Farewell to River’s Song

 

“I take to rivers the strongest.

They give me that incredible sweet feeling I once got from religion.”

-Jim Harrison from his novel, Sun Dog

 Less than a week ago we sold the beloved Yukon Outpost. Nancy and I paused, in full embrace, one last time at the riverbank. We shuddered and joined the river’s tireless concert as we added a soft encore of tears.

Leaving our log home and Yukon friends made the selling tough but leaving the river music was toughest. Its constant background noise was both comforting and provocative. Here I became acutely aware that water and wonder are always on the move.

Overlooking the river on Pulpit Hill, a short ball throw from our Outpost, I received a dose of both moving water and wonder. This bare knob of land that rises abruptly 30 feet above the Watson River is a podium for views near and far. The steep climb accelerated my heartbeat but the view almost stopped it.

Weeks ago, the evening sun gauzed by the smoke of distant wildfires, I sat atop Pulpit Hill, mesmerized by this oldest of partnerships: water and a force that moves it. Here the slope of the river is greater than it is just 200 meters upstream. There the river bends gracefully like a lazy question mark. The water accelerates out of the bend and pushes off the base of Pulpit Hill.

Whether the noisy river hurries for a couple of days to distant Bennett Lake, or evaporates into air currents where it might eventually gather into a thunderhead and shower down on our Minnesota Basecamp, it is in perpetual motion.

The river’s song is borne from gravity’s pull tugging the liquid around and over ancient rocks. Like a youngster freed from school, the water races, leaps and slides over boulders and shallow stony shoals.

Downstream the tip of a slender black spruce arcs far out over the river in a boreal ballet bend. The spruce’s root system is gnawed by the rushing current and is imperceptibly sliding into the water. Like a nervous toe testing a hot bath, the spruce apex bounces delicately in the moving water as if keeping time with the river melody. No longer does this spruce summit host white-winged crossbills to sing their sweet trilling songs. And no longer does the wayward wind strum needle music from this surrendering spruce. Though I can’t hear it, I know the branch of spruce needles comb hissing notes out of the water to add to the symphonic allegro.

To hear the river lullaby through the bedroom window all night long was a gift. But to watch the river at different angles of sunlight was a more complete sensorial offering.

At suppertime, we cranked open the window next to us, as if to invite the musician to our table. We often ate in silence hypnotized by the early evening river now lit in silver reflected sunlit.

From my table setting, I had developed the habit of repeated glances over my right shoulder. I turned often, as if I am expecting company at any moment. I would simply look upriver, past the bend where a bench of green grass is sandwiched between a phalanx of willow and the river. I didn’t want to miss the strolling bear. It seems such a perfect setting but in the years of repeated look-backs, we never saw any bruins ambling there.

Recently a bear left an impressive pile of scat along with fresh diggings for northern sweet vetch on our trail directly below Pulpit Hill, out of sight from our supper window.

With the recent warm, sunny days, I considered boldly wading out into the current, stand firmly with legs outspread, like an upside down tuning fork and directly participate in the chorale. I wondered if the tenor of the river tune might change as I slowly lifted a leg? And if I chose to lessen my tuning fork stance and become like a post, would that add timbre to the harmonies?

I wonder about the accidental arrival of all the river rocks that make up this liquid orchestra. Gravel, born from worn down rocks and rocks rendered from worn down boulders. As the river glides and dances in its youthful headwaters it will seemingly age and become greater in girth and more sluggish in its terminus at Lake Bennett.

Other residents were attracted to the hydro concert. There is a large midstream rock, just upriver, that often hosts an impatient, teetering spotted sandpiper. Some days the rock is a resting place for a red-breasted merganser taking a break from the chore of fishing for small grayling gathered in the boulder’s eddy. I’ve watched an otter pause to groom itself on this popular perch and one day a mink came swimming by it, riding the whole stretch of rapids as if it had to get somewhere in a hurry.

