Blowing In the Wind

The smell caught me…that distinct, absolutely divine scent that only comes in the fall, the smell of dead leaves. I think of Anne Shirley rhapsodizing over dead fir leaves, and her friends thinking it somehow unholy to think of things dead in Heaven. I think it’s just one of those “Yay God”-worthy moments, realizing that God can take death and make something so beautiful of it.

Alex has been waiting for the chance to jump in the leaves. Julianna has been waiting for the chance to plunge through them and kick them up, just like her mommy loves to do in the fall. Nicholas is ready to follow his siblings’ lead, wherever it takes him.

The sun shines warm, tempered by the chill of a wind waiting to steal the warmth as evening draws near. The smell drifts upward as I crouch close to the ground with the camera.

Time to dig small hands in the leaves, to crinkle them beneath fingernails, and fling them skyward.

Yay God, indeed.

Shared with Wordful Wednesday at Angie’s Seven Clown Circus.

Published in: on November 16, 2011 at 4:43 am  Comments (6)  
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Spring, Sprang, Sprung (wearing out the cliché)

It’s that time of year again. Sloppy rows of birch, maple and sycamore, hugging the writhing creeks, weary after a long winter’s worth of holding their breath, exhale a soft halo of glowing lime. The understory stretches, a dense, impassable wonderland of redbud and dogwood and wild blackberry flinging its splendor out for all to see, before the canopy steals its light.

I know, writing about spring should be illegal. When we start waxing poetic we employ ten dozen clichés and deeply selective vision. You know, the kind of vision that ignores the old tire half-buried in silt at the edge of the stream, the sad remnants of somebody’s fake poinsettia, the non-biodegradable plastic swimming pool hung up on a branch—all the remnants of a wet winter.

Still, this is my blog, and spring never fails to evoke in me a wonder that cries out to be expressed, especially after an endless winter like the one just past. I’m not going to annoy any editors with my musings—I’m just going to share them with you. And maybe someday I can steal the images for use in a story. (I’ll be like Tchaikovsky: repeat offender in self-plagiarism.)

It’s a perfect day, and as I sit in the warm sun, I try to identify how many different bird calls I can hear. They sing in such perfect ensemble that no matter how many times I count, I always lose track after three. I glory in the air rushing past my face as I pedal along the trail. Wake up, world! And wake up, soul. The mind-numbing days of staring at the same four walls are over. The dandelion war begins anew. And…

Wait a minute, what’s that hiss? That noise like escaping air? Surely that’s not a sharp trail rock, wedged in my bicycle tire, a mile and a half (all uphill) from home?

Bah, humbug!

;)

Shared with You Capture: Spring at I Should Be Folding Laundry

Published in: on April 18, 2011 at 4:28 am  Comments (8)  

Early Spring in the Woods

On Julianna’s birthday, Alex came home from school in great excitement. “My teacher said there was going to be an early spring!” he exclaimed. We tried to moderate his certainty, but how do you explain to a five-year-old that the groundhog is a publicity stunt?

When I get up to walk on Sunday morning, it’s already well above freezing. All morning, while we get dressed and go to church (jackets, not coats, thank you), the snowpack melts. As the day goes on, the sound of running water down in the woods crescendoes: first a whisper, then a gurgle, and at last a steady rush. The cul de sac is clear for the first time in weeks, and in the afternoon, Alex and I go outside. He rides his bike for a while, and then we put on our boots to “slop” our way down to the woods. It’ss harder going than I anticipated. Eighteen inches of super-fluffy snow doesn’t just pack down as it melts; it morphs into to a snow state I’ve never seen before. I guess my boots are really shot, because slogging through snow at the threshold of melting ends with my toes being very wet.

The last time I was there, it looked like this:

A pristine wonderland crisscrossed only by animal tracks and a trickle of water peeking from a layer of ice.

Today, Alex and I pause at the edge of the bend in the creek and survey the busy water.

He stands with his hands jammed into his pockets, and watches the gurgling waters round the bend, then says, “Come on, Mommy!” After all, there are rocks to throw.

And vines to investigate, to puzzle the mystery by which they grow up, then down, and somehow manage to loop upward again. How do they do that?

And untouched snow in need of shuffled tracks made by little bare legs.

And fingers to poke into the snowy drifts at the edge of the creek bank in an attempt to make raccoon tracks. I watch, then bend down to do the same, and my fingers sink into something barely cold and soft like velvet. I’ve never felt anything like it. Or maybe I’m just paying attention for the first time. “Look,” I say softly, and point to the creek bank, where green shoots sprout from the soft earth. “The world thinks it’s spring.”

