why wouldn’t nature – in all its magnificent glory – wonder what in the hell is going on?
why wouldn’t nature – in its most minuscule and its most vast – its most discreet and its most deafening – stare down humanity, shocked at the impunity?
why wouldn’t nature – in its chugging-chugging ability to keep on keeping on – shake its head as the people, living within its generosity, destroy it?
why wouldn’t nature – working around its infinite challenges to maintain a healthy and centered balance – be infuriated at so many unresolved conflicts, so much bigotry, so much extremist agenda?
why wouldn’t nature – in its symbiotic synergy – be aghast at such lack of cooperation, such disregard to interdependence?
why wouldn’t nature – in its innate ability to BE love – drown in tears of devastated sadness?
i’d say that each time we see it, it looks different.
the des plaines is not a raging river. it is not a major water thoroughfare. it bubbles out of the ground a little north and west of here and flows south, through the rest of southeastern wisconsin and into illinois where it eventually – through joining with the kankakee and the illinois – becomes a tributary for the mississippi. its origin is from glaciers long ago, a heritage it carries in its current, in each bend.
it is a treasure, this relatively unknown river. we have hiked many of its miles, getting to know it in all its different seasons, its river-ness unflailing even in drought.
a place of solace, the trails that have developed around this river must be wrapped in the magic of the flow – for it is there we go (as we have written time and again) to sort, to ponder, to laugh with abandon and to cry.
and even in the moments when it is frozen, when all appears still and fallow is on the calendar, it is still moving. it is a living and breathing river – a body of water that continues.
i suppose that could make me feel the slightest bit less panicked about this country. this is a living and breathing democracy. though it appears frozen and at inordinate peril, i suppose there are tiny streams of constitutional law that are still bubbling up, pushing their way to the surface from aquifers deep in the earth. i suppose that the river’s origin 14,000 years ago should speak to me about tenacity through challenge – both natural and manmade. i suppose that the import of this simple river on the places through which it flows should remind me that every single impact counts, every effort to eradicate invasive species makes a difference.
and so, with no small measure of hope, i honor the uprisings of those who protest against the cruelty being dealt to the people of this country. i applaud the efforts of those who push back against the authoritarian rule that has surfaced in plain sight. i acknowledge that under it all – flowing underneath the vileness of this administration – are steady, solid, compassionate, reasonable voices. the people who stand firm on the principles upon which this country’s democracy was built – not silent, not still.
as i write this, it is a feels-like of -41 degrees outside. the actual temperature is -14. we are staying inside.
this is one of the bends in the trail i really love. as we come around this outer perimeter of the trail – a section beyond which we have explored with good boots and warm weather – i know that the stand of pines is coming. and with those pines, the scent…
we stocked up before the big freeze. going to the supermarket is astonishing each time we go, so this time was no different. we had a list – and shopped to the list – though we did buy a small bag of cape cod chips not on the list – but it was still a small fortune. we didn’t want to have to go out to resupply in the frigid arctic blast.
not to mention the fact that this time – this time in this world – oddly and horrifyingly suspended – feels overwhelming.
it’s a little bit risky writing a post ahead of its publish date, particularly now. anything could happen, it seems. and we don’t want to seem – or be – tone-deaf.
in the moments of stepping away from all that is happening – and they are merely slight moments – we seek any source of reassurance, any source of comfort, any source of grounding. we try to get good sleep, eat well, drink water, exercise. we try to find things to laugh about, things that take us away from the chaos. we hug the dog. we listen – still – to george winston’s december album. we hike when we can. we plan distractions.
but we’ve cancelled some meaningful plans, things we had on our calendar for months. things we’d been looking forward to. it was disappointing to do so, but we recognized our limits – physical and emotional – and decided to be adult about it.
yesterday, sitting on the old deck glider in the living room, looking out the front window, i tried to reason with myself about it. cancelling plans and tickets and such is not just a nod to the weather or to our personal limits.
it is a deep sigh of the exhaustion we feel as we navigate – with the pummeled populace out there – the current world, the devastation we feel about our country, the shock our hearts register each and every day as we stay as plugged in as we can manage about everything that is happening – rapidly, with no brakes.
sometimes, i guess, one just has to stay still, to sit still, to stare out the window.
and sometimes the trail comes to us and wraps us in it, hoping to assuage our fears, to calm our hearts, to stoke our courage.
when i came across the green plastic ant farm stashed on a shelf in the storage room in the basement – between two stacks of books – just innocently sitting there – i couldn’t help but immediately feel like it could be a metaphor to how this universe – in the biggest sense of the word – is now looking at us.
through a plastic shield, the universe stares at the goings-on on this planet – and let’s make that even more specific – in this country – and – without describing all the horror that meets the eye, the horror that is happening below the surface, the horror that is intended and about which we can only guess – so let’s cut to the chase – the universe groans in utter dismay, shocked beyond belief that we have screwed up OUR ant farm so appallingly.