The greatest drama we witnessed just upstream from the boulder perch was a cow moose trying to urge its newly dropped calf across the fast current. The little one teetered on gangly legs in the chilly spring current. It paused; legs spread like a sawhorse, and bleated its discomfort. Mom moose dipped her huge snout down to the little one almost as if she were whispering urges. After ten minutes of stumbling and quivering, the moose decided to return to the birthing side of the river. Perhaps another day of figuring out terrestrial living and wading had to pass before another river crossing attempt.

Days before we pulled away, I filmed this stretch of moving water trying to capture the tireless duet of music and dance. It’s not the same as being here. Not by a long shot.

The river rushes by never, ever to return. We did not hurry away but instead reluctantly turned our back and eased away. It’s time to embrace and love other places but I will never forget this river’s song.

 

Wild Search at the Golf Course

 

 

 

Family was visiting the Yukon Outpost recently. Like all others who visit from down south in less wild grounds, they hoped to see some native wildlife.

Alas, as their ten-day visit was coming to an end, we had not had many wildlife viewings. No bears. No caribou. No moose. And no mountain goats but we are fairly certain we spotted a Dall sheep bedded on a high mountain slope. But a better sighting than seeing a grizzly bear was the unveiling of two different lynx, including one that walked across our scrappy yard.

There had been a few red squirrel stops-and-starts to watch, but they can be easily witnessed in the Lower 48. We needed to see a critter native to these parts.

It called for the sure thing, the “gimme putt,” so to speak. So we headed to the Annie Lake Golf Course, one of the local amenities in our Yukon neighborhood. After a ten-minute drive down three gravel roads, we arrived at the course. The land was cleared of spruce and lodgepole pine by a homesteader who raised cattle and pigs here. The U.S. military still had a base in Whitehorse from WWII days when the Alcan Highway (Alaska Highway) was built. Some say that golf enthusiasts in the Army first created the course here. It is the oldest of the six golf courses in the entire Yukon Territory.

Mount Lorne rises up a couple of miles behind the first tee, and a dozen or so miles beyond the first green are the familiar peaks of Red Ridge, Mount Perkins, Goat and Twin Mountains.

Ours was the first vehicle at the golf course on this morning. We parked next to the first tee off platform, a raised wooden box surfaced with tough mats made of bound rubber strips. Sort of like rugged entry mats into a building.

To play golf at Annie Lake requires no tee time. The course is not mowed. There is no staff. There is no clubhouse. However there are two outhouses. Adjacent to the first tee off is a large hand-painted plywood sign: “$5 can buy 2 bars of soap or a beer, or a head of lettuce or 18 holes of golf!” You are on your honor stuff a $5 bill into the slot of the box near the first tee off. It is obvious that very little revenue is required. I guess they do print up a new batch of scorecards every so often.

 

Once you have managed to hack your way to the first sand green you need to putt the ball into the hole. After you finish putting on the small sand green you are expected to drag the green smooth with a swath of carpet, approximately three feet wide, that is attached to an easy pulling handle.

We were not here to play the links; we were here to find critters for toddler granddaughter Eleanor to witness.

There is a hand painted sign near the first tee off that says, “Use this site at your own risk.” Nearby is another, government issued sign that gives tips on “keeping humans and bears safe.” A couple of years ago two neighbor boys were riding their dirt bikes when they found themselves being chased by a pair of grizzly bears. The boys had just come off a trail, often used for dog mushing in the winter, that spills out onto the 17th fairway. As the boys accelerated away the bears stopped and watched.

It gives new meaning to golf hazards.

Some golfers have watched moose or even woodland caribou cross the course.

The shaggy, unmowed fairways resemble the roughs the pros encounter while playing the British Open. But this is what makes for great arctic ground squirrel habitat: open ground and plenty of forage for them to eat.

The ground squirrels are abundant here and there is even a special rule for this golf course. If your golf ball rolls into a ground squirrel hole, simply drop a new ball and play it without taking a penalty stroke. For that matter the scorecard indicates there is no penalty if you lose your ball on the fairway!

