Sunday Morning Walk - Oddities

Along with the beautiful, there are strange and wondrous things in the woods!



The acorn was sprouting in the path, so I moved it off to the side so it might actually have a chance.

WomanSong

What is WomanSong? WomanSong is what people are made of. WomanSong is a gathering in North Dakota in the early fall, this year, 2008, on September 6 and 7. Somehow, last year the planners found out about my little gallery and asked me to teach some workshops and give a talk. It seemed like a bad business decision to agree to drive 700 miles one way to give some workshops and a talk for a weekend, but I ignored that voice and signed on. Was it worth it? Many times over. What is WomanSong? Women. Young women in funky cloths that express their independence and zest for life. Older women in practical comfortable cloths. Every age of woman from every sort of profession and every sort of personality and ideology and philosophy. Songs. Many talented musicians. Audience singing along sometimes. Drumming. Talks on the main stage. Sometimes serious and sometimes funny and often a mix of both. Workshops. Many going on simultaneously all over the park. Hands on. Stuff to make and take home. So much to learn. You have to be 3 or 4 copies of yourself to really take in all of what is offered. Plays. Movies. Art venders. Women camping. Women laughing. Women telling their stories. Women asking for help and women giving help. Bummed smokes. Hugs from old friends and friends you just met. Owls flying over the road at night. Coyotes howling far away. Last year WomanSong was rain. Wet shoes, wet socks, wet hair, wet chairs, wet grass, mud. And guess when the rain broke and the sun came out? 3 minutes before my talk in the big tent was to begin. I lost my audience to the sun and had to agree to give my talk outdoors at the picnic tables on the lawn in order to bribe them back. WomanSong was new friends and new ideas and new personal challenges and new inspirations. WomanSong was fire breathing dancers. WomanSong was poetry. WomanSong was stories. WomanSong was hot coffee. WomanSong was finding out you are smarter and better off than you thought. That other people have been in your shoes and made it just fine. You leave WomanSong a better person. You leave WomanSong a stronger woman. You leave WomanSong knowing people are good and kind and that you are too. You leave WomanSong feeling . . . important! WomanSong is amazing. You should go to WomanSong. You should gather up your tent and sleeping bag and your quest for fun and personal growth and head to North Dakota in September. It might seem silly to drive however many hundred miles you are from LaMoure, North Dakota, but it will be worth it. I’ve been to WomanSong and I am going again. See you there!

Sunday Morning Walk - Abundance

Mayapple
Trillium
Trillium
Merrybells
Marsh Marigold

Sunday Morning Walk - Vistas

Skunk Cabbage
Marsh Marigold
Mayapple

Small Kindnesses That Matter

It is a rare camaraderie there in the Intensive Care Unit waiting room. They call them ‘campers’: The people who have been there for a long time, days, weeks even, and staked out a claim on certain chairs or tables with their blankets and pillows and bags of books and notebooks. They are there offering gentle help to those just in, not intruding or prying or offering too much but just a bit of a smile at first, a nod, then a not-too-threatening question about who you’re there with, maybe an offering of their story, and ear to listen if you need to dump, a box of tissue if you break down. The campers always have boxes of tissue, not so much because they use them so much anymore themselves but because they know those of us just arriving and raw from the shock of it all will need them.
They remember if you have a meeting with the medical staff or if the one you are there with had a procedure or surgery done and quietly ask of it after to see if you need to talk or need fresh advice or resources. They know where to score a snack or a soda and the best stuff in the cafeteria. They know where you can camp and not get busted and what behaviors to avoid to keep from annoying the local gatekeepers. If you are just tired of keeping up a brave face, and don’t want to scare your family, you can go cry with them a bit. Or just sit: They know when to leave you alone. They are tough by now. And when it all goes bust, they hold you while you cry. Or if you’re not the hugging type, they just sit there and let you cry as much as you need to. And hope for their own better outcome that grows less likely with each passing day. But that kind of hope is a funny thing: Like most Good Things, the more of it you give away to others who are in desperate need, the more you have left to cling to yourself.

Wild Plums

The plums are in bloom now. The park was designed by volunteers as a pretty park, a park for quiet contemplation, a small picnic, a place to read a book or sit a while and watch the birds, a place to have a small gathering of Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts or a birthday party, or a spot to stop to have your lunch on a bench or in the grass. There is a small central lawn surrounded by trees and shrubs and flowering things, with a pathway that makes a loop back in between and among the plants. We asked for donations in exchange for any sentiment you wanted on a small plaque. Between the designing of the park in the fall of 1995, and the planting, on Arbor Day 1996, my father died, and friends bought plum trees in his honor. He always gathered wild plums in the fall from the shelter belts between the grids of farm fields and made ‘plum brandy’, by some process of stuffing wild plums into bottles and covering them with some sort of alcohol. The concoction lived in the highest cabinets in our kitchen and came down for a toast when certain friends were over or for medicinal purposes in winter when flu or bad colds plagued him. Plum trees were a good choice to honor him. There was a dulcimer player with a song about the lasting nature of gardens at that 1996 Arbor Day event and many children with shovels helping plant the trees. I try to remember to go there, to the little park, every spring when the plums are in bloom, and stroll the paths and sit for a while on the benches, maybe pull a weed or two. And to remember all the fine volunteers that helped design the park and buy the plants and plant the plants and spread the mulch and pull hundreds of thistles the first couple years and buy more plants and plant them and weed around them and divide the perennials to fill in the gaps and rescue the paths from the aggressive ones. And to remember my dad and his love of taking a drive in the countryside and a walk along the fencerows or across a pasture, where we could get him to tell us a story or two about some little or great thing from long ago or just last week. The plums are blooming now.

