Boats & boulders
September 12, 2012 § Leave a comment
We decided to canoe the St. Croix River. My sister, her husband, me, and my best friend. This river keeps drawing me back to where it winds between two of the Upper Midwest’s finest states, Minnesota and Wisconsin. As states go, you might call these two frenemies. Football fiercely divides us. Yet we are variations on a theme.
The small towns here in Wisconsin remind me so much of my Minnesota childhood. The geography of hills and trees, water, woods, and farmland – it’s the same. The snowmobiles. The jetskis. The shabby cafes, the corner gas stations that also sell bait, and the Dairy Queen in every town. Rows of cabins along lakes. Small golf courses. Many small churches and their faithful parishioners. There is one such church across the street. I listen to the bells.
The St. Croix makes for a happy meeting place for me and my Minnesota-dwelling favorite people. So. We found ourselves in canoes on the water.
We love boats.
A small island in the middle of the water simply had to be explored.
Chats with friends in nature are always welcome.
Canoe trips in general are welcome.
I wasn’t ready to be done. Next time, I want to camp overnight somewhere amidst evergreens and stars and the hooting and howling of wild creatures.
Instead, while the other three headed back to the Cities, I wandered around the boulders and potholes on the Minnesota side of Interstates Park.
Creepy.
Then I found a spot on a rock where the river view and the light were just right. I sat there and thought. I read. I journaled. I prayed. I let my spirit get all settled, and the day wound down.
As it should.
A country lad
April 22, 2012 § 2 Comments
The Passionate Shepherd
Who can live in heart so glad
As the merry country lad?
Who upon a fair green balk
May at pleasure sit and walk,
And amid the azure skies
See the morning sun arise;
While he hears in every spring
How the birds do chirp and sing;
Or before the hounds in cry
See the hare go stealing by;
Or along the shallow brook
Angling with a baited hook,
See the fishes leap and play
In a blessed sunny day;
Or to hear the partridge call
Till she have her covey all;
Or to see the subtle fox,
How the villain plies the box,
After feeding on his prey
How he closely sneaks away
Through the hedge and down the furrow,
Till he gets into his burrow;
Then the bee to gather honey,
And the little black hair’d coney
On a bank for sunny place
With her forefeet wash her face:
Are not these, with thousands moe
Than the courts of kings do know,
The true pleasing-spirits sights
That may breed true love’s delights?
– Nicholas Breton
Rabbit Mountain
January 5, 2012 § 4 Comments
This warm weather is too weird for early January. But if it’s going to be here, then I’m going outside in it. After getting the horses all fed and turned out, I headed home to fetch Tassie for a hike before I got too settled in and too lazy to go back outside. (I love my cozy moments of sipping coffee on the couch.)
We went to Rabbit Mountain instead of our usual hike round the lake, just for something different.
The thing about Rabbit Mountain is that it’s rather odd, and to me, slightly uninviting. You drive in towards a series of small slopes and notice at once how strange the color is all around you. The whole landscape is a kind of pale yellow-green-tan, dry, rough.
I’d be lying if I said I find great beauty here. I don’t. It is arid and exposed, and the sun beats hard. I find myself wishing for streams and the shade of deciduous trees.
Still, the place is interesting in a desolate, old West kind of way. And it makes for a nice hike, the effort of going upward, the breath coming faster, the very healthy-feeling beating of your heart.
And what’s this?
A yellow brick road?
So warm, today, that I had to take off my long-sleeve hoodie and hike in my tank top and jeans – and I wished those jeans were shorts, so badly that I looked down to consider if the holes in the knees were big enough that I might rip the legs off below (they weren’t).
We found a few patches of snow where T was able to cool down. She panted from the weight of her winter coat and working against gravity. She snorted and rolled in and ate the snow for relief.
Down we came with oxygen in our lungs and blood and a few more photographs on the camera.
Another place to have seen, to have traveled across, to add to our collection of notes about the world.
Snowmelt
December 29, 2011 § 2 Comments
It was not a white Christmas. On Thursday Colorado got a heap of snow, and on Friday I drove out of it to a balmy, brown Iowa, and on Sunday I drove to an equally balmy, brown South Dakota.
No one complained about being outside without a jacket on, however!
Today I am back in Colorado, where we have had an interesting morning. You try moving 34 horses through a slick, sloppy mess of mud and ice – and add some powerful gusts of wind! (Forecast predicts the winds will get up to 80 mph today.) It’s a bit of a workout. At least the weather is warm. At home I poured a cup of peppermint tea, stretched out for a short rest, and decided Miss T. deserved a walk.
So we went outside to watch the snow melt.
There is sun and blue sky and water running, running everywhere. The snow sort of crunches and slides beneath your feet. We splashed through puddles at every intersection.
Miss T. gave herself a bath with more than one satisfying roll in the lingering patches of snow.
And we found evidence of snowmen . . . who had seen better days.
Despite the cone-laden evergreens, twinkly decorations, and a pile of newly-opened Christmas presents, can I just say that it feels like spring?
Kinds of Honey 