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When I Breathe, I Thank a Tree

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“For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.”   –Martin Luther

Have you ever felt like you couldn’t breathe?  Whether from asthma, smoke, pneumonia, or fear, the strangling, helpless feeling of not being able to replenish the body with oxygen kicks us into survival mode.  The only thing that matters in that moment is to breathe.  The physiological processes of breathing, delivering oxygen to all cells of the body, and removing carbon dioxide waste are miraculous!  Just as miraculous are the processes of trees and other green plant materials taking our waste of carbon dioxide, using it to provide nutrients for themselves, and in turn, providing oxygen for us.  We and trees are partners in this thing called Life.

Our Black Friday consisted of heading to Warner Lake County Park, spending energy via leg muscles, and buying a great day at a bargain price.  It was unseasonably warm with sun and chances of passing showers, and we eagerly hit the trails.

The wooded trails were eclectic with areas of conifer and deciduous forests, which is common in this area of Minnesota.  One uncommon aspect of this park was the high population of mature Red Cedars that grew among the mighty Oaks and Pines.

A small walk-in campground area in the mixed forest seemed like an enticing place to camp.  Deciduous trees were like ghost trees among the evergreens.

The sun broke through the clouds and shone on the butterscotch bark of a Scotch Pine tree.

We walked on, and then this…

” And into the forest I go to lose my mind and find my soul.”  –John Muir

The tall Pines were mesmerizing as they swayed and whispered in the breeze.  Chris said this is the place to take a sleeping bag and spend the night!  Imagine lying on a bed of pine needles, safe in the bosom of Mother Earth.

Breathe.  One tree provides 260 pounds of oxygen a year, while absorbing more than 48 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  The burning of one gallon of non-ethanol gas produces 20 pounds of carbon dioxide.

After we left the Pine forest, we saw other interesting trees and a grove of Birches.

When we circled the lake, we looked across the ice-covered water to see the Pine forest rising above the other trees.

 

It is great fun to discover a Pine forest of such beauty and serenity.  I’m thankful someone created the park around the small lake and big trees.  The deciduous trees in our area are not contributing to the oxygen levels in the air we are breathing during their dormancy, and the evergreen trees have slowed their production of oxygen in their non-growing state.  But trees around the world are doing their part in their active, green growing state to provide us with what we need to breathe and to clean up and recycle what we do not need.  This is a world-wide endeavor.  Silver and gold, shopping and gifts, spending and gadgets are moot points if we do not have clean, oxygen-rich air to breathe.  Trees are our real treasures, if we rightly consider—their gift to us is the only thing that really matters.

 

Mystery and Gratitude

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“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature.  And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”                     –Max Planck, physicist

Mystery: anything that is kept secret or remains unexplained or unknown.  I’m not sure which is more mysterious—Nature or human nature.  I guess it’s because they are one in the same.  I drive Chris nuts sometimes with my wonderings: I wonder why they decided to put that there?  Why did you cut the vegetables that way?  Why in the world would people throw their trash out the window?  I wonder what happened to that tree?  Why do people have to be so mean?  I’m not making a judgment on his vegetable cutting—I just want to know the reasoning behind it, if there is one.  I’m curious, and I would like to understand the things I see and try to make sense of them.

My mystery thinking began this week after Chris put burlap around the Arborvitae.  It is no mystery that deer love Arborvitae and will devour a good-looking tree into a malformed eyesore in one short winter.  And thus, our very own mysterious Stonehenge, or Burlaphenge, rather.

I was also wondering why the leaves haven’t fallen off the Ninebarks, Lilacs, and Apple trees yet.  They are the later ones to drop their leaves, but after snows and hard freezes, they should be down.  But maybe that’s the exact reason they aren’t down—that it all came too early.

It is no mystery that November is grey and brown and kind of bleak looking.  The summer vibrancy of Hosta leaves fold and dissolve into nothing, like the water-doused wicked witch of the west (now that’s a mystery!).

