Hike the river
January 23, 2012 § Leave a comment
So we used to do. These walks became welcome breaks from studying and working, in those graduate-school Iowa winters. Miss T and my sister and brother-in-law and I went out where the high banks and the thick ice would invite us in, and on.
We followed the tracks of cross-country skiers. The paw prints of other dogs, the boot prints of other hikers. We put our own prints in new snows.
Climbed fallen trees and ducked beneath their branches. Saw our breath turn to fog.
We loved winter. How it opened new terrain. How it made the river a favorite hiking trail.
Pella Crossing
January 17, 2012 § 2 Comments
Here is a collection of ponds.
Another place to walk. New shores with new outlines to follow. New patterns and textures to look over and feel.
Out there, just before sunset, watching the afternoon wind itself down, I might get all caught in nature.
I closed my cell phone. My mother and I had been talking over jobs, my future, the usual. But now, enough. I focused instead on the rustic perfection of fence lines.
The cattle, standing quietly near their watering hole.
The white scales on the ice’s surface.
And the always-loveliness of how water meets earth.
Reminding myself: Another day has gone along, and you, my dear, are alive and well. And so is your best friend.
And here, at the end of your walk, is one glorious tree.
Pointing you home.
The Wolf Moon
January 8, 2012 § 2 Comments
January’s full moon is tomorrow, the 9th – the Wolf Moon – though this night it was as near full as can be. It beckoned, as full moons can do. I listened, as I so often don’t.
I heated chili and poured it into a wide-mouth jar, then wrapped the jar in a tea towel. Took the cornbread muffins out of the oven and let them cool while stuffing books, yarn, and a spoon into my backpack. Found a scarf. Pulled on the wristwarmers my best friend gave me, slipped my feet into boots.
We went out, this white-blue night. Out to dinner meaning out to dinner. No cars in the parking lot. T bounded from the car. I walked slowly after.
It would have been best to get away from the sound of cars, the lights of houses, but that means going into the mountains and too far. So we take what we can have.
The first sound, over and beyond the cars, was that of the geese. The chorus of them raised their voices in a moonlit evensong, over the rise before the land slides down to the reservoir. We did not go to see them – we stayed on the trail – but they sang to us all night. I liked knowing they were there. I imagined the village of them, the gray and black gone silver, their wings tossing light as they moved.
Then came the sound of feet, T’s quick steps, my longer strides scuffing over gravel. Only patches of snow and ice to interrupt the rhythm. A few minutes of walking and I felt hungry. There is a picnic table that sits close to the water, which was white with ice. I spread burlap over the worn wood. The chili steamed into the air when I removed the lid from the can. It smelled so meaty and good that Tassie looked up from where she was nosing around the shoreline, then came over with her ears forward in expectation.
We had our dinner with lit candles, until they seemed too strong when I wanted only the calm of the moonlight. I blew them out, tucked them away. Honey-soaked cornbread. I rubbed my hands together and looked at the black silhouette of the tree against the half-frozen lake. No headlamp – forgotten in the closet at home – meant no reading, no knitting. Never mind; we would walk. It was what would make T the happiest, anyway.
In Colorado predators are always on my mind if I go too far or dark has fallen. Even here in the pinpoints of light from houses across the reservoir and up into the mountains, in the road noises not far away. A couple had walked past us earlier with a black labrador, so I reassured myself: If they thought it was safe, it likely was. Walk on.
T skittered and loped around, sometimes so far I could hardly make out her shape in the evening’s dim, though usually I could hear her well enough. Not stealthy, that one, but affectionate to make up for it. She is a breed meant for companionship, that’s for sure. I have owed her this walk and it was a nice thing to give it, at last.
And I found myself in prayer. I remember, now, how common a thing this used to be in this small life of mine, walking and praying. Often aloud, catching myself if another person happened to pass by. Nature became where I would best find Him. Walking was how I would begin to reach for Him. Clarity came in the space, and quiet, in my voice tumbling forth, and movement.
This has seemed a lost thing. Lost, almost without notice, in the pursuit of work and the appeal of technology’s entertainment.
When did I stop lingering through the woods? When did I stop allowing myself to be drawn into its holiness?
Only an hour or so, we had, this night. A duck rustled the water as we rounded the last bend. Only an hour or so, we had, but home I went with a hunger met, a spirit widened.
A Lake Superior Poem
December 19, 2011 § 2 Comments
My graduate school and poet friend Amy just chased her heart north, to the North Shore of Lake Superior. I am so glad for her, especially because this place is one of my homes, too – never a place I have lived, but I place I have known myself to belong to, to be somehow intangibly (and yet, so very tangibly) connected to, smitten with, inspired by. It is a place I crave.
The summer after I graduated from high school, my family took a trip up to the Lake of the Woods, into Canada, and down along the North Shore Drive. When we reached the lake we had been in the van bickering and bored for too long, and then we’d gotten out at a rest stop and stumbled upon a trail. Suddenly we were all in better tempers, as the water reached blue into the distance and the breeze whisked its way around us.
And there was a moment when I stood on the rocky shore and felt my chest fill so terribly, wonderfully full. And I felt my heart know I belong here. For a long while I outlined my plans for the small house I would have where the waves rush and fall against the rocks and the pines.
I have since then known that same feeling in other places, though not so many as to make this one decrease in significance. Instead I am glad to find them, to gather them like precious stones. A few years ago three friends and I went up to ski at Lutsen, and I got to see my lake in winter. Several weeks later I wrote this poem.
—–
askance
at winter’s edge of shoreline, Lake Superior breaks into glass,
shards that creak and clink when we step softly across.
white-blue sky reaches down to the distant blue-black
where ice gives way and water moves free. now and then,
a rumble and groan. we keep close to shore. hold a stillness.
listening, it is, for beginners. only common sense in asking
the lake if we might cross its cracks and heaves, if
we might find the rare structures of winter on water.
—–
Kinds of Honey 