This environmentally friendly golf course is a bit like an episode of “Wild Kingdom” or some other nature show. The most numerous mammal out here is the arctic ground squirrel. It is the largest of all North American ground squirrels. Local folks call them “gophers.” They resemble a big prairie dog and live in colonies. No mammal on this continent hibernates longer than an arctic ground squirrel, sometimes 7-8 months.

With Eleanor waddling across the course with us, we could hear the distant squeaks or barks of alert ground squirrels warning the world of our approach. We saw several scurrying and one stood stretched like a tent peg, perched on the second hole tee off box, tail flicking and being very vocal.

In the meantime, little Eleanor seemed to care less and was more at home in examining, tasting and throwing the rocks found at the burrow entrances.

 

Eventually we strolled back to the truck. The high-pitched alarm calls of the gophers became less frequent and who knows what was peering out of the forest flanking the course. Time for us to move on, there was more wildlife to tally elsewhere.

And maybe, just maybe, some golfers might show up by noon.

 

Untrammeled? I Don’t Think So.

 

 

Directly behind our Yukon Outpost is the terminus of a steep ridge. We call the lightly poppled prow, “Pulpit Hill.” It commands an amazing view and always provokes utterances of awe.

Immediately below the tip of the ridge is the serpentine, hissing river. Lift your gaze from the dancing water and you encounter spires of spruce trees that Yukon poet, Robert Service, christened “sentinels of silence.” For 180° in front of us their dark expansive breadth gives rise to a serrated silhouette.

Above the forest are distant mountain peaks. To the west, we enjoy picking out the summits of Goat, Twin, Red Ridge, Perkins, Needle and Grizzly. Directly behind us is the namesake for our hamlet, Mount Lorne.

While this mountainous, boreal covered and river riddled countryside wears the colors of wilderness well, much of it is only an illusion of wilderness. We could argue over definitions of wilderness but I am going to refer to the U.S. 1964 Wilderness Act definition:

A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

The Pulpit Hill image I have painted for you appears to be untrammeled. However, I purposely omitted the graveled Annie Lake Road that runs through the spruce and pine forest. Nor did I include the abandoned mining roads that stitch the sides of many of these mountains.Mining is one of the engines that drives the Yukon economy. This territory is rich in copper, lead, zinc and of course, gold. It was here that the famous gold rush of 1897-98 lured tens of thousands of men and women north to stake claims for their own treasure of gold. Only a small percentage cashed in any sort of profit.

After those early years, mining took off and it wasn’t long before the first bulldozers began easily doing the work of many horses and men. Gashing their way up the mountains, those crawling bulldozers gnawed switchback roads to prospect for minerals or access mining sites.

Miners take the richest ore first. When the mine is no longer financially profitable, it closes. Most mines up here last less than ten years. Yet the evidence of this machine trammeling lasts scores of years and likely even centuries.Old wooden timbers frame ominous mine entrances. Rusted mining detritus can still be found scattered about. While the scars of “progress” are an eyesore, the old mining roads provide recreationists an easier means to access some of the nearby mountains.

After less than a half hour drive down the Annie Lake Road, Nancy and I unload our mountain bikes, check our backpacks for rain gear, bear spray, water bottles, lunch and extra clothes for chilly summits. Then we begin the slow, heart-thumping pedal up the old mining road. We ford a creek, then get off our bikes to ascend a steep pitch littered with all sized stones and boulders.

The old dozer trail stops part way up the mountain. We leave our bikes and begin to bushwhack through thick buck brush, willow and spruce. Eventually we wend our way through small copses of alpine fir. We face a stretch of steep scree. These layers of loose, mostly flat rocks can easily slide over each other and give the hiker an unexpected, dangerous ride. We find a Dall sheep trail crossing the scree. Some of these narrow paths have been used by generations of sheep and we have learned to use them to gain elevation. Finally we reach the alpine tundra, textured in miniature flowers, boulders and exposed bedrock and we relish a 360 degree view.