But all is not bleak on the November front with the interesting seedheads of Goldenrod, Hydrangea, and Purple Coneflowers.

I was wondering, of all the logs we have used as ‘steps’ in our hilly woods, why the pileated woodpeckers have suddenly attacked this one.

There is one mystery that I never question—I just take it in with gratitude—the amazing sunsets!

 

How do we problem solve and make our world a better place?  First we have to be aware—we need to notice things, see things that are not working or are working beautifully, and get curious about it.  We also have to step outside ourselves, put our biases and prejudices aside, and look at the situation with new eyes.  We have to be our own third party.  (What a difficult thing to do, I know.)  Then we need to gather information and communicate—who are the experts and what do they say about this, what’s the data about this subject over time and many sources, where does this truly have an effect, when does a certain thing happen or in what situation, and then, the question of the mysterious why.  Does that sound too scientific or experimental?  Or like too much work?  My hypothesis is that we all do it all the time but leave out some of the important steps.  We make the results and conclusions fit the way we already think, slap our hands together, and exclaim, “Done. Well done.”  But what is the impact to ourselves and others if our conclusion is a lie or has only a thin line of convenient truth in it?  Are we willing to engage in dialogue about our conclusions?  A mystery is anything that is kept a secret or remains unexplained or unknown.  There are many things in life that should not remain a mystery—secrets that serve one and hurt others should be brought forth into the light of inquiry, examination, and illumination; unexplained conclusions that tout magnanimity but in essence do much harm should withstand a thorough and vigorous cross examination and accountability; and unknown things that we do not want to know should courageously be brought forth through the fences of resistance so we can stare them in the face, feel the full force and cost of their hidden, yet flawed power, and find relief and peace in finally knowing our truth.  So get curious, gather information, communicate, examine, be courageous, and for those things that are truly a mystery—like sunsets and the pure wonder of Nature (and probably even cutting vegetables)—have gratitude!

Nature and Nurture—Who We Are

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She was a listener from a very young age.  Her large brown eyes and beautiful, expressive face shone with excitement, cast woeful sadness, or conveyed a myriad of other emotions, all without the use of words.  In fact, she didn’t talk much at all early in life, even when I knew she knew how to do it.  Her older sister was a words person at a young age, and with her caring, intuitive spirit, she ‘interpreted’ for Anna.  It was apparent that Anna allowed it—she would look at Emily to answer, and I could see the approval in her eyes when Emily got it right.  I was never worried; I knew she would talk when she was ready.  And she did.  It was soon evident that she was an articulate auditory learner—she would be playing on the floor with toys and suddenly sing a complete jingle that she had heard on tv.  All of our kids were exposed to music from birth—classical music, fun Raffi songs, cultural songs and lullabies, my singing songs at bedtime, interactive song/story tapes and books (remember Abiyoyo?), along with the Emmylou and CCR records in our collection.  Anna showed a special affinity for all music and instruments—she loved the toy piano passed down from the cousins, she taught Aaron how to play the toy xylophone, we bought her a beautiful wooden zither for Christmas, and she would play songs for us—and this was all before she started school.

How do we become the persons we are born to be?  How do all creations end up where they are in order to do the work they are intended to do?

Why do the gold-leaved Cottonwoods and Willows prefer to grow with their roots near water instead of on an arid hilltop?

Do muskrats choose to live near the cattails in order to use them for food and building material or is it happenstance?

Rango’s herding instincts apply to cattle, geese, or people.  He enjoys his work and takes his job seriously.

And yet, the geese have their own sentries doing their job to keep an eye on him and us.

What makes one dog a herder and another a retriever?

What happens when opportunities for doing one’s work dry up or are never available to begin with?

We live and grow in this complex, multi-layered environment with synergism and competition, support and censure, dependence, independence, and interdependence.