because instead of ants – relying heavily on the importance and responsibility of connected community, with unselfish dividing up and equal sharing of work, with patience and problem-solving skills, their committed and unrelenting devotion to a positive and generative end result – we humans here on this earth seem to shun the values of equality or connectedness in community, lead with narcissistic and immorality-driven agenda, devote ourselves to divisiveness, cultural, status and caste, racial, gender, religious, nativistic dominance, drive toward a brutally suffocated powerless populace.
to think that an uncle milton’s giant ant farm could show us humans up is preposterous. but it’s absolutely true.
i am – truly – not quite sure how we would survive without this trail.
it offers sanity in a world that seems to be losing its very center. it offers quiet in a world noisy with horrific news. it offers peace in a country that doesn’t seem to understand peace any longer.
we breathe on this trail.
we talk about other things – projects and dreams.
we get lost in our own thoughts.
we – know – in the way nature makes clear – we are simply two tiny parts in a big whole.
blogsites supply some analytics about your blogposts. wordpress can tell us which posts are viewed, how many views, how many visitors we have, their countries of origin. the site, however, is not totally protected against bots, so some of the information – when the numbers seem exponential – is obviously generated by non-human sources. there are moments i laugh – or sigh – and say things to d like, “wow. like they have nothing better to do in name-a-country than to sit around reading reverse threading, eh?” i know better. my words are not likely to assuage – or even be the vaguest bit interesting – to people in dire circumstances, in countries full of upheaval or war, in places where trying to find just a bit of food is paramount. i am humbled by people who are in such drastic conditions or situations.
we have a thing about our shadows. and our feet, too, truth be told. there are many photographs on my camera that depict our shadows or our feet in a wide array of places. “we’ve been here,” i feel like these say.
it’s like a footprint. though the prints and tracks around us in this picture will fade with snow or rain or other prints and tracks, they will never really go away. the imprint will always remain part of the texture of the path, a part of the fabric of the trail.
i feel like our shadows are the same. though the moment the clouds move across and block the sun, the moment the sun dips below the horizon, the moment we move on – our shadows seemingly disappear. yet, something in me feels that they actually remain. our shadows – like the shadows of deer crossing the path to find shelter in the bramble, the shadows of hawks and a bald eagle or two above, the shadows of squirrels scurrying or horses elegantly cantering through, even the shadows of fuzzy caterpillars making their way – they all remain part of the many layers of what has existed, what has passed by, what remains in the energy of that place.
there are people imperiled in every corner of our world and there are people honing cruel skill at the denigration of others. there are people thriving in closely-held self-actualized dreams and there are people burdened with feelings of failure. there are people who are always the helpers and people who hostage-take others’ well-being. we all add to the energy of the world.
i feel like i really would like to do my best to make sure my shadow adds even the tiniest bit of goodness to the vibrating atoms of this world. being outside reminds me of the evanescence of it all, the transitory of us.
the trail was a mixture of ice and mud. in some spots – where the woods doesn’t let in as much sun, there was still snow…with evidence of hikers, horses, some kind of atv tracks.
we needed to get out on the trail. it had been several days since we’d gotten there.
this trail, as I’ve shared before, is the place where we do much sorting. it is the place where we re-center when we feel disoriented. it is the place where we speak of celebrating, where we acknowledge grief. it is the place we can talk or be silent – and either way – in both conversation and silence, we are fully communicating.
so, pulling up our turtles and foregoing any imperative to keep our boots mud-free, we started walking.
in the quiet of these woods, the pastel sun sinking lower in a slowly-graying sky, stark trees as sculptural interruptions with the horizon, thoughts have a way of making their way to the forefront, unimportant stuff drops off, existential takes the limelight.
it was a couple days after this country we live in invaded venezuela, a couple days after a citizen right-around-the-age-of-my-own-children was shot three times in the face and killed by a government agency, which then went on to demonize her.
there are moments when i literally cannot imagine what it must feel like to believe – absolutely and without a doubt – that you are the most powerful person in the world, you are the smartest person on the planet, you are better than anyone else – anyone, anyone, anyone, ever, ever, ever. this kind of exponential narcissism is beyond anything i can comprehend, a complete and utterly ego-driven attitude beyond the pale. the callousness, the cavalier mob-boss certainty, the self-devotion is revolting. being witness to this is living inside this person’s sickness – and, as contagious as it is if one is a sycophant – to which, indeed, we bear witness – for me, it is nauseating, incomprehensible. appalling doesn’t begin to cover it.
we hike because it helps us sort to clarity. even with all the innate complexity of the forest, the ecosystems present, the symbiotic relationships in place, there is still not much that is complicated when you are hiking through. it is all there – surrounding us with beauty and simplicity, the goodness of planet earth.
