reverse threading

the path back is the path forward

Tag Archives: on the trail


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teasel tease. [d.r. thursday]

“if left unchecked, teasel can form large dense patches and severely impact a habitat planting. teasel can be very difficult to manage because once established it pollutes the soil with durable seed that can germinate throughout the growing season.” (plantscience.psu.edu)

“leaves have spines on the underside of the midvein and smaller spines on bases on the upper leaf surface. the stem leaves are opposite and prickly, especially on the lower side of the leaf midvein.” (nwcb.wa.gov)

“handling teasel is best done with heavy gloves, every part of the plant is prickly to the point of piercing human skin.” (fairegarden.wordpress.com)

“once teasels become established in an area, they are hard to eradicate.” (fllt.org)

“if left unchecked, teasel quickly can form large monocultures excluding all native vegetation.” (illinois.edu)

if left unchecked…

it would seem these teasel beg the metaphoric reference to people within communities. it is no wonder – in these times – that my mind immediately goes there.

but teasels are beautiful, with interesting texture. like the flat-back-hand-carder for the vintage spinning wheel in our basement that cards wool or raises the nap on fabric, they were utilized for decades and were initially cultivated from the old world. they appear in planted gardens for their dominant sculptural presence and in meadows, growing wild and free.

on a quest – every day – to take photographs, i find myself back at 18. i was given my first 35mm camera when i graduated from high school early, my parents pretty certain i would love it. i did. i was out the next day, walking the beach in winter, reveling in capturing it all. i took that camera everywhere and took pictures of everything, reveling in the freedom of aperture and shutter speed. the deliberate taking of photographs brings one to center, into presence – there is no need for speed. instead, it is about slow movement, about noticing, about paying attention.

and i am – lately – feeling a tad bit back-there. at 18. the tiny lone flower, the shadow, the curl of bark – they get my attention. i pause.

these teasel stopped me. there was a teasing tension between their color, their thorns, the sky, the pine trees in the background. the juxtaposition of the bristle and the luminous. beautiful. i, too, couldn’t resist the teasel.

“despite its noxiousness, it’s impossible not to find the teasel rather endearing…” (jacqueline stuhmiller, fllt.org)

one just needs remember the thorns.

be wary. don’t hug a teasel.

*****

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garter snake. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

the snake lazily laid across the trail. a big beautiful garter snake, i saw it first and pointed it out to d. it didn’t move as we approached. i wanted to make sure it was ok. i went to it, trying not to frighten it. it seemed fine. so, camera in hand, i started snapping photos. it stayed put. after a moment it started to curl and bend, coiling into a posture of defense, but it still didn’t slither away. it held its ground, later begging research. we left it, curled back-forth-back-forth on the trail, enjoying the sun.

i’m not particularly a fan of snakes. i wouldn’t be likely to attempt to pick one up or let it slither too near me. but this one seemed dedicated to staying put, like it had something to say.

i wondered what it was trying to tell me. was it encouraging, “stand your ground!”? was it reminding me, “go slow and be deliberate!”? was it conveying, “change is imminent; be aware, be open!”? was it hissing, “beware of those who are maleficent!”? was it declaring, “allow for higher forces!”? was it reassuring, “renewal, healing!”?

i don’t know.

at the moment we saw it, it simply was stretched out in the sun – a snake relishing life. it may or may not have a message, an underlying meaning.

mostly, it was just there. and so were we. and we were glad to share the trail with it.