 

We returned to Brookings to meet our grown-up listener and to hear her musical voice being presented as a flute solo at a faculty recital.  Anna is what she has always been and more—a listener, a lover of music and instruments, a composer, and a music scholar to name a few.  She learned to play the clarinet, sang and played in church, pleaded for piano lessons, began composing, participated in band and orchestra, learned to play many more instruments, went to music camps and on to college to major in composition.  She has written a book and is now in graduate school—all the while composing new music from her creative, brilliant inner being.  Doing what she was born to do.  Being who she was born to be.

We sat in the Performing Arts Center waiting for her piece to be performed.  It was the same place we had gone to school choral concerts.  It was the same room where we had sat in awe as Itzhak Perlman played his violin.  It was the same stage with the Fazioli grand piano where Anna recorded her first cd of compositions as Chris and the sound guy watched from the control room.  I proudly present Anna Brake’s composition performed by Dr. Tammy Evans Yonce.

Program Notes
“Oh Rapturous Hour! Is this Fulfilment?” is a monologue for flute.  The poem, “Fulfilment” by Harold Monro (1879-1932), serves as the skeleton for the contour and articulation for the music.  The romantic poem has intense emotional changes and the characterizations are key to this piece.  I use word painting throughout with techniques such as breath tone, whole tone scales, flutter-tonguing, trills, multiple staccato and key clicks to represent words or themes in the poem, such as wind, nature, laughter, etc.

Nature—our genes and innate gifts, the spirit of who we are when we enter this world.  Nurture—the complex, multi-layered environment we grow and develop in.  The interaction and synergy of Nature and Nurture form who we are.  Later, there are choices that steer us in certain directions, while at the very same time, happenstance—those things we have no control over—can change the course of our lives in an instant.  It takes a hardy soul to navigate it all.  That’s how we all do this thing called Life.

More Leaves Have Fallen Than Remain

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“The leaf of every tree brings a message from the unseen world.  Look, every falling leaf is a blessing.”  –Rumi

If Fall is only known and embraced for colorful leaves, then Fall is short and soon over.  Too often a season is defined by one certain thing, and it passes quickly.  To me, Autumn began in August with little hints of color changes in out of the way places—a tinge of red on poison ivy peeking out from under the grass, and with a slight, but noticeable change in the length of daylight.  From then until winter sits firmly in our bones and on our driveways, Fall morphs in a myriad of ways, and it is long and glorious.

Here in central Minnesota, more leaves have fallen than remain on the trees.  Two weeks ago we wondered if it was ‘peak’ color yet; one week ago Chris raked what leaves had fallen; today the wind is blowing hard—raining leaves, rolling leaves, and piling leaves.

One of the large Maple trees around the house is bare.

Another has a few golden leaves still clinging to the branches.

And two are still mostly covered with their Autumn finery—for now.

But most of the leaves are spent and on the ground.

Some Oak trees have lost their leaves…

…and others glow like rubies and topaz.

Our ‘Prairie Fire’ Crabapple is lit with orange and yellow leaves that will soon fall, leaving behind the ripe red fruit.

 

For those of us who have lived for half a century or more, the words of the title can hold a different meaning from the literal.  More leaves have fallen than remain.  More years have passed than we probably have remaining.  While that may bring up feelings of sadness and grief, it could be we are defining this season far too narrowly and with only the parameter of ‘lovely leaves.’  What if, as Rumi says, every falling leaf is a blessing.  Perhaps we are getting rid of old, irrelevant burdens, ideas, heartaches, and self-imposed handicaps one by one by one.  When they have fallen away, the fruit of our lives is still visible, still relevant, still able to nurture those who need us.  We receive and embrace the messages from the unseen world, the gemstones that remain, and this season of life becomes long and glorious.  

