The Heart of the People

Halfway through the morning walk, just past the Hill to the west, it started to rain. No leaves yet on the black walnuts, sycamores and red maples filling in where the corn used to be two-plus decades ago, so the branches and buds catch the drops with soft tapping sounds. In just ten yards, I’ll turn the corner into the mouth of a secondary path Patrick cut a few years back and I’ll hear the gentle downpour fading behind me until I get to the woods.

This place knows magic, every day.

There are few things more soothing than walking in intermittent spring showers, unless it’s being tucked in on the couch afterwards with the morning oats (blackberries, blueberries, maple syrup and honest-to-goodness butter that’s white, not yellow), writing about them. I’ve not been sleeping well, nerves rubbed raw with uncertainty and each hour’s headlines worse than the ones before. Didn’t I just share two weeks ago about the hope of tending to life and growing things? Where’d all that go? The garden’s coming along, as gardens do with proper love and attention, and we hope to be eating radishes in our salads soon, but the rest of it seems to have evaporated, retreated into the temporary protection of the heart’s warren, where all smart rabbits hide when the hawk’s shadow darkens and blots out the sun. I’m safe and dry for now, in the company of a few others who, like me, need a break from the onslaught of hopelessness and fear. We’ll emerge in a bit to take up the mantle of love and justice again but give us a minute to catch our breath (I have plans to clear out what’s underneath the bed later today, just to have another place to go if I need it). In the meantime, I sink into the rain as it washes away the worry. A little.

Out running errands yesterday afternoon following a flurry of final tax preparation, Patrick and I drove through a packed demonstration on the street where a Tesla dealership stands. Pro-democracy supporters were six rows deep and around the block, numbering over 500; a small group of their pro-fascist counterparts sprinkled in here and there, flashing middle fingers and shouting insults across the two-lane road that divided the crowds (physically, for a start). No violence beyond the anger in the faces of those on both sides whose fears lurked just below the surface. I noticed one calm gentleman holding his hand over his heart, nodding with his eyes closed. It was warm and breezy, flags of all sorts snapping and unfurling over the heads of everyone standing up for what they believe. I honked loud and long as we circled the block and 500+ people cheered their thanks.

I don’t ask how we got here anymore and it’s neither helpful nor therapeutic to keep asking. The more urgent question is “where are we going?” If I let fear alone answer that one, I’ll be under the bed more often. Most days, though, I’m not that short-sighted, and thank the Maker for that. The rhythm of life, for me and maybe Patrick, at least, is a back-and-forth motion between unsettled and determined, with the land wrapping us in rain-washed comfort and wisdom round the clock. The last two weeks have leaned more heavily toward the “unsettled” side of things. Morning walks, work and studio art projects distract and soften the rough edges for a few blessed moments. It’s the nights that take me down, hard sometimes, as my thoughts are left to spool unchecked and unhopeful. Sunrises have been harder to believe in lately.

Sometimes I imagine an actual conversation between me and someone whose views and convictions are completely on the other side of my own. Is such an encounter even possible? I find that generous portion of my heart that wants to really listen, not just react, and I wonder where we’d land in those pockets of silence that pepper all challenging discussions. I’d like to think I’m compassionately curious about what goes on behind the clever slogans and yard signs, in the privacy of one’s own living room. Is there any common ground among humanity anymore? Anything we can agree on and somehow move a foot (heck, a toe) forward together? It wasn’t evident on the street yesterday, far as I could see, but we didn’t stay long enough to find out. Looks like I’ll need to go back and try again. Maybe.

