it was the color that stopped us. we have walked this route for years. the other day – wind blowing off the lake, waves crashing over the rocks, rain falling intermittently – we noticed the color.
the east side of the trees was iridescent. cobalt blue and teal green mixed in with the rich color of its bark. we stood in front of the trees, studying the mix of color, the tooth, the randomness. later, it took some research to discover what might – just might – be the reason for these colors: amaurodon viridis – a fungus. if that is true, we don’t know what that means for these trees. both are stricken on the side that faces the lake – the side that takes the pummeling of the wind in lake-effect storms. we’d imagine that side of the tree is decidedly moister than the side facing the afternoon sun. but – at best – even with a bit of research – we are making it all up. we aren’t tree experts or even tree knowledgers. we are, however, tree lovers. and we are tree noticers.
it did make me think of october days we spent in breckenridge, colorado. days where the town took tree-safe paint and designed an art installation on the aspens. with biodegradable water soluble colorant, social and environmental artist konstantin dimopoulos inspired the painting of the trunks of aspens blue-blue-blue drawing attention to them – stunning yellow leaves in fall against this blue – impossible to not notice – an effort to point to the importance of trees to the planet and the devastation of global deforestation. it was breathtaking.
the work of an artist is to ask questions, to prompt thought, to nudge and cause both comfort and discomfort, perhaps to elicit change. the work of an artist is not to take the easy pre-cut path. the work of an artist is to linger in not-knowing, in seeking. the work of an artist is to notice, to pay attention, to educe the notice of others, to stir up paying attention. to encourage stillness and wild interaction, both.
the trees got us to stop. and as we stood and noticed and wondered, they stood tall, knowing they had done their job.
the flock of cranes were above – heading south – their bugling loud in a blue day still of rushing wind. we stopped on the trail and looked up, expecting to see one or maybe two sandhill cranes flying by, from one meadow to the next. instead, there were two distinct v’s – in the ancient pull of migration.
we stood there – still – watching…until craning our necks for the cranes was too much. i lowered my gaze and felt the earth tilt a bit in the headrush of returning to terra firma. a gorgeous sight – in my eyes and ears.
it is delicious – that sky. it is magnificent – that sky. in the day and in the night. i have been astounded and humbled. i have counted the stars and imagined the clouds. i have been soaked by its rainstorms and reveled in its snowflakes. i am fortunate to have felt the sun and the moon.
i have stood under that sky and i have realized that it is – yes – the same sky that the others i love are also under, despite any distance between us. in my mind i migrate to each – seeking the intuitive connection to their places in the world.
in tasting the sky all is possible. and, in my looking up, i feel grace and hope dizzying down on me.
toooo hot. i am waaaay toooo hot waaaay toooo often. this peri/meno/post thing just goes on and on and on.
i have friends – they know who they are – who have had “i-think-i-had-a-hot-flash-once” experiences. how – exactly – is this equitable?? perhaps – in some involuntary way – i have taken on their burdensome backpack full of hotflashes…i have – involuntarily – embraced hotflashes for the whole gender. it would seem so. speaking of gender – what – exactlyyy – is the yang-for-men of this – our yin?
hot flashes are “damnedable” as my sweet momma would say – pretty much the harshest of her language save for a few choice times. they wreak havoc. they turn the best of intentions into sweaty messes. good grief. even writing that gives me a hot flash. let’s just say they are … not attractive.
regardless of my distaste for these hormonal ridiculousnesses, they often happen at night – in the middle of my insomnia or, if i’m particularly unlucky, in the middle of a snippet of sleep.
so i try to plan ahead.
i open the window next to my side of the bed. i figure if i can feel the breeze coming in, i will feel better – refreshed and relaxed, ready for sleepynightnight.
it doesn’t matter what the temperature is outside. it’s still … necessary.
d doesn’t always agree. there he is – all zen-like, snugged into the flannel sheets, under the comforter and the quilt, his 32 degrees long underwear at the ready. reticent.
i mean, he always relents. thank goodness!
but i guess he’s imagining he is out there with agnes and chip hailstone, ricko dewilde, andy and denise, jesse, sue aikens – living life below zero – in the overnight.
i wonder if they breathe a sigh of relief when they come upon a trail. do they huff and puff, trying to slow their heartbeat having bushwhacked their way to this place? do they glance around – tentatively – looking both ways before stepping out? are they exhausted from finding their way? is a bit of clear-path welcome in their wilderness? do they wonder how long they should stay on this which is not a game trail?
the wilderness is a big place.
as we hike – in places mostly not as wild as we would wish – it is a gift of our time-on-trail to cross paths with the spoor of other creatures. we go slow, quietly – peering into the forest – far back in the meadows – to catch a glimpse of these elegant deer, busy-gathering squirrels and playful chipmunks, birds of many calls. we count ourselves fortunate they share the space with us.