As I age I have more frequent bouts of nihilism. I grumble about the onslaught of civilization on the natural world and the lack of leadership to recognize that without healthy natural systems our ideas of progress are dead. I love the idea of “untrammeled” but wonder if that is just what it is, an idea.

My grumpiness can be intolerable to Nancy and my family. One way to muzzle it, or at least lessen it, is to simply remind me that a carbon spewing truck and an old mining bulldozer have made it possible for me to gain this summit where the view and untainted air put me to my knees unlike anything else.

And to add to the conundrum, I will shoot some summit photos from an amazing small camera built with elements mined from somewhere that was once untrammeled.

A Wild Tune Up

 

Days before we left Minnesota we had our truck tuned up for the 2,500 mile trek back to the Yukon in northwest Canada. Such a trip requires a smooth running, dependable vehicle.Until we got to the Yukon, I did not realize how much of a tune-up I had needed.

It has been four years since intimately knowing this northern ground. I can barely hold in my joy at being back in the mountains tasting an air so pure that it intoxicates my senses.

My sub-arctic tune up requires moments of astonishment at the minutia and the endless. Here, I allow myself to wonder where we are in the context of being a human and to understand my relationship with the natural world. Here, in this vast wild country, I am a patriot of real, unfettered freedom. Here, I look beyond the familiar trappings of society.

Hiking up in the high alpine, I am mesmerized by grand vistas as well as the world underfoot. With patches of snow receding and days getting longer, plants are astir. I step delicately on this fragile landscape so as not to crush the season’s first party of flowers. Brilliant smudges of purple saxifrage attract my attention as well as that of the over-sized, slow flying bumblebees. Circular, mounded pink mats of moss campion seemingly call out for my attention. These stoic wee flowers tower millimeters off the ground and will get no taller. Here and there I reacquaint myself with wooly lousewort and mountain avens. These two species are taller but still measure in only inches.

My tune up requires that I gaze and wonder about tiny flowers but it also means that I embrace vigilance in a land where grizzly bears roam. Though not likely, I could become a part of the food chain. Having bears around awakens my ancient genetic code of wildness. I suspect the aliveness I feel here is due to the fact that I could have a physical encounter with a being far more powerful than me.

Given that it is early spring, I am not so concerned about bumping into a grizzly this high in the alpine. There is little food up here for the winter hungry bears. Foraging for plants is a grizzly’s primary activity at this time of year so they are more likely to be in the lower, lusher country.

Driving up on the Alaska Highway a few weeks ago, we saw more than 20 bears. All of them were feeding along the wide right-of-way, particularly where dandelions grew. Several times we saw bears stretched out, seemingly wallowing in thick patches of dandelions. Prostrate, the bruins plucked the yellow blooms and stems with their mouths.

A mile upriver from our Outpost, we found an open bench of ground grubbed by a grizzly. The torn earth resembled the workings of a drunken rototiller operator. The bear had been digging the starchy root of bear root (Hedysarum alpinum).

When I stroll through carpets of bright flowers, their tenacity to thrive in extremes combined with their beauty settles sputterings of my soul. And when I walk in bear country fear and humility play a duet in my heart.

Without the perpetual march of human progress and insatiable growth this wild landscape remains, for the time being, speckled with flowers, home to grizzly bears and awash in a sea of silence.

With the final adjustments made, I am nearing a complete tune up.

 

(Note the grizzly photo shows a bear feasting on dandelions, not bear root. He was feeding less than a mile upriver from the Outpost.)

A Reset

I’m sick of being surrounded by the sour blend of tribalism, labeling, shouts of “fake news,” and a dysfunctional political system. It’s easy to get cynical about things. I needed a “reset” and a healing dose of authenticity.

The easiest place to get a boost of genuineness is to amble in the woods or skirt a swamp. No egos, nefarious intentions or false pretensions exist there.

The other way is to go visit Karl.

With the finest, sunny day of spring upon us, it was time to get my gravel bike out for a ride. Good friend, Duane, joined me and we took off to explore the dirt roads in the township. I had a destination in mind.