to juxtaposition that with the hideousness of an administration that is warped beyond comparison is to walk in some sort of unreal reality. this place – these woods – make sense. in the way that winter falls upon the land, the leaves have fallen, the underbrush is in fallow, the land is simply waiting. this place – this nation – makes no sense. in the way that this winter falls upon the land, cruelty has beset us, goodness as-a-country is nowhere to be found, the land from-sea-to-shining-sea is waiting…for its soul to return.
for right now, the clarity that is evident, the thought that i literally cannot imagine but is ever-creeping-forward, is clear-eyed and colored with the horrors of democracy being dismantled – right before our very eyes.
and i wonder about those who find this worthy of cheering. i wonder about those who are aligned with the miserable, vile nature of people in current leadership. i wonder about those who believe in the mass deportations of their neighbors, the abject sadistic horror inflicted upon the populace, the removal of medicaid, of childcare, the endangerment of the LGBTQ community, the loss of affordable healthcare, the unemployment, the cost of living day-to-day, the loss of absolute sanity regarding actual medicine, actual research, actual science, actual healing, the dissolution of international agreements for safety and peaceful coexistence in the world. i wonder how it is that their brains – and hearts – have bought into – hook, line and sinker – this vacuous, ill-intended, dangerous administration.
many of these people were one-topic voters. their immaturity – and their ignorance – are evident. it is shameful that they did not look beyond their one flag-in-the-sand to seek actual clarity about the bait-and-switch in which they were participating.
because now – the thing they can say – as their country teeters dangerously close to falling to authoritarian fascism – is that women have no choice about their own bodies or that we don’t have to succumb to “socialist” healthcare or that we are cleaning out the “dangerous criminals” and, mind you, everyone else with skin color they don’t like or that they don’t have to worry about government oversight over or taxation of their big money and that air will be clean – only it won’t – and it will be deregulated and filled with fossil fuel particulate, and that water will be clean – only it won’t – and it will be deregulated and continue to be vulnerable to pollution and long term harmful pfas, and that crops will be clean – only they won’t – and deregulation on pesticides and fertilizers and sustainability and public health protections will add fuel to the dangerous fire and then – my personal favorite, surely the heartbeat of a healthy country – that their froot loops will soon – in 2027 – finally, finally, finally be safe.
these people – clearly – need to take a walk in the woods.
(about this week: there is a peril, it seems, to writing ahead these days. we had decided that this week – the first full week of a new year – we wished to use images of light as our prompts, we wished to linger on the possibility of light, of hope, of goodness. though our blogposts might stray from that as we pen them, it was without constant nod to the constant updating of current events – a mass of indefensible, unconscionable acts. we pondered what to do about these blogposts we had written and decided to keep them. we hope that – whether or not any absence of the happenings of the day, whether or not the chance these written words seem somewhat inane at this moment – you might know that those events – of corruption, illegality, immorality – do not distill or distort our intention – to bring light and hope to this new year – the first days of which bring more insanity and unnerving instability. we are still holding space for light.)
and so…
it is almost a week prior to this day that i am writing this.
i just found out that my cousin tony died. my dad’s sister’s son, we had only reconnected in the last few years and had not – yet – re-met each other. this makes me inordinately sad today. in a busy world that sorted its way through the pandemic and then hence, a visit together had not yet happened. time did not wait.
i didn’t know he was ailing, and maybe he wasn’t. maybe it was sudden. either way, it came as a shock to me and i could feel it contract my heart, squeezing it and eliciting regrets.
i hope – now – that we will someday meet cousin tony’s family…his children, his grandchildren. i hope to hear some more stories. i hold onto his older postings, politically in alignment with my own thoughts and beliefs, grateful for his assertiveness and candor. i hold tenderly onto those moments we had on the phone together – two cousins who missed out on sharing life together.
my dad’s sister – my aunt helen – had four children. with the exception of cousin maria, they were all older than me by years. that rift thing that fractures families sometimes – that I’ve written about before – took most of the years. the remaining years and months and days that have passed have taken three of my cousins. my cousin linda remains. in a tiny family, it seems important to travel east and spend actual moments together.
this has been a season. there has been much loss for many people around us. every single time we think we have time – in the future – with someone, i feel as if we learn that might not be so…we are reminded that there is no lock on – no tenacious hold – we have on life itself. we can try our best but these moments keep ticking and we are just lucky enough to be in them.
the sky was brilliant out the front door. i called d to come and see it.
the phone’s camera doesn’t really capture it. the colors were so much more vivid. the dusk so much more palpable. the intake of breath so much more visceral. falling into the pause – a moment of the infinite.
and we got to see it.
that’s the thing. it’s all there to see – always. connection, beauty, love.
it boils down to standing on the front porch, gazing at the sky.
