Category: Losing yourself in nature

beauty, Being resilient, Blessings, Campfire's glow, Campfires, Creation, Darkness, Faithful Living, Having hope about the future, how nature heals, joy, Lessons from the Wilderness, Light, Losing yourself in nature, Outervention, Sitting around the campfire, sunrise, the vicissitudes of life, Watching the campfire, When the sunrise lights the clouds

The Light from Under

This Side of the River

The sun rose above a cold and hushed forest this morning, making the high clouds blush with anticipation. To the east, the trees’ backdrop was all crimson and fire, while to the west the underbelly of the sky was lit in rosy pastels. A gull floated high above the bluff shaded as pink as a flamingo. The browsing doe’s brown winter coat was tinged a dusky magenta.

I have always enjoyed the effects of things being lit up from below. This is nowhere more observable than around a campfire on a very dark night. As people lean forward to warm their hands, their faces take on a softened shimmer, mesmerized by the flick and spark of the burning wood. We are used to turning our faces toward the sun to momentarily appreciate its balm and warmth, but a campfire’s burning coals smooth out wrinkles of anxiety, bathing the heart in calming thought like

a reflection within a reflection. 

Light from above leaves sharp shadows. Light from below melds with shadow to soften the outlines. Life is like that sometimes. An unanticipated threat looms suddenly, glaringly lit by a fearful realization: an unexpected bill we cannot pay, a pink slip at work, an unwelcome, gut-wrenching diagnosis. The light is coldly enlightening-there is trouble afoot, and the shadows are long and dark. 

Making a nighttime fire in the fireplace or the backyard fire pit brings a different perspective. The light softly cracks the darkness, the flames invite us to quell our panic, to murmur with the nattering coals into the warm light’s crevices – not to forget our troubles, but to see them in a light less stark. Illumined, yes. But without the anxious shadows, warming our souls in the fire’s rhythms of flare and ember. I’ve never seen a more beautiful face than one watching a campfire, meditatively strengthening with faith and resolve to face the shadows and overcome them.

________

Thanks for the time you take to read my wandering mind. After seeing today’s magnificent sunrise, I decided to try a writing exercise on why I adore the softening effects of under-lighting. It isn’t easy to describe!

J.A.P.Walton, Ph.D.

Feel free to comment here or send an email: jpraywalton.writing@gmail.com

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Being LIFTED

This Side of the River

We find ourselves in the French Alps this month for our daughter’s much-anticipated wedding. The views from our rented condo are spectacular in this little ski resort town that reminds me of my childhood days spent at Rocky Mountain National Park. Rugged, snow-capped peaks at every turn, the serenade of the swift mountain streams, the hikers, the bikers, the dog-walkers and kayakers. All of it a delightful community focused on the outdoors of God’s grand and hospitable design.

These Alps have known their battles. Forged by tectonic plate uplift of immeasurable force, it is an area of high mountain tarns, and long valley cow-pastures. Here, during WWII, the Germans and Italians raced into France to lay hold of the lush farms and productive mines. 

When I was here two years ago, our daughter took unwell following a series of seemingly unrelated health challenges. Thank God for the persistence of the French doctors who found previously unknown factors that, perhaps compounded by a Covid vaccine, suddenly and decisively and dramaticallycoalesced into a life-threatening situation. Our daughter was laid low overnight. But now, she is again strong, and fit, and glowing like a bride-to-be should. We are so very thankful.

What better place than these mountains to be knocked low, and then given the grace of time and medicine to heal, stealing oneself against the tectonic forces in life that unexpectedly smack one down, but then turn to LIFT back up? I am reminded, here, of Psalm 121: “I lift my eyes up to the mountains. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD who made heaven and earth…The LORD who will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore… He will not let your foot be moved, and he who keeps you will not slumber.” (Order mine).

I have been giving much thought of late to the grace inherent inthe word LIFT. Such a hopeful word, is it not?

We lift another’s spirits. We lift them in prayer. We lift the downhearted and weary when we step in to help. A smile. A hand. A kind word. Such a LIFT to others.

We are here to celebrate so many good things. May you too, in times of deep challenge and worry and stress and fear be able to look up, and know that help is there. That you WILL BE LIFTED when you most desperately need it. That a celebration awaits.

Thanks for reading along. Please click on the FOLLOW button the receive regular posts in the email.

J.A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

Jpraywalton.writing@gmail.com

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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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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