*****

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daisy to the sun. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

though we haven’t heard from him – on his youtube channel – for a long time now, joey coconato has a thing about meadows. he was in the presence of superb forests, the most majestic of mountains, rushing water and red rock canyons, but you could feel his reaction when he came across a meadow. it was like a breath of fresh air. a deep breath. i see a meadow and, now, consequently, think of joey.

the meadows we pass on our trail are revitalizing. post-invasive-species-eradication, they are greening and the vegetation is multiplying, more quickly than we can keep up. like breck – our aspen tree out back – we notice new shoots of growth every day, new tiny blooms of color. and then – there are the daisies.

this daisy caught my attention. even more than the others. mostly, maybe, because it wasn’t facing us. instead, the daisy had its back to us. and it seemed to have turned its face to the sun, soaking up energy and warmth, in a full-on beach-towel-on-the-summer-sand kind of invitation.

there have been days when face-to-the-sun is the best we can do. our meadows, sometimes fraught with invasive species and problematic drought, need us to just stop a moment and look up. turn our faces to the sun, let the shadows drop, soak it in.

when i think about our hiking and the moments that stay with me in the bank of yearning, they are the ones in pine forests, in and amongst quaking aspen, alongside quiet streams. they are on mountains with views between branches out to other mountains, ranges in the distance.

but the moments that are really prevalent – really impactful, even in their familiarity – are also these – the ones we know best, the turn in the trail, the scent passing a certain stand of pine, and the new beginnings – rebirth – in the meadows.

and, like daisy, we turn our faces to the sun.

*****

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old friends in the garden. [k.s. friday]

back home-home, my sweet momma had planted bleeding hearts on the east side of our house. there were four-o-clocks there as well; old-fashioned flowers in her garden. we didn’t have any fancy plants – it was otherwise hosta and day lilies, rose of sharon and hydrangea, azalea and forsythia. but, in thinking back, i love her sensibility of these old-timey plants, steadfast through the ages, and anytime i see or plant any of them, i think of my momma.

our trail takes us through the woods. the honeysuckle lines the dirt path and its sweet aroma wafts around us. there’s pink and white, both. and, as i glance over, there is something that makes me think of my momma’s bleeding hearts. we’d plant them in our backyard but for the fact that they are toxic and we don’t want to take any chances with dogdog. so simply being reminded of them will have to suffice.

maybe today we’ll go and get a few flowers at the nursery. we need some to put in a planter on the old chair out back and in the retired firepit vessel. i suppose it’s time – already! – to pick up our basil plant and the cherry tomatoes we love to have on our potting stand. we are heading into summer soon and caprese salads and skewers are beckoning.

honeysuckle is a symbol of pure happiness. i’m pretty sure that four-o-clocks and hosta and day lilies and rose of sharon and hydrangea and azalea and forsythia are as well, though i haven’t looked them up and i’m guessing there’s more meaning for each.

for me, they are walking in my growing-up yard. for me, they are my momma, bent over the garden, deadheading the four-o-clock blossoms and loosening the leathery seeds. for me, they are the light purple buds of the hosta heated by the sun – the ones planted by the garage just off the one-car driveway – just begging for tiny hands to pop them at the end of the afternoon when they were filled with air. for me, they are the giant flowers of my sister’s name (though spelled differently, she would quickly add). for me, they are sitting up in the maple tree with my notebook, writing, gazing down at the garden on the shady side of the house. for me, they are big bunches of dried hydrangeas in the fall. for me, they are delicate hearts lined up on a stem, for i was always fascinated by these. for me, they are so much more than old-fashioned flowers.

for me, they are comfort. for me, they are like old friends.

*****

OLD FRIENDS REVISITED ©️ 1995 kerri sherwood

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picture-of-the-day. [d.r. thursday]

i haven’t stopped. since march 2020 when my son – at the beginning of the pandemic – in an effort to help me feel connected to him and my daughter – suggested we have a shared text with photos taken in our day. a picture-of-the-day. and every day, not-failing, i have sent one since. i am in absolute delight when they now share a photograph on this thread; i know busy-ness and work and life have picked back up some time ago and picture-of-the-day is no longer on their radar. but, because i am a mom – and i know moms everywhere can relate – it’s still on mine. i look for something that somehow represents my day, every single day.