My late mother-in-law often shared this insightful nugget in times of trouble and doubt: “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift—that’s why it’s called ‘the present’”. At 2:30 this morning, it struck me that the current Situation pushes me to stop and live in the gift of whatever my present moment is, until the next one comes around, and the next…and the next. Now I’m four minutes into a future that looked bleak an hour ago and I’m still here, still married to the man of my dreams and still determined, if only even a little bit, to do what I can to help push that bleakness back a few yards. Is that enough? Not against the backdrop of a future built by my—and our—worst nightmares, it isn’t, but…on the bus with strangers, heading downtown to work? Ok, sure. Or thanking the man in the MAGA hat who just held the door for me at Kroger? Um, yeah. Teachable moments are surprisingly everywhere and most don’t involve a monologue to a captive audience. I rub my forehead, a little confused by the grayness of it all when my heart—and maybe the hearts of others—wants black-and-white, linear and clear assessments and solutions. Communities are messy and evolving, our fellow humans in a continuous state of growth and awakening (darn it all, on myriad different time frames and schedules, too) and yes, intransigence. Patience is required while we’re also painting slogans on the signs and banners we’ll wave in the streets. The good work of love and justice must continue.

All I know is that I want peace. And I can’t be alone in that. I’ll do what I can, as best I can, one moment to the next.

Join me.

She's Here!

Spring has arrived on our doorstep, her suitcases bulging with 70-degree days, the faint shrill of tiny peepers in the swampy depressions of the woods, steady soothing rains and the occasional thunderstorm with its strobe light lightning. Bonus this past week was a total lunar eclipse that generously shared the night sky with an applause-worthy meteor shower (those middle if the night trips to the bathroom downstairs do have their merits). Yesterday, I saw a house sparrow tugging at a piece of straw five times her length, trying to get airborne with it to build the base of her summer home. I offered to break it into smaller pieces for her but she declined. The first shoots of our beloved snowdrops and crocuses are bravely above ground, unaware that the weather-guessers are predicting a few more hard frosts before we can comfortably trudge outside barefooted and unfettered. I’m not worried. They know what they’re doing (the snowdrops, not the weather-guessers).

In a burst of “it’s almost-spring” antsy-pants-ness, I cleared the remaining dead stalks and last year’s tomato vines from the raised beds before continuing down the path to the woods, imagining the all-blue and red Pontiac potatoes we’d plant later this week along with radishes, chard, kale and spinach that will fill our salad bowls until the lettuces start sprouting. The garlic we nestled in the ground last October got the party started a couple weeks ago, along with a narrow bed dedicated entirely to my grandfather’s tulips from the Netherlands. In the far end of our overlarge and warm bathroom, we’ll start the tomatoes, cabbage, seashell cosmos, snap peas, dragon’s tongue beans and some Mexican sour gherkins that will be no bigger than my thumb when we harvest them. Oh, and bell peppers in all colors—green, yellow, red, orange and purple (do I have to go to work tomorrow?).

I am overly ready for the season of laundry on the line, hearing aids on the morning walks to catch every bird call and deer snort, turning compost by the shovelful, sitting atop the zero-turn mower for those luscious six-hour stretches of meditative grass cutting and eating sun-warmed pink bumblebee cherry tomatoes right off the vine. The weeds will bring us to our knees, we’ll give mammoth sunflowers a try in a loving nod to our sisters and brothers in Ukraine and the chickens will welcome another six layers to the flock so we can help feed our family, neighbors and coworkers. I don’t know how things work in your soul, but planting and tending to life is my best insurance against the despair and division that currently threatens to poison us once and for all. A tiny seed that will give us ground cherries in August says otherwise. My hope is in her. Unreservedly.

As if all that over-the-top unstoppable new life jubilation isn’t enough, I also got to hold my great-niece for the first time last Sunday. Eleanor arrived on Valentine’s Day just before her mother’s birthday and has no idea how much joy she brought with her on her passage from the womb into her parents’ tired and excited arms. She is wiggly and sweet, a sponge soaking up the sights and sounds around her and I think I may not see my sister Peggy for the next seven years at least. Her first grandchild has a claim on her heart and her spare time; I hold no grudges for such bliss. It’s just more life in a cute little package to keep us focused on what matters and how we can be helpful. Isn’t that what we’re here to do, after all? Tend to life, give our undivided attention to the Important Things and lend a hand (or a dozen eggs or a basket of freshly-picked salad ingredients).