Homecoming

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“Every traveler has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering.”      —Charles Dickens

An old black pickup pulls into the driveway every weekday afternoon and parks in front of the garage.  An old black dog inside the house who’s waiting and watching by the floor-length window gets a shot of adrenaline in anticipation.  The homecoming has begun!  Chris exits the pickup, gathers his small red cooler and extraneous sweatshirts, boots, and clothes that are mud-streaked, oil-stained, and grass-smelling and walks slowly toward the house.  If he’s dug holes, planted trees, or been on his hands and knees pulling weeds for too many hours of the day, it shows in the limp of his gait.  But pure happiness and joy meets him at the door in a rush and a dozen rubs against his legs.  There is a smile on Chris’ face as he sits on the bench, looks at his gray-faced friend, and rubs behind her ears as she wags her tail in contentment.  The three of us then take a walk down the road—Chris and I check in with one another about our day as Tamba checks out the new smells on the old pathway.

It was Homecoming at Saint John’s University last weekend.  Aaron and his friends met to eat breakfast in the Reef—the cafeteria on the basement floor of the thick stone walled Quad building.  After a short walk across campus, they entered the pine tree enveloped football stadium where the Johnnies whomped the Auggies in a no-surprise win.  Tailgating, catching up, reminiscing, and sharing a beer and a game of pool rounded out the day.  Chris and I joined Aaron for a hike at Saint John’s the next day—it was a beautiful, sunshiny day, and the Maple trees were in spectacular color.  Families, students, and alumni hiked the extensive network of trails, reveling in the magnificence of the place.

What does a place one wants to come home to offer?  What brings people back ‘home?’  Saint John’s emphasizes a sense of community and friendship that I witnessed during Aaron’s four years there and that has continued in the years since he graduated.  It is a place where you can fall, and there are people there to help you back up.

Home is a place of beauty, however you define that.  Saint John’s University is surrounded with hundreds of acres of natural beauty—lakes, streams, Maple forests, grasslands, and Oak savannas—and contains historical and modern architecture that awes and inspires.

Coming home should be a safe haven in the rough seas of life.  The heart-breaking reality is that many children don’t have a safe haven at home; they consider school and their teacher a place and person of safety where they can have food, kind words, and care and help with learning and being.  We never know when we are someone’s port in a storm.

Home lets us be who we are with no pretenses, embraces us no matter our size, color, mistakes, or shortcomings.

Home is a place to hang out, to get close, to have a conversation, to hold one another accountable, to soak up the good things in life and to deal with the bad.

Home is a place of encouragement when a task is daunting, when we wonder how the heck we’re going to climb this next hurdle, when the steps are right in front of our faces but we are unable to navigate them for whatever reason.

Home is a place of growth and learning where books and experiments, chores and hands-on doing, creativity, mistakes and solving problems of every kind are used daily.  We learn, we grow, we shed our old ways and constantly become new creatures.

Home is a place that helps us out of the muck, that throws us a rope when we’re stuck, that will wade into the mess we find ourselves in, pull our boot out of the mud, and help us back to shore.

Home is where all the paths of life lead back to—often we lose our way and wander through the trees.  We get confused about what direction we’re going and whether it’s the right way.  We get scared of what’s to come because of the dark nights that have come before.  But always, the Light of home is calling us forward through the shadows.

 

For Aaron, homecoming at Saint John’s was fun and nostalgic, satisfying and bittersweet (Jake, you were missed!)  For Tamba, Chris’ daily homecoming is a time to celebrate with joy and contentment.  So what does a place or person offer that one wants to come home to?  Safety in all realms, acceptance of who we are, beauty for the eyes and soul, responsibility of internal and external dynamics, help when we need it, a culture of learning and growth, and fun, happiness, contentment, and joy!  Home is the place we return to, it is the people we can count on, it is the God who sustains us, it is the path we travel on the journey back to ourselves.  Home is truly where our hearts are, where we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we matter. 

Wielding the Power of Love

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There’s somebody out there wielding more power than they probably know they have.  Their power is not evident at the time of delivery; in fact, it will be evident days to weeks later.  The delivery, I’m sure, is taken lightly and seems relatively benign, and they may or may not see the consequences of their actions.  That being said, their mission is noble and just—to rid our city or township of the noxious Spiny Plumeless Thistle.

