Category: Kindred Spirits

beauty, Being resilient, Birds, Blessings, Creation, Creator, Faithful Living, Forest, God, Great horned owl, Hardiness, Having hope about the future, Heartwarming, Hope, joy, Kindred Spirits, Lessons from the Wilderness, Living Faithfully, Losing yourself in nature, Meeting at the Post Office, Nature, Peace, Perseverence, Praise, Prayer, Silence, Sounds, Spring, Springtime in your sweatshirt, sweatshirt, The sounds of nature, weeds

On the Lookout in My Sweatshirt

This Side of the River

Here in the north, we await spring alongside our longsuffering tree companions. Yesterday we had a typical spring bluster curving the stoic trees into the posture of an elderly man bent stiffly forward at the hip. Branches swayed in frank petition for their leaves to come soon. Soon Lord!

It seems we need a greening of the soul.”

The daffodils and forsythia are drunkenly painting the town yellow in defiance of lingering snowflakes. At the post office, there’s a fellow in shorts, a woman in winter boots and scarf, two suntanned folks joyfully reuniting after a long winter in the south, and a tuneful whistling coming from the sorting room. All this color and joy under the dark and foreboding old mural of a sinking Ann Arbor car ferry. And yet, the post office is family of sorts, with a seeping warmth in the face of the chilled grayness outside-this is spring in our little town up north.

Yes, spring in the north is for reunions, and color explosions, leaves and grass and blooming bulbs. But mostly, for me, spring is for birds and sweatshirts. Oh, how I love sweatshirt weather in the north. I can sit in my SOTD (sweatshirt of the day) on the deck and watch the birds for hours.

The wood thrush has returned, shyly showing off his speckled vest, singing like a busker at eventide. I would toss you a dollar if you could use it Mr. Thrush. May you be blessed with a lovely brood to add to the forest choir.“

It will only be days before the grosbeak, ovenbird, and vireo are here to join you, while the ruffed grouse beats his drum to lure in a mate. Yes, it is a blissfully happy time here in my sweatshirt, here at the place where dune and forest meet.

Just don’t blink; things quickly change this time of year. Yesterday’s drab unremarkable goldfinch is shockingly yellow this morning. The grass greened up within hours of rain, and the weeds are already out there laughing at me. They adore their effect on my futile thinking. Beware weeds-I have a new tool for rooting you out like a secret buried sin.  

Yes, sweat-shirted and shivering I wait and watch, glad of the trees’ nakedness that I might see the birds better. Soon, all will gratefully hide behinds the leaves’ green screen. I am keen to glimpse a flash of red, the vivid scarlet of the tanager, the royal velvet head of the woodpecker, and its pterodactyl-like pileated cousin already hammering away at a dying ash down the lane. I listen for new songs and the whir of the hummingbird, and thrill to awake before dawn to the insistent hoots of the resident great horned owl calling its newly-fledged owlets to a freshly-killed banquet.

Wait. Ugh. That’s a gritty word that makes me impatient all winter long.”

Watch. A word for thinkers and worshipers and those who hope. Listen. A word to hush me up and be still because there are other voices I need to hear. Spring up north is a signal to be on the lookout. To still the soul enough to hear what God has to tell me. To enfold the unfolding flora into my heart of stone. To laugh at the squirrel’s chase, the weeds’ taunts, and to wrap myself up in my sweatshirt to step out, arms wide, heart a-warming, and thank God for this time of year.

Thanks for reading along!

Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

Jpraywalton.writing@gmail.com

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Anishinaabek, beauty, Birds, Blessings, Creation, Creator, Forest, God, Hardiness, joy, Kindred Spirits, Losing yourself in nature, Nature, Peace, Praise, Silence, Spring, The forest and the dune, The sounds of nature, The squirrel and the rabbit, The white cedar, Trees

Losing Yourself

This Side of the River

We went exploring yesterday in neighboring Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore https://www.nps.gov/slbe/index.htm, and discovered an old cedar gnarled in grace at the edge of a small lake. It has the typical cedar’s look of a tree in skirts, the deer having browsed the lower vitamin C-laden branches years ago. Underneath a lush, loamy, fragrantly pungent blanket of woodsy compost harbored what I imagine is a million little insects awaking to the spring sun’s warm invitation. The whole scene was one of peace. Calm. Rightness.

An imperial tree rooted securely beside living water.

A stunning preservation of a tree so old I could not reach my arms around it (a white cedar can live to be 800 years old). Who was here in its youth? A young Anishinaabek family collecting nuts and berries, chipping Charlevoix chert for knives and spears, and drying salmon for the winter? An 1800’s logger who somehow missed this section of forest? What birds have taken refuge in its thick gown? How many fawns have bedded down with their mothers underneath its umbrella?

Any thought of the forest and its inhabitants awakens my imagination. Just today I watched a robin pair building a nest in the Frasier fir out back, using stuffed beakfuls of bluestem grass cut back in March and laid along the split rail fence for a bird salad bar. How pleasant to see the old grasses carpeting the fluff and cheep of new bird life. Still, the robins will have to be wary of the lazy cowbirds lurking nearby. We have heard and seen the trumpeting sandhill cranes flying over, gawky and loud like they’ve had too much to drink. An evening grosbeak came to the feeder two weeks ago for a two-day layover; he has an appointment further north. Then we were thrilled to see a pair of ruby crowned kinglets snipping in and out of the white pine. Now we await the hummingbirds and orioles and rose breasted grosbeaks, our very best friends of summer here at the bluff.

The other day a heavy, pregnant doe crossed my path down the lane. She wasn’t much bothered by me, so I talked with her a few minutes. I wanted to tell her to leave my red osier dogwoods alone, and she wanted to thank me for my hospitality in planting things she finds tasty.