When spring shows up with all of her most welcome baggage, it’s a good idea to make room wherever you can find it. She doesn’t take “no” for an answer, just keeps pushing life forward and upward and smart folks hang on for the ride.

The Medicine We Need

It was impossible to walk quietly this morning on the paths through the fields and back to the woods. A second round of freezing rain Saturday night glazed every fallen, decaying leaf and tired blade of grass for the seventeen-acre loop that begins and ends at our mud room door, making my bootsteps crunch loudly like those first fresh bites of cornflakes before the milk softens them soggy. I venture out most days with a fragile agenda that hopes for silence and wild companions to join me from a distance, and I graciously receive whatever the land gives me. I am never disappointed when I return to the house, chickens fed and watered, porch swept or salted (whatever it needs most) and walking boots drying at the register near the washing machine. Water boiling for the morning oats seals the deal on what I consider to be the best way to start the day.

Last Sunday, for the first time since we’ve been here, I veered off the main path past the sweat lodge and put my feet where the deer walk, a series of connected and well-worn tributaries through the old ironweed stalks and young sycamore saplings. I used my walking stick to push back brambles and plunged further eastward on the trails, pausing by a tree I didn’t recognize and feeling humbled by the realization that this place hadn’t known human footprints in over twenty-five years. Whatever pulled me forward—curiosity or Something Else—rewarded me with a most stunning find: a full eight-point buck skull, teeth intact and bleached perfectly white. The remaining bits of skeleton lay in a small pile a few feet away and I could only hope this magnificent relative had passed peacefully, surrendering to sleep and a smooth crossing over to the other side. I lifted the skull gently from the cold ground and carried it to the mouth of the meadow where I’d retrieve it on my way back to the house, leaving a string of unanswered questions in the dead grass.

I kept to the paths this morning and as I rounded a slight curve toward the place where a favorite young sycamore stands tall and brave, I saw the soft white glow of a four-point antler resting atop a thick plug of quack grass. It hadn’t been there on yesterday’s walk and the tiny reddish-pink spot of blood at its base was evidence enough that all kinds of things go on out there when we’re not looking. The difference a day makes, eh? I plucked it from the ground and lifted my gaze to the young woods north where three does and a twelve-point buck had been silently watching me. The largest of the does gave a warning snort and took off into the forest while the buck stood there, not moving, just…staring. I turned and showed him my shoulder blades as I moved down the path, head down and not returning his penetrating look, marveling at his utter stillness. Stand your ground took on new meaning in an instant.

The world is an especially noisy place right now and I crave silence in amounts equal to water and air. Most days the hum of traffic a mile away is light or nonexistent and I can bring my full attention to the shrill call of a bright red cardinal or laugh along with the raucous crows flying just over the woods’ canopy on their way to what sounds like a fun party. The woodpeckers are just starting to drill into the still-standing-but-dead black walnuts that line the creek banks, and last week I saw a small flock of sturdy robins bouncing about in the meadow, looking confused and sheepish, as if the memo they’d received had been some sort of prank designed to lure them back to their summer home prematurely. They soldiered on, though, pecking at the ground and slanting their heads slightly to listen for…what, worms crawling beneath the frozen top crust of soil? I left them to it and scooped out extra seed for them near the feeders dangling from hooks on the ridge.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that our souls are weary and in need of a powerful balm to calm things the heck down, if just for five blessed minutes. And I realize at the same time that to receive the gift of such a pause is one more hallmark of privilege; there are too many brothers and sisters who don’t have that luxury and must keep moving, no matter how tired they are. I know I can’t fix everything, or even some things, but I can and do walk on their behalf, taking not a single step for granted, sending the peace from the fields across the miles and countries’ borders to reach them, fingers crossed, with a small morsel of healing.

What else can I do? It’s a question I ask myself regularly and I must get comfortable with the silence that follows, waiting for the answer to arrive. There is medicine in the waiting, I know.