it is possible they are deep in the woods – camouflaged – peering back at us. i wonder if they ponder our hiking on the trail. i wonder if they wonder why we are not bushwhacking through underbrush, running when flight is the answer. i wonder what they wonder.
they don’t know if or what we have bushwhacked, how we have arrived at the path on which they see us. they don’t know where we have been, what we have seen, where we have come from. they don’t know what desire path we have created in the woods for ourselves, what watershed at which we stand.
it is all a mystery – back and forth – what we do, what they do. yet, we share the same options for arriving at a destination. we can take a well-beaten path, a planned laid-down trail. we can go the way that is prepared ahead. or we can bushwhack our way free.
we do know we will be fortunate to share a meal together. we know we will cook something nourishing, light a candle, place cloth napkins at our seats, have tumblers of water and perhaps a glass of wine. we know that whatever food we choose, it will be with thanks-giving at its center.
since it is monday and since thursday is merely three days away now, it will not likely be a turkey and all the traditional trimmings. our families are elsewhere. our children are grown, doing other things. our friends have their own plans. it is just us and we simply cannot devour a turkey-and-sides – nor do we want to. we will gather – the two of us.
and instead, we will focus on the giving-thanks of thanksgiving. we will lift gratitudes for each of these people not sitting with us at the table. we will hopefully get outside for a bit. we will realize that this moment in time is a moment in time. in the overarcing of life, this is the moment we can touch.
this time has not been without lessons. this time has not been sans reflecting. this time has not been without peering into dark looking for tiny smidges of light. this time has not been without wistful grief.
this time has been with learnings. this time has been with the sharing of burdens. this time has been with others offering starlight from a deep universe. this time has been with realization. this time has been with the cut-to-the-chase-ness of breathing-right-now.
the bowl may be empty. the bowl may be full.
our thanks-giving hearts are.
“we are a landscape of all we have seen.” (isamu noguchi)
it becomes clear looking down the trailmarker. the clearest place – with the most clarity in focus – is the very middle. it blurs on the edges, in the foreground and that section which is furthest away. but the middle. clear enough to see the drying grain of the wood. clear enough to see the tiny spores of lichen. lichen in the foreground. lichen furthest away. all blurry. but clear – there – in the middle.
lichen is a symbiotic partnership – it is a mutualistic relationship of fungus and algae, living together. lichen are not parasitic – they thrive, but do not feed on others. instead, they depend intimately on each other for survival, getting nutrients from the air, trapping particulates, absorbing small pollutants – their very presence an indicator of air quality.
lichen are tolerant of extremes and resilient in growth. they are considered a biomonitor in assessing the health of the environment in which they dwell.
we approach the trailmarker. it’s a sunny day, beautiful really. we are on our way back to the trailhead. it’s been miles of hiking.
we are refreshed and tired, both. we are happy to be together on this path. it is familiar and, this time, we don’t need the marker to know where we are or how far we have to go.
but the markers are there – in most of the trails we hike. some are less obvious, like cairns in the high mountains. they help us find the way, help us know – more clearly – where we are. even if what was before is fading and what is ahead is blurry and unknown, the trailmarker gives us a bit of certainty in the moment – the only certain thing.
the lichen draws my attention – soft greens and mustard yellows. i wander over to the marker to photograph it. i don’t know a lot about lichen so i google it later.
their place in the world – these tiny organisms – is astounding. their ability to co-exist, their thriving together, how integral they are in giving back – all inspiring.
apparently, they are a little more pure, higher up on the love-one-another chain than humans.
the orange sherbet sky is a stunning backdrop to most anything but the milkweed’s wisp is anything but most-anything.
we pass by and notice. we pay attention. texture and color and movement from the gentlest breeze – it is a photograph before it was a photograph. my job was simply to snap it.
our days are slower. we linger in not-knowing. we acknowledge time as it sneaks by. and the next week comes before any of us are ready, before it seems possible. even the milkweed is surprised.
we are learning lesson after lesson. that this is life: the things our fingertips touch, the scent on the wind, the view before us, the call of the black-capped chickadee, the ground under our feet. we are caught up by the impermanence of it all. we are realizing the folly in the gathering of stuff. we immerse in the river where there is no stratum. we feel the moment, without knowing the edges of next.
the orange sherbet sky doesn’t dawdle. color has another place to be. and as the sun drops below the horizon, the shadow-gaps fill in.
we stand with the milkweed in dusk, close, loitering in early night and, with gratitude and rest, ready for next.
we passed the bench in the park. i couldn’t read the rest; it’s possible that the spraypaint was -somewhat- erased for a reason. nevertheless, what remained: i with.
in these days fraught with division, they were words of prompt, words that made me think, words that made me wince. because they hold in the air other words: i against.