i have to say – this has been a good thing, this intention to seek and snap the picture-of-the-day. i take lots of photos, so some days this is easy. but there are others when my photo is of mashed potatoes or chicken soup or the accuweather tornado watch or glasses of wine at the end of the day. some days are just life. normal, regular, not supersized, life.

the trillium placed itself in front of the fallen log, clearly, on purpose. ready for its photo shoot, its bud profile at this stage resembling a mighty tulip, the toadshade waited for someone to come along and take its picture. and there i was.

that very day i ended up using a graceful fern in our backyard as my picture-of-the-day. the composition was just a little better, the curve of the fern beautiful. but the trillium knew it would end up featured. i had whispered thank you to it after my baker’s dozen shoot. it stood proudly as we hiked away, knowing.

paying attention – to the littlest details of a day – requires intention. i know i could get lost in the other details of our life, the more pressing, the more complex, the minutiae and nuances of moment-to-moment adulting.

but one text from my son changed that and offered me a continuing reminder to find something – any thing – big or little, positive or disconcerting, dreamy or a little bit scary – that was a real piece of my day. it also offered me a chance to physically let them know i was – at that very moment of sending – thinking of them.

i know there are days – i don’t want to think about how many – that my grown children look at their phones and – in unison from 1400 miles apart – roll their eyes as my picture-of-the-day drops in.

i just want to thank them. ❤️❤️

and this trillium.

*****

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down and frizz. [k.s. friday]

it is likely the heron’s. we have seen a couple together out there – gliding through the marshland, standing regally by the side of the pond, walking sedately. we hiked past the downy feather, that had likely fallen from where down is hidden beneath the heron’s outer feathers, and i went back, the talcum powder white capturing my attention on the trail. sometimes i pick up feathers – to keep them, beautiful signs of divine and freedom and flight. i left this one on the trail, tucked between the pine and the cone, its texture begging notice.

under the outer layer of my straight hair is an unruly curly layer. the days i do not blow-dry my hair, i am banana-curled, little-orphan-annie-curled, a combo-platter-no-real-sense curled. i personally have found it annoying. most women desire hair which they do not have – a different kind of hair – a different color – a different texture, thickness, bounce, volume. it is the way of this society.

instyle magazine did an entire month of articles on women and their hair. i read the initial article from 2018 and, frankly, found it somewhat entertaining. the most common uniting hair complaint is frizz, which, i must say, i have complained about a time or two. d has trouble understanding frizz as he is a non-frizz-haired guy (incidentally, with better hair than me – which doesn’t seem quite hair-fair). regardless, hair has become a tool of empowering for women, especially in this nation.

according to what i read, we can be flushed with excitement or nervous as all get-out, challenged beyond our perceived limits or drudging our way through the day – but, if our hair looks good, we feel good, no matter.

i wonder if the heron – in its elegant wisdom and intuition – has concerned itself with its feathers. or has it just simply concerned itself with its basic needs, its instinctual movements and rituals, its patterns and place in nature. is it thinking about its frizzy down feathers? i suspect not. compare that with the reported 81% of human women who feel more confident if their hair looks great.

according to the majority of human women – none of the hair products out there reeeeally work. everything promises to de-frizz, de-curl, celebrate the curl, straighten, give volume, grant sheen, untangle, combat thinning, retain moisture, eliminate split ends, make it bounce, make it stay still, give a hairstyle hold. but nope, none of it really works.

if you add perimenopause, menopause and post-menopause to the hair equation, you are faced with a variety pack of even more hair concerns. for me, that means that – despite all my deliberate blowdrying intentions for straightening my hair, the instant a hotter-than-hot hot flash swings by, i am frizzed. drippy hot, frizzed and curled – definitely not a jennifer aniston hair look.

“in order to cool their body temperature, great blue herons will partially extend and droop their wings and open their mouths while fluttering their throat muscles. much like dogs panting, this helps cool their body through evaporation. this behavior is called gular fluttering.” (nps.gov) the innate wisdom of the heron – gular fluttering. who knew?

so…if you see me – curly hair askew sneaking out from under a few straightened hairs trying to hold on to their straight – fluttering my throat muscles (is this synonymous with talking too much in humans???) – you will know i am post-yet-another-hot-flash and am channeling my internal great blue heron. please don’t comment on my hair.

