Category: Winter Water Sports

beauty, Blessings, Creation, Creator, Faithful Living, Hope, joy, Lessons from the Wilderness, Outervention, Pilgrimage, Prayer, Silence, Sounds, The sounds of nature, The still small voice of God, When God speaks, Winter Water Sports

A Rare and Precious Nothing

This Side of the River

It is unusually still at the bluff this morning, as if the trees and waves are playing Red Light-Green Light, stuck in a frozen, statuesque posture. We had a similar day last week after a powdery snow. Walking up the wooded section of dune through the stilled maple , oak and hemlock, we stopped to listen. And other than the blood pulsing past my ears, there was complete silence. No cars on the distant highway. Not a whisper of breeze in the tree boughs. No timid chips from a bird. No jet skis ripping up the day on the water below. 

A rare and precious nothing.

Our regular lives are noisy. So many things clamor and clang for our attention that we thrust our earbuds in deep in a futile attempt to choose our own noise. We are so accustomed to the noise that real silence is often uncomfortable. And yet, Scripture tells us that God often speaks into silence. If you can believe that, then a life without silence might be one that thrusts God aside, forgoing his presence and wisdom.

Out in the silent snowy forest, I began to think about the times nature is silent. The noise is there, but it is tiny, inaudible to us. I think of mama mouse in her cozy nest of mewing pups. Of the mole busily tunneling beneath my feet. The turtle suspended in the pond with just its nostrils showing. The pinecone and milkweed pod splitting open to disperse seed. The stars making their way across the night sky. The blink of eyes watching silently for a meal; the bobcat and the sharp shinned hawk, the owl and the snake-each patiently, moodily, warily silent.

All of nature speaks without words in a lyrical, melodic fashion with an unuttered language our plodding words cannot describe or comprehend. The rose, for example, nods silently; its sound is beauty and fragrance and silkiness. We know that the trees communicate, yet we hear nothing.

It’s said silence is golden. So why is it so hard for us to be silent? Why must our own thoughts and endless chatter fill the void? In my teaching I was fond of throwing out questions that required thought, massage, analysis, and synthesis. It took a while for students to learn that those would end up being the same questions on an exam. Students were so busy sounding out answers, waving their hands in the air to put voice to the answer, that they never thought to write down the question in their notes. And I refrained from rewarding the “bunny rabbit” responders, because they wanted to answer without the harder work of deep thought in silent rumination. I would ask them to think a little longer. To sit in the quiet with a quieted mind. To marinate on the question. That was where the learning would take place.

We can all learn from the quiet. The questions are where to find it and how to patiently sit in it? How to still the voices in our heads? How grasp the truth that God speaks into the silence?

My prayer for you today is to find a quiet spot where you can stop talking long enough to listen to the silence, blanketed in the comfort of a rare and precious nothing, for that is where you will learn the most about yourself, your world, and God.

Thanks you so very much for reading. My goal is to be hospitable to my readers, giving them ideas and words that delight and challenge. If you want, you can click on the blue FOLLOW button to receive blog posts in your email. Feel free to drop me a note at the email below.

~J.A.P. Walton, PhD

jpraywalton.writing@gmail.com

death, Faithful Living, Hope, iceboating, Lessons from the Wilderness, Outdoor Adventures, Uncategorized, Winter, Winter Water Sports

At the Mercy of…

This Side of the River

It is finally iceboating season in Michigan! Lake Michigan acts as a huge heat sink, and when its waters are warmer than the air, the significant evaporation results in lake effect snow showers for days on end. But, once the lake begins to cool off, the snow lets up so that the inland lakes can freeze slick and relatively snow-free. Our whole family gets impatient for the good ice to form!

My brother got his boat out last weekend. It takes some work, sharpening the runners (as you do your ice skates), checking the sail for holes (the mice can eat like horses), making sure the stays and halyard and sheet ropes are sound, and, of course, gauging the depth of the ice and the force of the wind.

As in all outdoor adventure, you put yourself at the mercy of prevailing elements when iceboating. That means you must withstand marrow-freezing cold, fickle winds, imperfections in the ice, and other ice boaters. Of course, you do your best to fend off the threats with the right equipment and sound judgment. A pot of chili on day-long simmer doesn’t hurt either.

