.

Most of the trees had ‘shaken off’ the snow that had hung on them previously, with the help of the sun and wind. Some still carried large ‘snowballs’ on their strong-enough branches.

And yet, size, age, and identity were not the determining factors of who was damaged compared to who ‘shook it off’ and stood strong. Some of the old ones broke. Some of the Oak trees bent.

Not only were most of the bent trees heavy with snow, they were also stuck in the snow where they touched the ground. And once the snow had crushed them down in the unnatural bend, the accumulating snow just added more weight, more distress, more strain, and less chance of a return to ‘normal.’ I wondered how many would be able to ‘spring back’ to where they were before.

The day was beautiful, the snowshoeing was great, and all along the trail, there were trees in distress—so many of them.

In the moment, I observed the large number of trees that were bent and stuck in the snow and made a mental note to return next summer to see if and how they were able to recover. But it wasn’t until a little later that I realized that I was like the struggling trees. When I had Lyme disease in the 90’s, I felt bent in pain and stuck in uncertainty, as doctors were still doubtful that Lyme existed in Missouri so weren’t fluent in helping me. Much suffering. When I subsequently endured depression, I weathered much distress while stuck in sorrow. Recurring Lyme, deaths, losses, people not believing me, believing in me, or helping me all added to my burden, piled on the snow that was already holding me down. And those were not even the worst of my anguished distresses. Those are still too painful to mention. I was frozen in place, looking out at the world around me from my unnatural position, wondering why I was one of those pinned down while all around me stood beings who seemed unaffected by the storms. Like the trees, was it my position or status, was it my environment, did I have a genetic proclivity, was it a previous disease or wound that allowed such suffering or was I just weak? “Bad is never good until worse happens” is a Danish proverb that infused my family culture with our phrase ‘it could be worse.’ Endure, don’t complain, don’t ask for help, suffer, bear the pain and hardship. So I did and continue to do so, but truth be told, I’m not even good enough at that, or I wouldn’t be writing this.

If we are to draw from the heart of suffering, as Churchill says, in order to find and express inspiration and survival, somehow I think I have done that. Nature has been my inspiration for all my life, and it gives me great joy to share that beauty and wisdom with all of you. Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote, “…every struggle is a dance….” The dance includes comfort along with the distress, pleasure along with the pain, peace along with the anguish, delight along with the misery. If I cannot ‘shake off’ the suffering, at least I can reach out and cultivate those qualities that oppose it. So I look up to that pure blue sky to lift my spirit into freedom and possibility. May those of you in suffering do the same.

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.

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.