*****

I DIDN’T KNOW ©️ 1997, 2000 kerri sherwood

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the burn. [k.s. friday]

they chopped down, chainsawed, mulched, chemicalized, burned. they decimated the whole forest to eliminate the invasives. and – in the way of oncological medicine, of environmental eradication programs, of corporate and organizational ousting – the good cells may somehow survive, burned edges and all.

to be a tree with burn marks is to be human. one cannot traipse through this life without them. we all carry with us whatever balm has helped us get through the fires. we lean on the surety that spring will come, eventually.

as we hike the trail, we know that it is not one hundred percent that only the good will keep on. it is not a certainty. instead, it is a risk, a gamble, that there may be cells that escape treatment, there may be invasives that escape annihilation, there may be people-in-power-with-ill-intent who either escape the pointed fingers or are the ones corruptly pointing them.

and in those cases, the worry is that those cells will reproduce, those invasives will take over and choke out the organic, those people will destroy the place. a ravaging burn. devastation. and the good cells, the good plants, the good people will be left to fend for themselves, to remain upright – stalwart – to grow despite the odds.

it is good friday for those who are keeping a religious calendar. a day of destruction following betrayal and many burned edges. as this sacred story goes, three days later there is a resurrection. and the targeted jesus rises.

as we hike the trail, we notice the green shoots growing out of the ground, their top leaves still blackened. we marvel at the tenacity of these plants as they garnered energy best-as-they-could, regardless of the burn. the good xylem and phloem somehow survived.

there are naturalists who are watching closely, tending to the native plants best as they can. there are doctors and nurses and researchers and clinical trial experts who are watching closely, tending to patients and health and life best as they can. there are, therefore, it would seem, allies who are dedicated to the truth, to transparency, to the best parts of an organization who are watching closely, tending to the burns of the sacrificed.

“i want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.“ (oriah mountain dreamer)

shrinking back will allow the devastation. standing in the fire – the center of the fire – will allow the resurrection.

*****

“and you were there in all of my suff’ring.

you were there in doubt, and in fear;

i’m waiting on the dawn to reappear...” (you were on the cross – m.mayer, k.butler, a.assad) 

TRANSIENCE ©️ 2010 kerri sherwood

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a mission of symphony. [two artists tuesday]

though not quite as at-home as the cranes walking the edges, we know this pond. we knew it as a marsh. we knew it as dry dirt. we knew it with mulch strewn throughout as they eradicated invasive species. we watched as the rains began to fill it. we listened to the quiet wind ripple across its surface. and then, one day, we heard the first frogs. though we cannot see them, the orchestra pit is filled with frogs in chorus. the static becomes a symphony.

such is the way of a choir. for well over three decades, i conducted groups of people who chose to sing – in choir. they gathered, sitting in folding chairs cold with mid-week evening thermostat dips. they gathered, weary from their days at work or home, filled with activities of responsibility, of life. they gathered, to become a symphony.

the thing about choir rehearsals is that – with good leadership – they go from a meeting of a group of individuals to a collaboration of musicians, from quiet chatter to boisterous song, from people who possibly feel ill-at-ease to people whose voices are heard, whose hearts are seen. choir rehearsals are community events and – led with joy – become places that are generative, places that are accepting not competitive, places of great learnings and tremendous laughter, places that are spaces filled with concern for the other, lifting up of each other, a place with a mission of goodness, a mission of symphony.

i’ve missed being a choir director. it’s been over two years now and the lack of vocal choirs, ukuleles, handbells, worship bands is palpable for me. directing was always about the community – building it, reinforcing it – life-giving, loving. my resume shows seven churches along the way. seven communities in which i offered all i could give, responding to their individual needs, their particular circumstances, their strengths and their weaknesses. seven fluid rivers of music-making.

seven ponds with symphonies. rippling out.

quietly static to extraordinarily alive.