Rediscovery

On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the good and kind podiatrist released my left foot from its post-op boot prison and sent me on my way, no walking or other movement restrictions, along with his reassurance that I can’t make the healing bone fragments worse unless I drop something on them again. I felt like Dobby with a new pair of socks and looked like a newborn fawn wobbling its way through the unsteady challenge of making my legs work in rhythmic harmony as I stepped down gingerly from the exam table and headed for the exit. Left foot, right foot, left foot again, right foot again, and repeat.

What the toes have to do with my gait and how my hips are involved I’m still trying to figure out, but we’ll all get there, my bones and muscles and nerve endings and I, moving forward into both familiar and uncharted territories. Which means, I resumed my morning walks with a deep and wide-eyed wonder after four-plus weeks of being sidelined, reluctantly content to look out the windows and wonder what might have changed Out There. I did try one downtown-via-the-bus excursion three weeks into my recovery and couldn’t get to the bathtub fast enough (hard to do while limping) at the end of the day for a soothing eucalyptus and Epsom salt soak. My kind and understanding supervisor approved a remote work schedule until I could more easily navigate the cold concrete sidewalks from the bus stop to the office without cautiously dodging the ice and snow.

On that first reintroduction to the walking paths, it was clear our industrious moles had taken over, enjoying the absence of human bootsteps on the landscape. Hills and mounds were everywhere and frozen in mid-unearthing, creating treacherous speed bumps just the right height to catch the toe of my wellies and send me careening or stumbling. I can’t recall a time where I was more laser-focused on what I was doing, a full-body attentive experience, head on a continuous swivel and eyes raking in all the beauty I’d so longed for while weighted down on the couch with Advil nearby. “I’ve missed you so”, I’d whisper into the woods and fields every ten yards or so and she reciprocated with red flashes of winter’s brilliant cardinals (the birds, not the clerics) and a sharp north wind pushing itself gleefully across my smiling face. Week-old snow still covered the ground and held all manner of nonhuman foot and pawprints to slow me down even more. I saw coyote (more on that in a minute), fox, rabbit, possum, squirrel, raccoon, deer and a few from a relative I couldn’t identify. We’ve always known that more happens beyond our gaze than in front of it out here in the middle of somewhere, but give the wild ones five weeks of unfettered and unwitnessed freedom and some mighty powerful reclaiming goes on. I imagined parties on the paths with their own version of a DJ blaring forest music through the bare branches of all the trees framing the mossy dance floor. From the evidence on the cold ground, it looked as if a pack of coyotes took down or at least feasted on a deer on the ridge just below the sweat lodge circle. I counted three of the poor creature’s four legs scattered as far as the north field (still looking for the fourth one) and its still-meaty spine lay to the right of the short path past the stand of white pines, stark and red against the white snow (at this moment, it seemed wise to look around slowly and carefully for anyone coming back for seconds). I moved forward with a fresh respect for the hardscrabble life our untamed land-mates must endure, and a promise to not add to their troubles.

As of this writing, I’ve made four unbroken treks into the wilderness that is our land north of the house and have come back to the couch with stories, images and lessons only she can provide. The deer trails are clean and wide this time of year, with the snow making them distinct like the chalk outlines on a crime victim. There’s no escape from the reality that food is scarce, shelter from the chill winds even more so and here I am running hot water for a bath simply because I can. It’s an apples-to-oranges comparison, I know—my life of need and comfort against the furred and feathered existence of creatures whose beauty brings me to my knees pretty regularly. But it’s hard not to feel motherly and want to take them blankets and leftover cornbread, thinking I’m being helpful. If I can walk past them without startling them, maybe that can be enough.

All this from a forced hiatus from walking the land, being in close proximity to her mysteries and gifts…it was all I could do not to curl up on a large patch of frozen moss and fall asleep, hoping to be accepted as One of Them, letting them teach me their ways of survival and after-hours play. Would I give up my evening hot bath for that?

It’s tempting, my friends. Quite tempting.