I have been thinking a lot this year about “being at the mercy of…”. We typically think of mercy as something we extend to others-actions like charity, compassion, and nonjudgmental service. I wonder, though, if mercy isn’t so much bigger, and why we often fail to see ourselves in need of it; we are needy recipients, yet prefer to believe we are grandly altruistic in our smug self-sufficiency. God knows better. There is nothing we can do or buy to protect ourselves. In the end, we are incapable of saving ourselves because we can’t be enough-not good enough, or smart enough, or rich enough, nor can we work hard enough to avoid the ice cold truth that we will die.

Think about a God who would still love you despite all your imperfections and sins. One who would make a way for you to be fully prepared in life to accept and even welcome death, and to live forever with Him. That is mercy as deep and solid as good ice. All you have to do is believe it.

Happy sailing…into the arms of a savior!

~J.A.P. Walton

Please LIKE and SHARE as you are able. These short pieces are to become part of a bigger book, and I welcome your feedback in the COMMENT section.

canoeing, Lessons from the Wilderness, Outdoor Adventures, Wilderness Paddling, Winter, Winter Paddling, Winter Water Sports

The Ice Shelf

This Side of the River

The question always at the back of my mind: is the reward worth the risk?

I really like to canoe. My husband Mark and his brother Hugh rabidly LOVE it, so much so that a winter paddle is never far from their minds. I guess it isn’t fair to expect a real waterman to stay grounded for long. One year, the three of us decided to paddle the lower end of a local river that winds lazily out to Lake Michigan through the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore. In the summer, the canoes and tubes are five across as tipsy tourists float or flail their paddles with an astounding lack of expertise. No matter if they tip over, the water is warm, shallow, and not too swift.

Winter is another matter altogether. Winter paddling takes planning, the right clothes, and a spare set of dry clothes in a dry bag (a hefty water proof sack made for water sports). The winter we went down this particular river had been exceptionally cold, and the ice mantle butted ten feet out to create a narrow middle channel where the water was corralled into a swift current. We walked up and down the bank looking for a good place to “put in,” a canoeman’s “ism” for getting an awkward, land-lubbed craft gracefully (and dryly) afloat. But, with so much unstable ice, there were no good choices.

The fellows determined that if we started on a high point, we could “sled” the canoes down the hill, over the ice, and into the downstream swifts. I wasn’t so sure-it seemed risky to me. What’s more, with Hugh’s cancer always in the back of my mind, I didn’t think an icy dunking would be good for his already vulnerable health. In the end, Hugh went downstream with the lifesaving throw bag to toss us if we capsized, and my husband and I geared up our “sled.” I am always in the bow, so I got in on my knees to stay low, while my husband grabbed the gunnels and did two practice push-pulls like a bobsledder. On the third push he ran alongside the canoe, then jumped in for the ride, and we were launched. No turning back now!

We hit that ice, slid straight across it, and nosed broadside into the current with an exhilarated whoop. Before I could worry about being perpendicular to the current with the opposite ice shelf looming ahead, Mark had expertly turned the canoe downstream.   Hugh soon followed.

The landscape along a river is as robustly alive in winter as other seasons, but it takes a vigilant and patient eye to parse out the subtle differences in the tinted palette of grays, blacks, and browns. The trees stand dormant, a stark relief against their snowy backdrop. The mountain ash berries pixilate the landscape with wild red abandon, and the snow is clumped in the wild river grasses like so many wads of cotton.

It is exceptionally rare to encounter other people. But the deer, mice, squirrels, snowy owl, muskrats, minks, bald eagles, hawks, titmice, and the drably draped goldfinches are all out paying no mind to the cold. Energy along the singing river lifts life up and out in a muted chorus of vigorous yet hushed harmony. People miss it entirely when they hibernate inside all winter. Being outdoors in the winter helps us become so alive, so attuned to the natural environment, so energized by spending all our energy, that the answer is, always yes, the reward is worth the risk.

Get up! Get moving! Don’t duck the winter, dive into it!

Please click on the FOLLOW button to be sent future posts.  And SHARE liberally with friends!

~J.A.P. Walton