And despite all the stressors, the lack of time, the projects pressing down, the nudging that I’m out of balance, at this moment, this moment in the woods, all I feel is joy.

Today I am thankful for signs of coming spring:

Driving with the window down for the first time in 2011

Opening the deck door for a precious half hour to let fresh air into the house

The first day that my early-morning exercise is accompanied by a blush of dawn

A gorgeous sunrise—food for the soul

Riding bikes in the cul de sac

Animal tracks in untouched snow…even if they aren’t destined to remain so

A little boy with fists jammed into his pockets

The mystery of vines

Shuffling through untouched melting snow

Making raccoon tracks in the snow

Green shoots along the creek bank

The whoosh of running water outside my window

Last year’s grasses melting their insulating blanket

On In Around button


Published in: on February 14, 2011 at 6:36 am  Comments (3)  
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7 Quick Takes, Vol. 101

Dobby in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Image via Wikipedia

___1___

 

Best link of the week, hands down, in honor of the upcoming movie release (anybody want to be super geeky and dress up for a midnight showing? ;) ): Hogwarts Gets the Internet. Ever wondered what Dobby might say on Facebook?

___2___

All right, people. This is a note to some of you Blogger bloggers. I love to leave comments, BUT. Sometimes I want to tear my hair out and ignore any site with an orange “B” in the URL line. I write my comment, I hit post without doing a word verification because all I got was a little red X, and not a word; it reloads; I scroll down; it displays a red dot; I hit post again; it reloads; I scroll down; it tells me to match a word; I match the word; I hit post AGAIN, and THEN it tells me, after all that, that you still feel the need to approve my comment. Please, for the love of all that is holy, bloggers: If you’re going to enable comment moderation, PLEASE SKIP THE REST OF THE NONSENSE. I know you like getting comments. Don’t make it so freaking hard! (See here for someone else who feels the same way, and knows what to do about it!)

___3___

I read a great writing quote this week:

The first chapter is the last chapter in disguise.
- Richard Peck.

Apparently, he writes a book, finishes the ending, then ditches the first chapter & writes a new one. Hmm. Now, this sounds like a good plan to me, especially after the weeks & months I’ve spent obsessing about how to start in the right place. One more nudge that it’s time to STOP PROCRASTINATING and START WRITING.

___4___

Kudos to Parenting Magazine! They want pictures of kids with Down syndrome. Pass the link around to anyone who can oblige! 

___5___



We made a family page to send with Alex to school. It’s an album that makes the rounds of all the families in the class, and it was fun to pick out pictures and scrapbook them, with Alex making most of the decisions, on Sunday afternoon. We talked about what he liked, who he loved–all that fun stuff that you can include in such a project. On Monday morning he stopped on his way down the stairs and turned back to me, peeking through the railings as I changed diapers and dressed little ones. “Mommy,” he said, “the two most important things about me are my Iron Man costume, and God. I love flowers. I love all the things that God made.” Warmth to the heart of a mommy who finds God in nature.

___6___

Recently, I was sitting by a lake, seeking stillness, when I happened to glance down at my shoe and see a tiny spider, no bigger than the head of a pin, building a web between the loop of my shoe string, my sweat pants, and the surrounding pants. Close as I watched, I never could see the threads she was traversing. And it occurred to me what a miracle a spiderweb really is. I understand what they’re made of; I know it’s produced by the spider’s body…but I don’t understand how they get from one point to another to put up the strands in the first place. Can you imagine staring out at a gap the size of the Royal Gorge, and simply hurling yourself out into the abyss, trusting…trusting in what, to keep you from plunging to certain death?

Of course, I suppose it helps that you weigh virtually nothing, so you can be your own parachute. Still, it’s kind of miraculous, don’t you think?

___7___

Pray for me–have a presentation to give to the diaconate candidates today on NFP, and I’m not feeling very good the last couple of days!

7 quick takes sm1 7 Quick Takes Friday (vol. 101)

Published in: on October 15, 2010 at 4:56 am  Comments (10)  
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Fall Elements


Fall Elements

Originally uploaded by One-Speed Photography

I didn’t want to come out today. I knew I was not going to find a truly quiet place, and I have so many works in progress that I really begrudged the time. At the very least I ought to be folding clothes so that’s not hanging over my head, too. But I have a sitter, so I take my best guess and head northward, my head a jumble of anxiety about the old novel that got two more rejections this week and the new one I’m too intimidated to start on.

I reach the Pinnacles and find that I was right. It’s not quiet. But I head for the quietest place—where the overhanging cave and rapids mask the sound, and I spread out a blanket and eat an apple.