I don’t have anything against the intrinsic value of any plant in this creation of ours, but I have a strong dislike for Buckthorn and Thistles, two of the most tenacious invasive species of our area.  Come June, I am scanning the ditch along our road for the opening of a pretty-if-it-was-on-another-plant purple flower.  At that time, I get out Chris’ sharp digging spade and spend an hour or two doing my civic duty by walking up and down our road chopping every purple-flowered, prickly plant I see.

Seed dispersal by wind takes the opportunistic seeds to anywhere there is some degree of disturbance—an overgrazed pasture, vacant lots, field edges, or roadsides.  Luckily, the plant is biennial, and with persistence, it can be eradicated over a number of years, especially if all neighbors are on the same page.  As the summer wears on, my digging slips, and I notice a few spindly plants flowering across the road from our garden.  Here is where the wielder of power comes into the picture—with a wand and a tank of herbicide.  August is not a good time to spray weeds in a good management program.  I’m not an expert on herbicides, but I live with a man who has used them every year of his horticultural career, and I know about drift and volatility.  I first noticed a change in the color of a number of sumacs–they all turned orange while the others were green.  And then I noticed my tomatoes—the growing tips were burned back, the leaves got spotty, and the tomatoes I was so looking forward to started turning off colors.  Dang it!  The city public works director denied that they were the ones responsible, but I was a little worried when he said my garden was too far from the road to be affected (not true) and didn’t know what dicamba was.

The wielder of the wand did more damage in the neighborhood.  While spraying in a gravel parking lot down the road at a small park, the drift killed all but one branch on a 15-20 year old Accolade Elm, a hybrid tolerant of Dutch Elm disease.  Its survival seems unlikely.

And the hill at the end of the road that used to be all grass a number of years ago will probably be filled with thistles again next year, as the herbicide concoction killed the grass along with the thistles.

 

So disappointing that my tomatoes were wrecked.  Disgusting that a tree that took so many years to grow was wiped out.  Frustrating that the people responsible don’t have a better management plan than ‘go spray thistles’ in the humid hot middle of summer.  For some reason it all reminded me of the hate, injustice, and ignorance in the world that seems to be tenaciously invading all our lives.  The prickly spines of hate are often hidden under the beauty and righteousness of a pretty idea.  Seeds of discontent and harm are dispersed via the internet by opportunistic self-serving strangers looking for the grounds of unrest.  And what are the wielders of power doing to manage it all?

It’s overwhelming at times.  I find myself wondering in that ancient, yet 90’s sort of way—What Would Jesus Do?  It helps me stay strong.  I know that I will keep picking up my shovel to chop out hate and ignorance, and for all I am worth, I will wield the power of Love.

Shifting Gears

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We were still newlyweds when Chris taught me to drive a vehicle with a manual transmission.  We had just bought a used 1981 Chevy C-10 1/2 ton pick-up truck.  It was a bold red color—the only choice for a truck, according to Chris.  The single cab and long bed (the standard back then) looked sleek and utilitarian and housed a ‘three on the tree’—a manual three-speed shifter on the steering wheel column!  He drove us to a way-out-yonder gravel road north of Bates City where no extraneous traffic would interfere with my concentration, and then we switched places.  He was a patient, methodical teacher, and I tried to be the good student that had carried me through all my years of schooling.  But studying books and operating clutches are two different things!  I don’t care to remember how many times I killed the engine before I even got going.  There was gear grinding, bucking action, nervous laughter, and many “I’m sorrys” when I thought I was wrecking it.  Trying to get the hand-foot timing down—letting off the gas, pushing in the clutch, moving the gear shift to the right position, then letting out the clutch slowly and giving it gas—was hard and frustrating.  And how do you even get braking in there, too?

Fall is a time for shifting gears—luckily Mother Nature has done it more times than we know and does it smoothly and seamlessly.  The growing, producing season is in decline; the fruits of that season are gathered or hanging heavily on the vine, ready for harvest.  Internal systems in trees take their cues from the external world—length of daylight and temperature—to stop production of chlorophyll, which unmasks the carotenoids and anthocyanins that give leaves their fall colors and eventually causes the leaves to drop off.