In the end, I live in her world, not she in mine, and I must concede the right of way for browsing when there will be little ones to feed and fatten.

The squirrel and the rabbit have signed a truce under the bird feeder, where we often spill a little seed for the ground feeders. Those two, black and gray, sleek and fluffed, poke around in the sand for breakfast, sometimes surprised to come nose to nose. Yet no fight ensues. Neither chases the other away. They bow their heads and keep on feeding. Do I really own this land? I think not. It is theirs and always was. Their descendants will long outlive my own family line.

I am headed out to plant more lettuces, to transplant several balsam fir out of the little nursery where I have been babying them, and to soak my being in the sights and sounds of forest and dune. The newest catchphrase for getting out into nature is “outervention”-a sort of psycho-babble for letting God’s creation soothe your soul, and bring peace to your anxious heart.  My prayer for you this spring is that you too can get outside, lose yourself in watching the birds and flowers and trees and creeks and lakes in a way that nudges you to remember, always, to praise their Maker.

Thanks for reading along! Sorry it has taken so long to write something for you!! 

J.A.P. Walton

Email me with comments: jpraywalton.writing@gmail.com

adventure, Affirmation, beauty, canoeing, childhood, Creation, Faithful Living, God, John Muir, Kindred Spirits, Lessons from the Wilderness, Marriage, Nature, River, Silence, Uncategorized, Water, White Water Paddling, Wilderness Paddling, wisdom

Where Words are Unnecessary

This Side of the River

I must confess that I covet the times my husband and I paddle a river alone together. Being surrounded by boats, family, friends, and visitors, we are more often than not on the water in big groups.

He is a much stronger, abler paddler than I. He can read the currents and the wind in ways that let him slither downriver like a water snake-completely at home and at one with the boat. It is a marvel to watch him, when the edges of man, boat, and river blur into lovely moments of being in nature, rather than standing over it.

We met 57 years ago as children.  Now, the canoe and the wild river are symbols of our relationship. Stable and still in deep quiet water, swift and determined in the face of life’s challenges and submerged snags. We seek out the wilderness for our own restoration as individuals and as man and wife. We travel the rivers and lakes because this is how man has traveled the deep, dark forests for centuries, taking us where no road can go, no cell phone can reach. We go quietly. Reverently. Following the world’s first paddlers past rocks and pines, scrub oaks and scarred outcroppings, shallow sandbars and towering eagles’ roosts.

Out here, life hangs on; a tree’s roots cling with enduring hope, it’s branches reaching for God. Every breeze lifts a melody. The deer snuffs and stamps. The kingfisher scolds. The milkweed suckles the Monarch.

And all the while, the waters flow down, the land bowing to its power and majesty. John Muir said, “The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing.”

My husband and I need to be where words are unnecessary that we too might glide, and where creation does all the talking and singing for us. Where there is healing at every bend.

Where the earth’s broad sighs, and the sun’s nightly farewell give the soul hue and heft, and space and weft. Like candy at a parade, the wilderness tosses us joy with remarkable abandon, and we unwrap each treat with childish wonder that our hearts, together, could know such timelessness and beauty.

It is breath. It is gift. It is life. It is marriage. And it is ours.

~J.A.P.Walton

Thanks for reading!

 

adventure, Affirmation, beauty, canoeing, Creation, Creator, Faithful Living, God, joy, Kindred Spirits, Lessons from the Wilderness, Nature, Outdoor Adventures, Peace, Rain, River, Spring, Uncategorized, Water, Wilderness Paddling, wisdom

The Kindred Spirits of Water and Life

This Side of the River

The brothers went canoeing last weekend, a spring paddle to quench a long-wintered thirst. Boats and paddles silently slip into waters roiling with snowmelt. Spring rivers are generally unpeopled, effortlessly pulsing on with energy and focus, down, ever down. How odd that their endpoint is called a mouth, opening wide in confluence with some other body of water.

As the brothers shove off, the water embraces each canoe like long-gone and dearly-missed friends, kindred spirits which understand and accept each other with the delight of contented belonging. It is a holy reunion. The brothers wave and paddle off in an unconscious identical rhythm, letting the water carry them downstream. They, too, are kindred spirits-they have been since the day of the younger one’s birth, perfectly matched in mutual respect and a shared understanding of the world and one another. It is a rare and beautiful friendship. They are silent, letting the water and the birds do the talking. What a happy picture of harmony and rightness!  And just like that, they are gone, carried by the water around a bend and on to the day’s adventure.

Water is so dynamic, ever on the move from lake to cloud to rain, from headwaters to the sea, where ocean currents bathe continental shelves. Eventually, their energies amass in swirling foment of wave and hurricane and flood.

I often wonder at the mystery and miracle of water’s global expeditionary nature. Where has it been? Where is it going? Can it be that this very water dripping from the paddle once kissed Jesus at his baptism?

Did this very water float baby Moses in a basket? Did it balk into walls so the Israelites could walk through the Red Sea? Was it one of billions of raindrops that floated the ark? Was it in the spit with which Jesus made mud to heal a blind man’s eyes? Was it in the roiling, storming waves so quickly calmed by Jesus’ rebuke?

Water, so critical to life, lives on long after we die. It passes through us like we pass through it. We are kindred spirits with it, even though we fail to care for it properly. Next time you’re out, dip your hand in the water- be it creek, pond, or lake. Feel the life in it. This too is holy reunion. Listen to its stories. Marvel at its travels. And be resolved to care for it like a dearly-loved brother.

~J.A.P. Walton