After riding a few miles we turned down a quiet road shaded by tall white pine. We approached a small tidy house with some outbuildings and a neat pile of split firewood. I spotted Karl out back, raking the small patch of lawn.

Three years ago he would have been raking with his bachelor brother, Kermit, with whom he shared the house. Kermit died, and now Karl, at a young 81, lives there by himself. Karl was born here and lived his life on this site but his voice carries the melodic lilt of an old country immigrant.

Since I hadn’t seen him since last fall, I asked, “How was your winter Karl?”

He pulled his cap back and wiped his brow and said, “Oh December and almost all of January were pretty good but the last two days in January were something else.” Shaking his head, he muttered, “Why in the dark of the morning I had to use a flashlight to get a close look at the termometer to see if the mercury spilt out da bottom! It reads to forty below and I couldn’t see any mercury a’tal.” We chuckled and nodded, remembering the spell of cold that was even titled “polar vortex.”

And then Karl excitedly brought us to February news. “Man oh man, talk about snow. Could never rest from the shoveling.” He paused and then delivered an amazing piece of news. “I had to keep two grain shovels by the back door cuz one would overheat and I had to switch to the other on.”It is always refreshing for me to stop and visit with Karl. I miss Kermit as he was a perfect salt-of-the-earth sidekick who was easy to smile and often nodded rapidly in response to almost anything his brother Karl said. In recent years they put up scores of cords of firewood. No gasoline powered wood splitter for these two. They hand split everything and made an art form of stacking firewood.

They figured it took a cord of firewood to heat their small, old house every month over the winter. But they always cut far more and then would sell it.

Karl invited us in to show us some pictures. We followed him inside, swinging wide to avoid the wooden axe handle braced against the oven door to keep it from flopping open. Why get a new stove or door when a simple fix does the trick?

As we looked at the photos, my cell phone rang. I struggled to dig it out of my pocket and said to Karl, ”I’ll bet you don’t have one of these damn things.”

“Oh sure,” he said, pointing to a small folding phone partially covered by papers on the table, “It usually beds down right there.”

Karl asked, “You want to go out and see the rooster?” Duane looked fairly puzzled but we followed Karl out to his tidy small chicken house to see his pride and joy and only real pet. Stepping into the small room Karl quietly called “Come here Rooster.” A single, diminutive hen follows the rooster towards Karl.

I asked, “What’s his name?”

“I just call em Rooster.” Karl is a no-nonsense guy. “He’s a Jersey Giant. They can get up to 15 pounds you know.”

No, I didn’t know.

Karl pulled the big bird up onto his lap and grasped all the tail feathers and pulled. “You couldn’t do that with just any chicken.”

Clearly Karl and Rooster have bonded.

And why not? Karl sweeps up the rooster and hen’s room every day. Feeds and waters them at the same time every day. And believe it or not, Karl has even hung a window air conditioner in the small coop on hot summer days. No wonder the oversize rooster tolerates tail tugging.

With the day slipping towards supper we headed to our bikes. Feeling fully recalibrated towards bona fide “realness” Duane and I waved to Karl and pedaled away from this sweet estate of authenticity.

A Case of Two Killings

 

“It is my business to know what other people do not know.”

Sherlock Holmes

 

I have found evidence of two neighborhood killings. While there is a suspect, the potential murderer has not been seen. I paused in the morning chill to consider the evidence. There was no splash of blood or bits of bone; only small tufts of fur.

Then out of the foggy morning woods two specters appeared. The men were nattily dressed in woolen tweeds. The tallest of the pair, wearing a wool deerstalker hat, smoked a calabash pipe. The shorter gentleman shuffled behind the direct gait of his companion.

Ghostlike, the pair stopped at my side and fixed their gazes on the clues at hand. All I could offer was a quiet “Good Morning” and added, “My name is Tom Anderson and I live here. I came out to fetch some firewood and found . . . ”

With a quick, slight bow, the taller man interrupted my greeting with “Holmes. Sherlock Holmes.”