Fall flowers provide needed nectar to insects that may be migrating, hibernating, or laying eggs for the last cycle before winter.  One last hurrah of the repeat bloomer Stella D’Oro Lily entices a Monarch butterfly to linger and feed.

The beautiful ‘Fireworks’ Goldenrod attracts bees and wasps of all kinds.

Showy purple Asters bloom vibrantly as one of the late season stars of the perennial world.

A shift happens with the bird population.  The summer birds have mostly migrated away—we no longer see the graceful swoops of the bluebirds or hear the incessant chatter of the house wrens.  It is rather quiet on the bird front, though we heard a flock of geese just this morning.  A quiet little guy visited the bird bath recently and seemed to be wondering where everybody else was also!

Spring fawns are losing their spots to a winter coat and are almost as big as their mothers.  They are the reason we must be so diligent in guarding young trees and shrubs.

The male spotted fawn shifts to a ‘button buck’ as the pedicels form into small hair-covered bumps at 4-5 months of age that will grow into antlers next April or May.

 

With the patient tutelage of Chris and lots of practice, shifting gears with a manual transmission was soon second nature to me.  The old ’81 Chevy was a stalwart worker for us for many years.

 

Fall not only shifts gears for plants and animals, but for us also.  Some of us harvest and preserve food for winter.  We start craving hot soups, pumpkin anything, and apple pie.  We slowly and effortlessly morph from outside evening activities to reading or tv watching.  Daylight and temperature influence our internal systems and our external choices, showing that we are an integral part of Nature that is often overlooked.  Yet we also have a huge cortical brain that can override the more animal aspects of our existence.  We can choose to shift gears!  We can choose to migrate to a new place, choose to live in the way-out-yonder quietness or the busy bee metropolis.  We can choose to be bold, choose our schooling, linger in darkness or seamlessly let our Light shine. 

Checking Our (River) Bank Statements

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One of the greatest lessons children can teach us is to hold two very divergent ideas in our mind and hearts at the same time.  It may just be a matter of days after their birth before we are holding the most precious thing we have ever seen at arms length while contemplating the extreme mess of diaper, clothes, and blankets that needs to be cleaned up.  Or there is non-stop crying that wears on our sleep-weary ears and nerves from the perfectly beautiful baby we brought home.

This past week was hot and muggy with uncomfortable nights and air quality alerts that tightened my airways with ozone.  Summer’s bad qualities.  But it looked like Fall.  The Ash trees were mostly all yellow and dropping leaves.  The Sumac trees had turned showstopping crimson and scarlet.  The Linden trees were quickly turning lemon-colored with a circular blanket of leaves covering the green grass underneath them.  So is it Fall or Summer?

Our neighbor’s Buckeye trees glowed golden with leaves and spiny seed capsules that encase the ‘eyed’ dark brown seed.

Fall harvesting by the birds has begun.  A juvenile Cardinal plucked a seed from a nearby tree—unfortunately it was a seed from the dreadful Buckthorn!  Is Buckthorn good for food or a worthless tree?

Virginia Creeper vines are turning red, going from camouflage to conspicuous.

Also conspicuous in the morning dew was a funnel weaver spider’s sheet web.  Most likely a grass spider, she hid herself in the entrance of the funnel to wait for a tasty insect to stumble upon her web.  Are spiders terrible pests or architectural geniuses?

Drying seeds of Queen Anne’s Lace leaned over against the background of fall-colored Sumac.

The smallest Hostas are just now blooming, fresh and summer-like…

…while the sun-kissed Maple trees are beginning to show their colors.