it seems somewhat closed to just ponder the “i-withs” when one can see the “i-againsts” just as clearly. and, in this polarizing world, it’s generally the i-againsts that carry a charge. we read the news, we watch the world teeter and it becomes alarmingly clear how against we are against the againsts. our blood boils watching the mockery of governing; our hearts break watching the taking of lives in violent disagreement. we shudder at inequity; we are disgusted with closemindedness. we grit our teeth – nauseated – as we watch progress regress. close-in and further out, we are capable of listing our i-againsts.
and we are also capable of listing our i-withs. the place we stand – holding humanity, peace, fairness, equity, kindness, generosity. the tenets we stand with, the people who – actually – hold to those tenets. we ferret out those who pontificate, those who are righteous, those who are sanctimonious. instead, we clear the spaces next to us for the transparently authentic, who really do stand in the intention of goodness, who really do walk with us. the i-withs.
and we have gratitude for the i-withs. for we know, we are capable of days on this good earth because of our i-withs. we have gratitude for the i-withs for we know we could not be without them. we have gratitude for the i-withs and, in our mind, we spraypaint our list on the park bench.
i was the one. probably the one and only. the single person in the entire school who opened up my re-purposed hallmark card store bag to reveal a wax-paper-wrapped sandwich. now, if that isn’t bad enough, add to it the irreversible damage that this wrought: carrying a cucumber sandwich or liverwurst and mayo on smushy white bread wrapped in waxed paper. i mean, who eats this in elementary school or junior high or even high school??? it’s like that scene in my big fat greek wedding with the mean girls around toula portokalos taunting her lunch, “moose kaka???”. yes, irreversible damage.
and so, i have a thing about wax paper. this is probably not wax paper’s fault. it was innocently birthed in 1927 and has served the general public well. just not me in the school cafeteria.
while everyone else was flaunting their plastic sandwich bags – with their deli-ham-and-cheese sandwiches complete with prepackaged bags of chips and ho hos or twinkies – there i was – with my savory liverwurst on bread soggy with mayonnaise, an apple and, if i was really lucky, a prized yodel. there was no comparison. it was crushing.
so, the wax paper in the drawer in the kitchen comes with a little ptsd. it comes in handy, yes. but i’ll never ever wrap a sandwich with it. ever.
i think it was $250. that is the number that sticks in my mind. the amount of money my sweet poppo spent on the family’s very first calculator. way back when.
now, $250 was a lot back then. it still is. but my dad wanted us to have this newfangled device with which we could add, subtract, multiply and divide to our heart’s content, sans paper and pencil. it was a pretty exciting time and we all felt inordinately lucky to be living in such a technological world. wow.
my big brother was the one who made an abacus for me. in searching through bins in the basement and the attic i was hoping to stumble upon it. but no abacus to be found. amazingly enough, i even knew how to use the abacus.
and then, it was, again, my brother who showed me how to use a slide-rule. he was a surveyor for a time, so it was a tool of his trade. and anything my brother used, i wanted to use. he was that kind of idolized big brother. i’ve come across several slide rules in boxes and pencil cases. i’d have to refresh to figure out how to use them. i’m just certain that my treasured high school math teacher would be proud were he to know how attached i still am to these pre-calculator devices.
the stick on the trail somehow brought all of this to mind. linking-thinking, my dear friend heidi calls it. as we approached it, it just simply screamed “number line” to me. it appeared that each little branch nub was placed exactly the same distance apart. it immediately brought me back to number lines i’ve created in the past…for history classes or for math or for one of those “describe your life” timeline projects that have you looking back and then looking ahead. plotting on the line the ponderous things that have happened in your life that have in turn impacted your life.
i stopped to take photographs of the stick and got lost in plot-my-life-on-the-number-line thoughts. i’ve been doing a lot of looking-back and this stick would come in handy as a visual.
somewhere on that stick it would show our first calculator. somewhere before that it would show the abacus and the slide-rules. somewhere later it would show a first computer. and then, subsequent computers, laptops, ipads, cellphones. it’s easy to place stuff on the number line.
what’s much harder to place is the impact of moments in your life. but for one decision, one meeting, one event, the rest of the number line would be entirely different. it’s profound.
in the way that – in elementary school – you would draw a curved line – to the right – under the number line to show addition or a curved line – to the left – under the number line to show subtraction, it is much harder to reflect – with a simple curved line – the entire impact one nub on the stick might have had on you. though one might try to reflect the way one nub informed the rest, it is nearly impossible to wrap all impact into a few curved lines.
in fact, the number line, the abacus, the slide-rule, the early-bird calculator – none of them can calculate all that.
standing on the trail, mid-photo-shoot with the stick, i realize that it is likely we cannot actually portray ourselves – our lives – on a number line. it occurs to me that – because life and heart and soul are like this – we are living many nubs concurrently – backward and forward – all at the same time. no nub stands alone. each is altered and informed by all the others.
reverse threading 