I’ve never really appreciated the sedimentary rock here—the bulk and the variety of it, from mud-gray to caramel to slate gray and black, layered upon each other. The water tore through here, smacked into this solid wall, and in turning the corner, gouged out this deep overhang. Trees and shrubs cling to its brow, spilling roots and branches over the edge, their branches emerging from patchwork shadow in a rainbow that marches from olive to green to gold against the flawless blue sky. Its underside huddles black above the water, and rich, warm red-brown over the sand where I sit. Behind me, I hear the trickle of an underground stream working its way down the back wall. Before me, the water lies serene, reflecting the world in its depths, but in the distance, rapids sparkle, drawing my vision with motion.

A wind growls progresses along the valley, drowning out the traffic and the rapids as it rushes from tree too tree, sending a cascade of leaves whirling before it. When Alex was little, I would say, “Look at the trees dancing.” But a tree doesn’t dance with an edgy, raucous bump and grind. It follows stately Baroque forms, bowing to its neighbor and circling round. The leaves, though—no inhibitions there. Millions of thrill-seekers hurling themselves from the heights, some plunging in free-fall, others twirling madly, while the rest flicker back and forth, landing daintily feet-first in the water and then settling back on it with the sigh of those finally getting to rest after a long day’s work.

Voices approach; a young father arrives with two tow-headed boys, 5 and 7, I’d guess, and a mutt that looks half Huskie. Being boys, they pound around in the soft sand, closer and closer to the junction of water and rock wall, until one of them shrieks, “Daddy, I’m sinking in the mud!” I’m closer, and so, chuckling, I abandon my NEO and attempt a rescue. I manage it…barely. He wasn’t kidding about sinking in the mud; he loses a shoe in it and has to stretch out across the mud to dig it out. The dad heads off a tantrum by telling him to take his shoes and socks off and wash off in the creek. That wouldn’t work in my house, especially not at the end of September, with the water temperature edging downward toward winter, but it does the trick; soon the boy is running around barefoot on the chilly Missouri “sand.”

They don’t last long. Soon they’re packing up and leaving me alone again, and as their voices fade along the trail, I wonder if my long, creative descriptions of nature really interest anyone, whether I should post this on Monday or not. But I know that I will because I don’t have time to write multiple blog entries. I have too many irons in the fire.

So I twist my neck and look up again, at the monochrome rainbow. And as I turn to face forward again, I realize that despite the imperfect quiet, some of noise in my head has eased.

For monochrome rainbows,
dancing trees,
whirling leaves,
and the chill of Missouri clay seeping upward below my back

For subterranean streams
shady banks
swirling winds
and Jonathan apples

For running water,
clear blue skies,
ancient rock
and the irrepressible energy of childhood

For restful nights
busy days
invigorating work
and a rich life

*

Shared at Multitude Mondays and On, In and Around Mondays

Published in: on October 4, 2010 at 5:10 am  Comments (9)  
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At Dawn


Orion
Originally uploaded by Stigs
 

 

 

I slept poorly last night, haunted perhaps by the images on the movie screen, or more likely a prisoner of my own adrenalin. The children moaned in their sleep, and I woke. My husband, ensconced downstairs on the couch with a cold, coughed, and I woke. A dream ended, and I woke up.

So when the alarm sounds at 5:30 this morning, the last thing I want is to get out of bed, tie the running shoes, and pound the sidewalks. I grab the basal thermometer and stuck it in my mouth out of habit, and while it measures, I try to convince myself I don’t need to go, but I know better. And so, when the thermometer beeps, I roll out of bed.

As I cross the room, my shadow startles me as it flits through the dim pool of green cast by the smoke detector. I creep past Christian on the couch and go outside, where a brilliant early morning starscape greets me. When I come home, I’ll go in the back yard, away from the street lights, and enjoy the view. But when I reach the top of the first hill, I realize I don’t have that long. Out of our little valley, already the eastern horizon glows white. And so I forsake the usual maze of a cookie cutter development and jog along the straightest shot to the neighborhood park.

I lie down on the gravel path, hoping no one is watching. The sharp edges of rocks bite into my head, but my attention is fixed on the sky. Orion, Cassiopeia, the seven sisters, shimmering against charcoal gray. Then a thread of fire traces a path from north to south, a split second of beauty that makes my breath catch. Why don’t they last longer? Do they really burn out so quickly?

I drink it all in, the khee khee khee and ch-ch-ch-ch-ch of the insects filling my ears, as dawn comes creeping westward, stealing the stars one by one. And when I rise, pulling fingers through tangled curls to check for gravel, the world has changed. It is full of magic—the best kind of magic, the kind whose inevitability surprises.