 

We are a society based on labeling.  The calendar says it is still Summer and will be Fall on Friday; the meteorologists say it was Fall on September 1st.  If we had no way of orderly keeping track of days, what would it be called?  Perhaps it would not be named at all.  Often labeling comes with black and white thinking, with opposite and extreme judgments—good or bad, right or wrong, all or nothing.  We run into a web of tangled trouble when we try to determine who has the ‘right’ to decide what is right or wrong.  Does the person who is deathly afraid of spiders get to determine a spider’s worth or does an entomologist?  Does a person who is trying to eradicate Buckthorn from his property have the right to determine its value or does the person who loves it for a privacy hedge?  I believe black and white thinking are like two banks of a river, and the river is the gray area.  We can be the sturdy boats with thick ropes and strong oars and sails that navigate the River of Life.  At times it is imperative for us to tie up to one of the two banks—for order in a society or for taking care of our personal space.  But most of the time we are moving through life on the gray River, and we must hold two very divergent ideas in our thoughts and hearts with compassion.  Our child who just made a huge mess is our beloved.  The dreadful Buckthorn provides food for the birds.  The scary spider or bat eats many destructive insects, and on and on it goes.  Many people live on one of the two banks, like I used to—it is familiar and safe there, but Life passes by.  We call out with disdain or hope to the people on the River—“We know the answer!”  And while the River at times can be dangerous and fast-moving or stagnant and stale, most of the time it is life-giving, refreshing, cleansing, and invigorating.  Through rough waters and smooth sailing, may we navigate well, anticipate the rocks and snags, learn what we need to learn, look to both horizons, and enjoy the unexpected treasures around the bend.

 

Intentional Grounding

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Do you remember how often you were on the ground when you were a kid?  Our babies spent hours on blankets spread out on the grass while I worked in the garden or their older siblings played in the sandbox.  There was usually a Black Lab dog named Licorice in the grass or on the blanket near them, taking seriously her self-proclaimed job as baby-sitter.  When older, the kids played with kittens, watched the chickens, rolled down hills, caught frogs in the mud of the corral, made forts in the lilac bush, made snow angels and snow forts, and so many other things—all while sitting, crawling, or lying on the ground!  When they entered teenage years, their ground time was reduced to sports, laying out in the sun to get a tan, or an occasional picnic on a blanket.  All three had summers of their young adult years when they returned to living close to the earth at summer camps and outdoor jobs, when their bodies and spirits felt strong and empowered.  And then, what happens to us when we become adults?  How often are we in a building, in a car, in air conditioning, in good clothes, in a hurry?

My Mom recently returned from a week-long camping trip to Wyoming.  She remarked about how well she slept each night on her cot in a tent—much better than her nights at home in her own bed!  I told her about a quote from the Touch the Earth Trail pamphlet from Mille Lacs Kathio State Park that we had visited.

“The Dakota was a true naturist, a lover of nature.  He loved the earth and all things of the earth, the attachment growing with age.  The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power.  It was good for the skin to touch the Earth and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth.  The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing, and healing.  That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life-giving forces.  For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him.”     —Luther Standing Bear, Lakota leader and author, 1868-1939

Looking back at thousands of years of human history, most humans had almost continuous contact with the Earth each day.  This direct contact with the Earth is now called grounding or earthing; (also terms in electrical engineering to ensure safety of equipment and humans.)  There have been studies that indicate grounding’s positive effect on blood viscosity, heart rate variability, cortisol levels, inflammation, sleep, and autonomic nervous system balance. 

If a person has pets or kids, it’s easy to spend time on the ground with them and get a different perspective of the world.

 

When do you feel grounded?  How does one get to that ‘down-to-earth’ feeling?  Luther Standing Bear, young kids, animals, well-being researchers, and yoga instructors know that you can literally just drop down to the earth.  When I feel tired, achy and beat-up, like the weight of the world is on my shoulders, I like to lie down in the grass on my stomach, usually with a Black Lab dog named Tamba by my side.  I am never too much or not enough for Mother Earth.  I am just another one of her precious creatures.  My body feels supported; I feel the warmth of the sun and the cool of the shade.  My heartbeat becomes the heartbeat of the Earth, and with that awareness comes a calming, a grounding, and an appreciation for the life-giving forces inherent in Mother Earth and in each of us.

