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...]
Begin Spring
Tomorrow is the first day of Spring. Ready or not, here it comes! It seems like we are nowhere close to Spring this weekend as we continue to ‘clean up’ after yet another snowstorm. The roads are icy, the temps are unseasonably cold, the wind chill is downright Decemberish, and there is a lot of snow on the ground in the middle of the yard!
But just like so many things in life, Spring is a process that has a beginning, a middle, and an end—just like a story. So tomorrow we begin Spring. The groundhog did the countdown, and we, as excited children, waited in anticipation for the moment Spring would find us. So what does beginning Spring look like in central Minnesota? There is a change in the position of the rising and setting of the moon and sun—the moon on a monthly basis yet always in a celestial dance with the yearly movement of the sun. The sun is rising and setting ‘nearly’ east and west in its trek toward the Summer Solstice when long hours of daylight in the North of the Northern Hemisphere will shorten our nights.
There are days of melting and days of snowing—a ping pong game of subtraction and addition. But with the beginning of Spring, snow subtraction begins to pull ahead for the win.
Even with a new blanket of a windblown five inches of snow, the sun, from its higher position in the sky, is a steady source of warming power. Even with below freezing temperatures, the sunshine is softening the snow, compacting it with more moisture, and melting it along the edges.
The beginning of Spring, despite the snow, has us looking forward to warmer days when gardens can be planted and canoes can be retrieved from the drifts and winter slumber to glide once again on the ice-free lakes and rivers.
It doesn’t look like Spring, but whether we are ready or not, it has found us!
The beginning of Spring is more subtle than our weary minds and bodies would like it to be. But nonetheless, it arrives. It carries with it the promise and hope for the middle of Spring when the snow is gone, the grass is green, flowers are growing and blooming, and birds and animals are nesting and creating. Then the story of the seasons and us comes to the end of the chapter of Spring and to the beginning of Summer, and so on and so on. It is a sweet dance, like a flowing river, with a rhythm and cadence sung by Mother Nature— ♪ “Here I come.” ♪
At the Corner of Deer and Fox
The world’s suffering makes my heart heavy. When I see the video of all the mothers and children fleeing from their homes in Ukraine, tears stream down my face. The destruction, chaos, and trauma imposed by one unhinged guy is overwhelming and rips a deep tear in my constructed fabric of Goodness. Even here at home where the pandemic has killed nearly one million people—it’s like wiping out all the people who live in South Dakota and then a hundred thousand more. And then there are all the people I know who are suffering with or dying from a cancer diagnosis—is it just me or does that seem to be on the rise? What’s a person to do with all that suffering?
I strapped on my snowshoes and hiked into the snow and cold. Our below normal temperatures this week have preserved the snow cover, beyond the melting of the edges from the strong, March sunlight. The cold felt good on my face, a relief from the hot suffering of people I know and of the millions I do not. Our gathering place around the firepit is still engulfed in snow—only the deer have been wandering through in their quest for food. I followed their path and offered a couple old apples for their browsing brunch. Won’t that be a delightful surprise?!
Deer trails cut through the trees and over fences. The snow reveals some secrets of the other seasons—the travel routes of deer and other animals. They seem to be creatures of habit or perhaps know to take the easiest route—just like us.
My previous snowshoe tracks had been covered with a bit of snow, but the deer had already been using the trail. I felt like I was walking at the Sumac treetops with all the snow that has accumulated over the Winter. Getting off the trail definitely makes ambulating much harder!
In no time at all, at the corner of Deer and Fox (tracks), Nature took over my mind, washing away the thoughts of suffering for the time being.
Rabbit and squirrel tracks zigzagged erratic paths around and to trees, their light little bodies not worrying about sinking through the deep snow.
Last year’s fox den was definitely occupied by someone, with many curious onlookers, including myself.
I’m pretty sure Mr. Possum had been out wandering for food—see his tail track? Maybe he made the old fox den his winter home.
It’s a busy place out there.
Farther along the trail I noticed a dark spot in the snow, so I veered off the trail to investigate. A deer carcass was mostly buried under the snow but had provided many meals for the carnivores of the forest.
There was a deer-sized indentation in the snow where a deer had bedded down for the night, though the bed had a new blanket of snow on it.
I continued on the little road, following one deer trail while others intersected it, coming and going through the trees. A community of animals with their roads, homes, and eating places.
An allee of Pines with its chevron shadows create a perfect corridor for travel.
Spring is already showing its signs, despite the snow and cold. More birds can be heard singing and flitting through the trees, and on the south side of a large Pine tree, the snow has started to melt away from the warm, brown pine needles.
I had added my tracks to those of the woodland creatures as I witnessed the evidence of their Winter lives in the forest. It was a beautiful, brisk day—a perfect day for snowshoeing.
A quote fell into my lap today—timely and serendipitously—from Helen Keller: “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” While it is important for us to be compassionate witnesses to the realities of war, illness, and suffering, we must also cultivate and elevate the simple acts of ‘overcoming it’ that we see in the world. I appreciate the news outlets that include snippets of that Goodness that mostly go unseen. Those who dwell on and promote the negative and divisive aspects of our society, politics, and culture do a disservice to themselves and to us all. It’s a balancing act to witness and acknowledge the reality of suffering in our world and to do the same with the acts of overcoming it. Nature is a balm for overcoming suffering, as are gathering places of loved ones who lift us up and simple acts of kindness and offering. Spring is a hopeful, uplifting season—every year it overcomes the harshness of Winter and the heaviness of suffering. Food becomes abundant, new life is nourished, and life energy flows with renewed vigor. Isn’t that a delightful surprise?