Homeward bound, my breaths conform to the pounding of my Asics on the pavement: In-two-three, out-two-three. I cross over the dewy imprint of rabbit tracks on the concrete, and a moment later the rabbit itself startles from its hiding place in the grass and darts across the street.

I arrive home to find the trees in our little creek valley silhouetted against the murky light of predawn. The birds fly silently across the sky, as if positioning themselves for the morning chorus. And sure enough, as the sky visibly brightens, as the last stars wink out, the singing begins.

Published in: on September 13, 2010 at 6:28 am  Comments (23)  
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Starstruck

When I was growing up, my bedroom faced north, toward the pond and the gentle swell of a hayfield. And the chicken yard, which meant that any time a raccoon got into the henhouse, I was the one who raised the alert. No wonder I’m such a light sleeper.

I don’t know at what point it happened, but I discovered the beauty of that view, a beauty ever changing, depending on weather and time of day and season. I shoved my bed up in the corner, and from then on I did everything stretched out across the bed, where I could look outside: homework, Journaling, spinning stories. At night, I shoved my pillow in the window frame and watched the sun set, then rolled over and pressed my head against the screen so that I could see as many of the stars as possible. And that was how I fell asleep: listening to the sound of the crickets amid the clover and foxtails.

I also took to having long philosophical discussions with no one, a narrative of my day, and all the people in it. I learned to analyze my own reactions and feelings, and came to new insights. I’m not sure at what point I realized I was praying, not just spouting opinions at the sky. I was actually seeking, in those seemingly one-way conversations with the stars.

A teenager doesn’t place a lot of value on listening prayer. And yet, as I learned the shapes of the constellations, saw them shift through the year, and sent my words winging toward them, stillness crept over me, a stillness that finally succumbed to sleep. And of all the beautiful memories of my childhood, that sense of stillness, which always came on as I grew close to sleep at last, is preeminent among them. It was a stillness of the earth—of insects chirping and coyotes howling and bullfrogs pulsing their low, laid-back grunts. It was a stillness unbroken by human noise, except when an occasional car rumbled down the road in a thick cloud of dust. There were many times when, in the throes of some adolescent moral quandary, I remember envying the simple placidity of the singers’ existence.

I suppose I am thinking of it today, in this very early morning, because we slept with the windows open last night. In the wake of a cold front, the interstate noise succumbed to distance, and all I heard was that familiar hum and pulse of nature, the soundtrack of my childhood. This morning, of course, the traffic noise is back, but all through the night I woke repeatedly, just long enough to reassure myself that the stillness still pulsed outside my window.

I dream of someday returning to a remote place where I never have to listen to jet braking and tires squealing and the incessant roar of humanity. A place where I can once again shove my pillow into the window frame and stare up at the vastness of the universe.

But today, as the sky begins to lighten on this, my thirty-sixth birthday (see, I’mnot afraid of sharing my age), it’s time to seek ot the holy in a different place. One that involves very little stillness or serenity, but an awful lot of sweetness.

In other words, time to rouse the munchkins for school.

Shared at On, In, and Around Mondays

Published in: on August 25, 2010 at 6:59 am  Comments (15)  
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Seeking Stillness

At quarter of nine in the morning, the mercury stands at 83 degrees. Already I have mowed the lawn, written a blog, revised a writing assignment, and cleaned up half a gallon of forest green paint from the office floor. The sitter arrives, and it is time for me to go in search of stillness.

The humidity presses inward like a damp electric blanket, but I am going to the woods, so I drive with the windows down, park at the Boy Scout camp, and take off on foot. The path is muddy, its edges overgrown, but in the deep parts of the woods, undergrowth drops away, laying bare the skeletal lower branches of cedar.

And then green returns as the edge of the bluff approaches. The path turns, and the view opens up.

A few steps farther on, I find my spot: a rocky outcropping that looks like a sheer dropoff to the creek far, far below, but on closer inspection reveals a lower shelf, hidden from prying eyes on the path. I watch the vagaries of a breeze that sets a line of trees in the middle of the valley to swaying, while the wide swaths on either side lie still and untouched.

Still, the noise of traffic remains, a persistent, annoying buzz and rumble. I sit for a few minutes, and then, feeling restless, I move on. I follow an unfamiliar path over the ridge, away from the noise. At last I sit on a tree fallen across the path. I want to lie down; my overtaxed brain cries for rest. I’ve learned that sleep is the road to stillness, but I’m afraid that all the plants around me are poison ivy. At last I lie back along the tree trunk, and after a few false starts, find balance. I drift. 

I wake to the swelling ssssshhhhh of wind in the trees above me. I open my eyes. Neither words nor images can do justice to the sense of space, enclosed yet endless, of a room made of long, leggy trees. I see the Paraclete in a patch of sky.