Homemade Toys - Size Large

There was a thing we called the snow plane. It was a wedge shaped cockpit on skis, pushed from behind by an airplane propeller. The exact ownership of it was not entirely clear to me. The source of the airplane it came from was not entirely clear to me and who had been involved in its engineering and building was not entirely clear to me. Somebody built it in somebody’s shop. Sometimes it was at our house and sometimes not. We lived pretty close to this wide spot on the James River that was technically named Silver Lake but no one really called it that. It was just the Jim River by Ludden. My dad’s friend lived on the other side of the river, a bit north. Sometimes the snow plane was at their house. It was fast. How fast can an airplane engine push a wedge of cockpit on skis across a frozen river? I remember one time in particular. A friend of my mother’s whom I adored was visiting and we were going to go for a ride! It must not have been heated inside because we wore more layers than you could move much in. But for some reason, the friend brought my baby sister along, held the bundle of my baby sister in her lap. I have an inkling that it was because spoiled me insisted she come along even though she was far too young to have a clue what was going on! I am pretty sure my mother disapproved. I am pretty sure my dad grinned large as he drove the thing across the snowy field and onto the ice of the river. It was cold! It was loud! It was fast! It was fun!

An Eagle Scout

Tony was our navigator. Tony was a good navigator. He had a knack for knowing just where we were on the trail relative to the map. He was great at knowing which fork to take and for telling the real trails from the false trails where others before us had gotten it wrong. He could actually find where a trail picked back up on the other side of a creek crossing just from the change in vegetation. But Tony was fast and strong and had an unfortunate habit of getting too far ahead. So after some warnings, he was banned to the back of the group. Just behind me. I had to snarl a few times to keep him from walking too close on my heels for my claustrophobic comfort, but soon came to appreciate him back there. He would sense my energy lagging and would make some encouraging comment that sounded at first like a complaint but turned itself around before ending, like “Today sure has been hard work. We’ve gone about 5 miles but I bet we could do another 5 couldn’t we? And we only have about 2 left.” Or “I am tired too, but we can make it. I wonder it the campsite tonight will be as pretty as last night.” Or his simple "Aw, sure you can." to my frequent "I can't do this." He kept me going on many occasions with his quiet encouragements and his smile. Tony was awarded the rank of Eagle Scout a couple months ago at a very serious and solemn ceremony at his church. But it was only a formality. To me, Tony was an Eagle in the Daniel Boone National Wilderness in Kentucky in the summer of 2005.
Postscript: And this evening, Tony was awarded a Citizenship Award by his town. It is a fine thing to be honored with the friendship of an Eagle Scout.

More On My Impoverished Childhood

The thing is, I didn’t know it was supposed to be impoverished. I thought we were fabulously well off. We lived in this trailer house next to grandma’s house. No, not mobile home, I said, trailer house. And how cool is that? A long narrow metal house. In your grandmas yard! Cooler it does not GET to a toddler. My baby sister and I had cribs on opposite walls of the bedroom at the far end of the hallway and we could hand things to each other across the space between our cribs. I was older and had outgrown my bottle, but sometimes I could get her to give hers to me across the gap. Next there was the bathroom and next the kitchen and at the far other end, the living room. There was a front door and a back door, but they were both along the same side of the trailer house. A bedroom for my parents was built on at the back door so it was the doorway to their bedroom. The addition was made of 2x4 framing and plywood. I bet that bedroom was cold in North Dakota in the winter! In the living room, the couch was built into the end of the trailer house. No not sofa, I said couch and I meant it. The living room was separated from the kitchen by the refrigerator. The TV sat on top of the fridge. We were rich to have a TV. Once my dad was holding my baby sister and I was sitting on the couch and we were watching the TV that was on top of the fridge waiting for my mom to get ready so we could all go somewhere. My dad was eating the pimentos out of green olives for me. Love doesn’t get thicker than that. We were rich, I tell you!