Before the other man could say anything Holmes knelt down to grasp a pinch of fur. “Well Watson, with the combination of gray pelage tipped in brown and its uniquely soft nature I can positively deduce that the victim is a Sylvilagus floridanus.”

Watson nodded but then asked, “Please Holmes, while I am not unfamiliar with the universal tongue of Latin, could you remind me of the common name?”

Holmes stood up straight, puffed on his robust pipe and said, “Certainly dear Watson, this most common of North American lagomorphs is known as a cottontail rabbit.”

Watson knelt over the fluffs of fur with his hand cupping his chin. “With so few clues are we sure a death was involved? Perhaps this individual was a female and was simply removing some fur to line a nest in which to deliver her litter.”

Holmes joined Watson in squatting and deciphering. “Look here Watson, this clump of hair is brown-tipped, which tells me it is dorsal pelage, from the rabbit’s back. I dare say it would be impossible for the rabbit to reach its back with its incisors to clip away soft fur for the nursery bed.”

Standing, Holmes nodded and continued his assessment. “Clearly, each of these murders was delivered by a raptorial being and given that the evidence was found in the early morning hours, I am fairly certain that the raptor is nocturnal in nature. Hence, it must be an owl.”

Excited, I shared that in our township we have resident great horned and barred owls. Two months ago I could hear a pair of great horned owls courting in the night. Barred owls are also around here but I haven’t heard them all winter.

Watson stood up and glanced with quizzical admiration at Holmes and asked, “Please dear friend, back up a moment. Raptorial? Indeed, your quick analysis has me wondering how you can make that judgment?”

Holmes puffed from his pipe, and swept his outstretched finger around the killing site. “A mammalian murderer, such as a canid, like a coyote or fox, would have had to venture very close to the garage and house. And being timid in nature and properly shy of humans and their affairs they would have to be in dire straits to move in so close to human quarters.

He paused while Watson follows the arc of the detective’s gesture.

Holmes continued, “Typically when owls make a kill they grip their prey with both taloned feet and hold it strongly until it suffocates or bleeds to death. While their prey dies, the raptor will peck at its back, thus the tufts of fur. And given your acute knowledge of anatomy Dr. Watson, you might find it fascinating, as I do, that the crushing power in the grip of a great horned owl ranges from 200 to 500 pounds per square inch.”

“Why Holmes,” Watson sputters, “that is nearly ten times the strength of the grip of an average human being!”

“Oh Watson, I am continually amazed at what the natural world can accomplish without the arrogance and selfishness of our Homo sapien tribe.”

Watson nodded in admiration and glanced at me with raised eyebrows, “Case closed!”

 

A Week of Poems

“A good poem should smell of tea

Or of raw earth and newly split firewood.”

-Olav Hauge

Discipline is a virtue that is often needed to succeed in life. My wife, Nancy, reminds me that only five minutes of guitar practice each day will result in me being able to accompany her fiddle playing for most songs. Cycling regularly, particularly doing tough intervals will give me better hill climbing endurance on a bicycle, And writing, putting the pen to the paper, stabbing keys on the keyboard, will make me a better writer.

Since it is still winter and I don’t like sore fingers from steel guitar strings and road biking remains weeks away, let’s concentrate on creative writing.

Recently a friend mailed me a box of books for me to read. One was a book he was returning but the other three were new to me.  Two of them were about wolves. But the third volume, a simple small book caught my eye. It was a tidy collection of poetry, called Leaf-Huts and Snow-Houses.

In that book I discovered a new, but long dead Norwegian poet, Olav H. Hauge. Professionally, he was a gardener and in his spare minutes he wrote hundreds of poems and left many volumes of diaries. This was a man who wrote of being separate from nature and yet unified by it.

He was a simple man of the land and spent most of his life alone near the mountains in western Norway. He was an avid reader of poetry finding the time to master German, Chinese, French, and British poetry.

As I paged through his often austere and pure poems I found myself smiling and even inspired.