*****

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the talmud, the meditation room, the woods. [merely-a-thought monday]

we had never parked in that section of the daily parking garage, so we never saw it. creatures of habit, we didn’t park there this time either, but we walked across the driveway to use the elevator and the interior moving walkway on that side. for how many times i have flown out of the milwaukee airport, i was surprised to find we could walk inside instead of through the cold terminal parking garage. the walkway was much warmer than the damp parking structure and, since we were going to florida coatless, it was a much better choice.

we rounded the last corner – the one that takes you to the third-level-skywalk to the terminal – to find ancient words of wisdom marking an entrance to the airport’s meditation room. simple, beautiful, quiet – we never knew it was there, though it was completed in late 2017. “airports can be busy, hectic, and stressful places. the MKE meditation room provides a quiet, tranquil location for thought, reflection, prayer, and meditation.” (www.mitchellairport.com) we stopped into the meditation room on our way home. we sat for a few minutes, reading the inspirational words on the wall, closing our eyes in contemplation. it was surprisingly silent. it was right as the liminal space between the flight and home.

a few days ago – in the later afternoon – we hiked one of our favorite trails. we were stressed and needed the space and quiet of this familiar woods. we had been there days before, boots and snowpants through deep snow, trees stunning against the whiteness. it was beautiful. we find the ancient words of the talmud on this trail…we are sustained by its peace, we feel more hope for truth and justice as we walk in nature.

but this day was not quiet. and, though researching the mayhem revealed that it was a “woody invasive species clearing project,” we found the noise, the machinery, the devastated forest disturbing. nothing looked the same and, as much as we know this trail, it was hard to locate within it; without familiar trees and underbrush each bend in the trail looked different.

“removing invasive shrubs and trees in oak communities allows for enough sunlight to reach the ground level to encourage the growth of young native tree seedlings and other native vegetation.” (www.lcfpd.org) we felt somewhat relieved reading these words after our hike, understanding that these big changes were intentional and that the purpose was growth and sustenance of the savanna, prairie, and marsh wetland.

the talmud, the milwaukee meditation room, the preserved woods in northeastern illinois…all the same, i suppose.

it is the removal of the invasive, the obnoxious, the noise, falsity, injustice, all that is conflict-riddled, that allows the sun, that encourages, that sustains the world.

*****

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warmth wins. [two artists tuesday]

the tiny fallen branch must be radiating enough absorbed heat to melt the icy snow-pack just around it. the perfectly custom-shaped frame of snow reveals gorgeous long-needled pine laying on the ground atop a small clump of clover. the green in a field of frozen crunchy white was a beautiful glimpse underneath, a reveal.

things aren’t necessarily what they seem. and – though we sometimes remember we also sometimes forget – we find that there is more going on – beneath the visible surface – than we can imagine. i suppose it’s mr. rogers’ endings-beginnings, it’s george eliot’s “don’t judge a book by its cover”, it’s the cinderella song “it’s what’s inside that counts”… i suppose you just never know.

it served as a reminder on the trail. though fallow seemed to be starting and early winter was beginning to take its toll, a little bit of green busted through the ice, peeking out, asking us to notice. it seemed it was stored-up warmth that mattered.

reading and research bring up many physics and scientific theories postulated about this phenomenon, about the albedo effect, about dunes and wind, about snow and pine needles. they are all fascinating, but for me – it was mostly all about the disparity between what it looked like on the outside and what was on the inside. because we don’t always know what’s just below the surface – in circumstance, in the environment, in people.

but a little warmth (or albedo or a breeze) reveals a smidge. just a little grace, a little forgiveness, a little compassion, a little generosity, a little love.

it doesn’t take much – this tiny pine bough is proof, indeed.

warmth wins, every time.

*****

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