Damage We've Done

If I stand at the side of the road long enough and stare down this valley, maybe I can will us not to destroy any more of this. I drive by here every time I go anywhere out of my part-time hometown. Mostly I take it for granted, as I suppose most passing by do, if they notice it at all. It is along side the road to the freeway, next to any ugly concrete bridge on a curve too dangerous to pause long on. Under the bridge, we have destroyed the pattern of the stream, and across the road, upstream, what was a beautiful view has been defaced and mangled by some sort of hideous development that is either industrial or agricultural and has marred the entire landscape there not only with its building and its road but with some sort of extensive digging for some sort of service utility. It makes me angry to look at once was a beautiful view on that side and it makes me fear for the fate of this side of the road. How many thousands of years did it take for this stream to carve this valley and settle into this pattern of windings and how many people rested at its edge and maybe watered ponies there or set up temporary camp to take a meal? It is most beautiful in the spring when the grass is still short and its windings are filled with water. I have never seen it flood when other straighter creeks are overflowing their too deep and ugly cut banks, so the oxbows manage to handle the added water of a storm. Imagine these hills and valleys covered with prairie grasses and flowers instead of pasture grasses cut by fences and imagine the hilltops capped with bur oak trees and black raspberry bramble and imagine the peace of living there or just visiting with no highway traffic rushing past And hope with me that we have the good sense to do no more damage to this than we already have.

Getting My Feet Wet

I take great pride in finally being able to get my giant uncoordinated graceless 50 year old body in and out of my canoe without taking on a drop of water so that I can keep my feet and jeans dry. I am very careful getting in and out, and in how I paddle so that I can stay dry. Then on the way home, I swerve madly onto the shoulder and willingly walk into the wet black slime to see up close the skunk cabbages and the marsh marigolds. They glow in the swampy flood plains and I cannot resist them.

May Day In A Boat

May Day! There was something oddly reassuring about seeing May 1 at last on both my cell phone and my camera.
It was a long winter, for the severity of the weather, for how it seemed to hang on and on, and for the challenges and struggles that this one held.
May 1 seems to close a door on all that and define clearly that we have passed a certain portal into true spring.
May Day in school was a time to make paper baskets, write poems about nature, and color flowers to post around the edged of the chalkboard.
I remember violets under last fall's cottonwood leaves on the playground and forgetting coats outdoors at the end of recess and hoping to be the one person sent outdoors to gather them up for everyone.
Today the wind made the water choppy and scary so I clung to the edges and the coves where I was gladdened to see green things poking up out of last year'd dead and brown things.
There is nothing like fresh green shoots pushing past dried brown to remind us of the cyclic nature of nature and the certainty that struggles will be rewarded with happy times again and sorrows give way to joy.
May Day is truly spring and there can be no turning back!

Spring Morning on Water Street

The day dawned sunny and bright, so I delayed my cleaning and organizing to capture what the back alley has to offer as it comes truly awake from a long hard winter. This is the 'back yard' of Commerce Street.

In The News

The builder is featured in the Reedsburg, Wisconsin newspaper:

http://www.wiscnews.com/rtp/news/283856

One Day On The Water

When the docks and boats are off the water, it is still and peaceful, allowing reflections of the shore on the water. When the leaves are off the trees, the evergreens stand out, almost resembling a Japanese woodblock print. It was pretty, and it is everchanging. It will be different when I go this week with new things to discover and awe me.

HOW TO COMMENT

Okay, so maybe it isn't THAT obvious! At the bottom of the post, it says 'comments' with a number in front. Usually '0' and that is what we hope to remedy! Click on it. You will be taken to a page with a box on the right. Type some fluffy words there. Move your cursor down. There is a funny looking word over a little box. That is called 'word verification' and it is to prevent kooks from putting advertising onto other peoples' blogs with automated programs. You have to figure out what the sqiggly or wavy letters are and type them into the box. I hope the sqiggly waviness does not trigger any drug flashbacks for anyone. Below that, you have to click on a way to identify yourself. If you have a Google blogger login, you should not be reading this cuz you know how. If not, you should click the circle by 'Name/URL' and then fill in a fake name that will give me a clue who you are, then click on the orange button that says "Publish Your Comment". Your comment will not show up right away because I have to read it and approve it because some weirdo saw my comments supporting gay rights on some other blogger's post and tracked me down and was putting in mean stuff, so I know it is less fun to have to wait to see your comments, but the mean guy wrecked that. Anyway, thanks for letting me know you were here!

The Timber Frame Stands!

The wonderful people from the timber framers worked long long days and put up with hot sun and drying wind and mosquitos and pouring rain and muddy soil that clung to our boots and cold wet rain and wind so strong it blew ladders over. They did not complain and they worked hard and they joked and laughed and they patiently answered all my questions and explained each thing I wondered about.

In the end, I had them sign the frame in a secret place, and their fearless leader posted on the completed peak a sapling white pine that the construction manager cut for us.

This house frame is a work of art, the product of fine hand craftsmanship, and the result of teamwork and dedication. It will be a happy place full of laughter and happy times. It will be a place that connects people with nature. It will host people coming to play on the water at the lake, to hike on nearby trails, and to climb the red quartzite rocks of Devil's Lake.

The frame is a product of nature, white pine logs, cut by people into timbers, and planed and sanded and cut into the dimensions of a plan that many people worked on over a year and a half.

I see the hands and hearts and minds of many talented and interesting and good people when I look at this house. It has had a very good start!