What Does Home Look Like to You?

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What does home look like to you?  How does it feel?  How many generations of your family have lived in the place you call home or in the place where your soul feels at home?  What is the history of your family?  Is your home tied to the land?  Or is home about the people you are with at any given place or time?

We visited Mille Lacs Kathio State Park last weekend—over 10,000 acres near the mammoth Mille Lacs Lake.  The park is a National Historic Landmark District.  The early French explorer known as Duluth was the first European to accurately record a visit to this area in 1679.  He found permanent established villages of the greater Dakota nation band known as the Mdewakanon who lived near Mdewakan, the Spiritual or Sacred Lake, now known as Mille Lacs.  This area known as Kathio has been home to the Dakota and later to the Ojibwe people for over 9,000 years.  (Stone tools and spear points were found at a site that was radiocarbon tested.)  9,000 years—how many generations of Dakota and Ojibwe people have lived here?!  It has been the site for archaeological digs for over a century with 30 separate sites identified thus far.  It was the perfect place to call home with forests, lakes, rivers, plentiful food sources and other natural resources.

We began our day by climbing the observation tower to get a bird’s eye view of the park and surrounding lakes.

Loggers removed most of the red and white pine forest in the mid 1800’s, and now most of the trees are oaks, maples, aspen, and birch.

Three large lakes connected by the Rum River could be seen from the tower, the largest being Mille Lacs Lake.

It was a beautiful day for hiking—not too hot or buggy.  We saw interesting fungi, five-foot-tall ferns, and delicate wildflowers.

While driving through the park in all its wildness, I commented to Chris that it looks like a good home for bears, thinking we weren’t in bear territory.  But when we walked through the interpretive center, one of the displays explained that indeed black bears live in the park!  Then we came across this tree on one of the hiking trails—looks like bear activity to me!

The swimming beach at the picnic area was a man-made pool not far from the banks of the Rum River.  The only one wading in it was a Great Blue Heron!

In 1965, Leland Cooper of Hamline Universary was sent to survey areas of Mille Lacs Kathio State Park.  The site that was later named after him was excavated a year later by Elden Johnson of the University of Minnesota.  The Cooper site showed that the ancient Native people lived there from about 500 to the 1700’s.  Summer and winter homes, a log pallisade wall, and ricing pits were discovered along with arrow points, stone tools, pottery, and trade goods, including glass beads and Jesuit rings–metal finger rings that French missionaries of the late 1600’s gave to the villagers.  This is what the Cooper site looks like today:

Ogechie Lake is a long, narrow, shallow lake that for thousands of years has produced wild rice for waterfowl and the people who made their home along its shores.  In the mid 1950’s a dam was built at the south end of the lake to keep the water levels high in Mille Lacs Lake for fishermen.  This basically flooded the Ogechie rice crop for decades with little to no production.  Two years ago, a new, lower dam was built, and the wild rice or manoomin is coming back so the present day Ojibwe can once again harvest the ancient food.

 

The land my grandparents called home in South Dakota has been in the family for three and four generations now—it seems like such a long time.  But consider the 360 or more generations of Dakota and Ojibwe who have called the Mille Lacs Kathio region home!  Home to me is the prairie, rolling hills of pasture, sloughs full of geese, memories of my family.  But there is also a connection to Scandinavia where all my ‘native’ ancestors lived.  Home to the Ojibwe of Mille Lacs is ‘thousands of lakes’ with fish and wild rice, forests of hard woods and conifers, wild animals and birds, traditions and stories of their ancestors.  When we look from a bird’s eye view at our own lives in the long history of our ancestors, what do we see?  Were there huge changes to where or what home was?  If we are the descendants of immigrants, refugees, or slaves, that would be true.  What is the ‘river’ that runs through all those generations, connecting them and us?  How do we wade through new waters to make our home?  We each have our own definition of what home looks like to us, but this I know: The land matters.  History matters.  People matter.