I stretch out my hand, and it looks like the handprint of God. Here, at last, is stillness.

I make my way back to civilization in stages. On the other side of the hill, the rumble of lawn mowers and traffic waits. The sweltering weight of heat pounces the moment I enter a sunny patch. But even here, the whisper of Heaven accompanies me, in the spice of wild herbs and the cool scent of cedar, in the bee that flies circles around me and the butterfly flit-fluttering alongside. And by the time I reach the camp, the words have begun to flow. Yay God.

tuesdays unwrapped at cats

Published in: on June 22, 2010 at 4:21 am  Comments (2)  
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By Flowing Waters

There’s just something about running water.

It’s one of the most familiar images the world—a symbol of bounty and peace. It’s Biblical, yes, but it’s also ingrained in human nature—this sense of being bound to the streams for our very lives. Whenever you turn on one of those programs of calming music, it’s inevitably paired with images of pristine streams flowing over rocks beside emerald-green meadows strung with white and purple flowers.

Generally speaking, we don’t have that kind of stream in Missouri. Millions of years ago, the glaciers melted here, stranding boulders and rocks amid gnarled clay hills. Aside from Ozark springs, we don’t have nice, placid clear creeks and streams. We have drainage ditches. Vast networks of drainage ditches, twisting and dropping and chewing through the valleys.

And when it rains a lot, as it has the twelve months, the creeks fill with roiling, roaring masses that look more like chocolate milk than water, uprooting trees and hurling them downstream like javelins, gobbling up the banks and reorganizing their curves with every downpour. I’m always amazed that we have any topsoil left at all.

No, we don’t have crystal-clear streams. But we do have rivers. Oh, do we ever. Rivers channeled into narrow, twisting strands by the Corps. Rivers flowing silent and deep, so deceptively calm that you almost don’t notice the speed with which the flotsam slides out of sight.

In Minneapolis, the Mississippi glides through a gorge, with pleasure boats drifting on its gentle surface. In Iowa City, the Iowa River flows good naturedly between grassy banks, and unless my eyes deceived me, it’s all flat. Flat to the edge of the river, flat on the other side. (Which of course means it floods, but I’m talking about ordinary days here.)

Here, the waterways are murky, and pulse with a restless energy, gnawing endlessly at their banks. Hardly the picture of calm, flowing waters.

Yet there is a different kind of rest to be found by my Missouri streams. A rest found in meditating on the dense undergrowth hanging over the stream, the trees clinging to the banks with only a few roots.

In staring at the rapid passage of bubbles on the surface, marching downstream, flirting with and twirling toward and spinning away from each other. In the gentle constancy of the picture, despite the perpetual motion. In the laughter of its passage over rocks, and the play of shadows as the sun peeks from behind lazy clouds and then hides again.

This is where I go to cover the sound of traffic, to lull my busy brain, to reconnect with God.

There’s just something about running water.

holy experience

Published in: on May 31, 2010 at 7:34 am  Comments (5)  
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Nature Boy

Lately, Alex been wanting to watch all the coverage of the oil…whatever you call it. Spill, blowout. I call it a disaster. But it’s got me thinking about my son.

This week at preschool “graduation,” he told his teachers he wanted to be “a worker at Disney World” when he grew up. We all laughed, but this morning I realized he meant something different than what we thought he meant. “When I grow up, I’m gonna make a ride that’s way up high, with a bunch of airplanes, and it’s gonna have Woody and Jessie jump, and swing off the airplane.” (Recognize this scene he’s recreating?) “And it’s gonna have a roof, and there’s gonna be a sign outside and it’s gonna say Toy Story 2.”

So evidently, he wants to be a design engineer.

But in the meantime, he’s Nature Boy. He has a heart for living things…

Watching an earthworm wiggle at the sandy edge of the creek--the worm he uncovered while picking up rocks to throw

…and he loves to be down in the woods, exploring the creek bank and throwing rocks.

looking down over the “magic goldfish pond,” which to his grown-up five year old mind no longer means magic or gold, but the minnows are still an object of fascination

He doesn’t understand the frightening implications of BP’s Gulf fiasco. And I don’t think I would want him to, frankly. Not at the age of five. Imagine the anxiety a small child would feel, carrying a weight that heavy.

Still, I like that he’s paying attention. I like that he’s astute enough to recognize that this is a big deal, even if he doesn’t connect it to the creeks and woods he loves.  

Because someday he will connect it, and it will change the way he approaches life.

May all our children be so blessed.

Published in: on May 28, 2010 at 5:18 am  Comments (1)  
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