when it fell from the tree, i doubt that this small branch envisioned any impression its fall might make. i doubt that it held any thought of impact, for it was suddenly a singular, solitary branch, away from other like branches, away from its tree. i doubt it held any real future in its mind’s eye. it just fell.
but the snow was soft and fluffy and the branch, falling from higher on the tree, fell with just enough oomph to sink into that snow, to carve out its shape, to lay still in a casting of itself.
and even if the wind had blown and lifted up the browned leaves of the tiny branch, which – in turn – lifted and blew the tiny branch out of its molded-snow-home and it ended up no longer right there – on the trail – in front of me, it would still have left its mark.
i passed by it. and in my passing by, i saw it.
i don’t know how many others passed by this branch lodged into the snow. i don’t know if anyone else noticed it, looked at it, photographed it.
but i do know that it made an impression on me. and i remember it.
and oh, that ever-percolating ancient question of legacy, of what endures.
it would do us each good – particularly in these times and in this place – to keep that in mind. the dimmest impression – though maybe even vague, even amorphous or indistinguishable – is still an impression. it may still be remembered. it still counts. it was there. it remains there in the continuum of time.
we have two pinecones on the mantel. because, well, in these times, under these circumstances, in the middle of this middle, one pinecone doesn’t seem like enough.
we enter the new year.
and we draw on the pinecone – its symbolism is hopeful with descriptors of meaning like resilience, regeneration, connection to higher consciousness, abundance, good fortune and protection. right now, there is not much i wouldn’t put on the mantel to ward off negative influences.
pinecones on the trail always get my attention. there’s something about the starkness against the snow that is simply beautiful. and, on this day when everything was so vivid, this pinecone invited me to kneel down and capture it.
if there was anything i would like to remember – every single day – this new year, it would be just that – that everything is vivid, everything is inviting our notice. i would hope to remember to pay heed to all that is around me – even the simplest of it all, the seemingly inconsequential. i would hope to remember to kneel in the snow.
for as each day ends i feel that i will find – as i sort through the hours and minutes – that it was the least of it all that made me feel most alive, the least of it all that made me know that my one, wild life includes pinecones and deer tracks, cold fog over the lake, dogga’s sighs, the holding glance from d, the suspended ninth. it includes the belly laughs, sous-cheffing next to each other, the first sip of coffee, our favorite trail. it includes new gutters and rube goldberg fixes, fuel pumps and matching flannel pjs. it includes the birds at our feeder, the squirrels on the wires, the last hugs we had from our kids, the sun lingering in a pink-peach-fire dusk sky.
sometimes the most important stuff is the least important stuff. the things that carry us from one day to the next in troubled times, the things that sustain our will and buoy our faith, the things that give us courage and let us exhale.
“you keep worrying you’re taking up too much space. i wish you’d let yourself be the milky way.” (andrea gibson)
i don’t believe that snowflakes worry as they fall from the sky. i don’t believe that they have any concern for whether they will fit or whether they will fit in.i don’t believe that they are self-conscious or self-doubting or – even – self-aware. they just are.
they form, they float, they land where they may. and then, they just are.
it is clear to me that we do not occupy such a singularly thin space of reality or consciousness. but were we to, it would simplify matters. we would form and float and land and be.
and perhaps that would mean that we would each bring all of us to the space into which we landed. we wouldn’t bring limited or limiting notions of mattering. we wouldn’t bring devices or attitudes measuring importance or gauging hierarchal places of belonging. we wouldn’t bring open hatred or cruelty. we would just land…into a community of other snowflakes, gathered and scattered, all beautiful, and unique.
maybe it would mean that no one of us would feel compelled to rule the space, to take over the place where the snowflakes gathered. maybe it would mean that no one of us would feel like they were more a snowflake than the next snowflake. maybe it would mean that each of us would feel that we count. maybe it would mean that each of us would feel like we are important – galaxy-size-important – even in the middle of all the other snowflakes. each one of us. maybe that kind of valuing could save the world.
every snowflake. they accumulated on the adirondack chairs we left outside in the just-in-case there might be another warm enough day to sit outside or to be by the firepit. i didn’t brush them off. there was something compelling about seeing them – this tiny community of snowflakes – something that drove me to study it, really look at how they scattered onto the surface.
it would seem that – indeed – these snowflakes let themselves fly. unconcerned, undeterred by anything else, i imagine they each – in all their glory – made like they were as big as the milky way and – in all their grand single-snowflake-power – floated and twirled their way down to the very important space that would be theirs. and no one stopped them.
and then, there they were.
tiny individual flakes. taking up all the space.
and they stayed there. waiting for the next snowfall – when they would hear the laughter and joy of the next batch of flakes as they fell, glistening and swirling like diamonds from clouds.
perhaps we are too noisy to hear such glee, to believe in such magic.
reverse threading 