Unfinished Business
Remember that childhood game used to decide who gets to do something or more often who doesn’t have to do something? Rock, paper, scissors? Count to three while pounding one fist in your other hand and on the third count you make a scissors, rock, or paper sign. Paper covers rock, scissors cut paper, rock crushes scissors. That’s what our mid-March weather has been like! If we had hopeful thoughts of Spring, Mother Nature crushed those ideas last weekend with a storm that dumped ten inches of snow on our accumulated heap. Winter has some unfinished business.
The snow was wet and heavy and smothered the evergreens with its power. Branches bowed to the ground, broke from the trunk, and got stuck in the snow.
The heavy hand of Winter was not letting go of its reign without one last(?) battle.
Three days later, Spring’s rains, backed by a whoosh of just-warm-enough temperatures, cut through the snow like a warm knife through butter. The rains came, and the snow melted.
The official beginning of Spring is Wednesday, and she means business. Though pushed back, she will not be denied. Snow and ice are no match for the liquid warmth of her rain.
We’ve had a ceasefire in the last couple of days in the battle between Winter’s unfinished business and Spring’s compelling unveiling. The temperatures have ducked down below freezing again, slowing the melting and flooding while laying booby traps of slick, icy patches. Beware of where you step.
But we have another player in this battle of the seasons—the power of the Sun who has returned to our hemisphere to play. Sun covers all with a renewed power. He works on the snow even with Winter in control of the temperatures. Sol joins hands with Spring to move us forward. He reveals the dirt of Winter that was somehow unseen in these months of snowy beauty. The fireball excites the dormant current of energy stored in every tree and shrub, and the warmth of that energy melts a ring around each trunk.
The melting snow reveals another season with a smidgen of unfinished business. Autumn leaves are sandwiched between layers of snow, skeleton-like in their loss of chlorophyll and organic matter. Perhaps Winter moves along their decay, so when the green grass takes over in a flush of Spring, the old leaves will finally be integrated into the soil, completing that part of the cycle once again.
We still have plenty of snow and a fair amount of time where the battle of Winter and Spring plays out. It is familiar and necessary. It is the way of Mother Nature, with unfinished business from each season slowly and surely becoming integrated into the earth. How do we handle our unfinished business? There are pieces of our past that seamlessly integrate into who we are as a person, other pieces are up for examination and debate, and still others are hidden, denied, or ignored—the past that won’t let go of us—our unfinished business. How do we know it’s unfinished? It still affects us—nightmares, illnesses, insomnia, overreactions, projections, and repetitions of similar events like accidents, to name a few. These pieces need to be brought into the light of day, questioned, listened to, and accepted. It is the most loving thing we can do for ourselves. Bit by bit, story by story, day by day, tear by tear, the finishing happens. It becomes integrated—it dissolves into our souls, minds, and bodies—completing that part of the cycle in order to feed our next season of life.
Spring Anticipation
The sun rose to reveal an unusual sight for a Central Minnesota Spring Equinox–no snow! Two years previous, I was standing knee-deep in the white stuff on the first day of Spring, so we’re already way ahead in the waiting-for-the-real-spring-to-get-here game. That being said, I was hard-pressed to find many other signs of the vernal season.
I did locate a few patches of green grass by the spruce stumps, due mostly to the very early November snow we had that covered the yard with a thick blanket before the grass went dormant.
Those stumps remind me of the loss of five huge, old pines and spruces that succumbed to the harshness of the drought year, but I rejoiced when I saw a tiny replacement growing beside another towering pine. It must have been there last year, but in its tininess and surrounded by other green things, I never noticed it. So I’m counting the hardy little green tree as a first sign of Spring.
Locust seedpods and white pine cones littered the yard, looking like fall but indicating Spring with their shedding–getting rid of the old to make way for the new.
One shock of color in the brown woods was a clump of raspberry stems–vibrant and alive-looking in reddish purple, defended from the greedy rabbits by the battalions of thorns.
One green Bergenia leaf lay in the brown rubble of oak leaves and spent perennial stems. It whets my appetite for the spring ritual of uncovering the perennial beds to find the buds starting to grow from seemingly nothing. It makes one respect the power of the unseen.
And finally, I found a maple and a birch tree with swollen flower and leaf buds holding forth the promise of Spring.
Spring usually arrives for us in a cloak of white. Even without the snow, we cannot boast of the usual harbingers of Spring like the Texas Bluebonnets or the Missouri Daffodils–as much as we would like to! What we do have are tiny indications that we are bidding Winter good-bye as we anticipate the warm, colorful Spring to come.
Anticipation is one of those words that we hold a fair amount of power over how it is perceived. It can be hopeful expectation or dreadful apprehension. And while the future event certainly influences our feelings, I like to think that we can control our impression of it. Is it an optimist/pessimist thing? How do we anticipate the dawning of a new day? How do we navigate the sorrow and reluctance of letting go of the old in order to embrace the new? How do we color our world when the landscape around us is gray and brown? How do we appreciate the tiny things and respect the power of the unseen? Even with snow in the forecast, I’m looking forward to a beautiful Spring!