Some of his poems are like small surprises and I imagined him quickly scribbling down lines with a stub of a pencil and a folded piece of paper. And in that moment I found an exercise for my writing. I decided I would write a collection of lines that I could call a poem though I would not confine my creativity to be shackled by rhyming, tempo, or meter. This would be an undamming of creativity. I set a five-minute time limit to manage a complete poem. And I made a point of not thinking about it beforehand so as to the work being more immediate. Another rule was that once time was up, I could not go back and rework any of the writing. After five mornings, always tempered with a hot cup of coffee, I found the following:

 

Poem #1

March 2, 2019

Both chimneys spew geysers of oak ghosts on this frigid morning.

Ungloved I hurry to the woodshed

pick split chunks of oak and build a stout armload.

Hurry back, up the shoveled corridor towards the house.

Grab the metal door handle.

Feel the burning pain of woefully naked fingers.

Hurry into the porch to the woodbox and loosen my load.

Finally hurry back to kitchen fire and hot mug of coffee

where my fingers wrap around it in prayer, thankful for heat.

 

Poem #2

(March 4, 2019)

This morning the clear air remains frigid.

Squeaking down the carved cavern of a path

I head to the bird feeder bearing riches of calories.

Perfectly round rabbit pellets sprinkle the path

Confetti from a winter parade?

Or releases of joy as they make their nocturnal raids on bird spillage?

Of this I am certain,

sitting unseen nearby is a smirking rabbit.

A sight never seen by us two-leggeds.

 

 Poem #3

March 5, 2019

Swings can be wonderful experiences

None less than today’s.

Below zero this morning

And a breeze that cut into my face.

And 134 degrees late this afternoon

that easily urged me to freely sweat puddles

in the cedar box that brings tropical temperatures

through the magic of infra red heat.

Ho Sauna! Hey Sauna, Sauna, Sauna Hey!

 

Poem #4

March 6, 2019

The flame on the struck match trembles, almost unsure.

Emboldened by the crumple of last week’s news

and a cluster of pine splinters,

The flame leans into its job of making us happy.

We have a few moments to hustle to the cold porch

where our old woodbox sits fat

with wedges of dried oak and cherry.

Three mute chunks are chosen for their cremation.

And in their passing they will crackle and snap

urging us to join the warm chorus.

 

Poem #5

March 7, 2019

.She is on time every day

Cautiously she slips in for her share of the spillage.

A sharp-eyed hen turkey looking for feeder seeds

to get her through this seemingly eternal winter.

The juncos, chickadees and other feathereds

pay her no heed.

All are too busy eating for a chance

at another tomorrow.

 

Poem #6

March 12, 2019

I left Basecamp for four days

for mountain and family time.

Back here in temps bending as they should

towards spring,

I shoveled paths while birds at the replenished feeder

shunned me even more after my absence.

The south breeze carries warmth and the smell of rain.

Will winter’s hold retreat

and allow me

to trudge to one of

the nearby dead oaks to make firewood?

 

Swimming in Global Waters

 

 

The push snow scoop and shovels were put away. Three hours to clean out our 420 foot driveway and I had worked up a keen sweat.  Then on the way to the house I paused, and plunged into the water.

The cold shocked me. I collected myself and floated on my back in the fluff of crystalline water and looked up into the blue sky. I thought of the erratic journey of the millions of six-pointed flakes that supported my prone body.

 Like a salmon reading the sea to return to unseen birth waters, the melting snow that dripped from my cheek into the corner of my mouth had a familiar taste. Could it be the home waters of my youth? Indeed, I could be swimming in the North Branch of the Sunrise River, the flow that passes right through my hometown where I grew into an adult.

Try as I might, I cannot taste the same flavor of the waters my buddies and I found in the swimming hole below Boo’s Hill at the outskirts of North Branch. I wonder how many of the thousands of residents now living there know the origin of the city’s title, North Branch, when they scribble it on an envelope return address?

A few strokes more and amazingly I find myself in the sacred waters of the Ganges River in India. But the taste now is hardly holy. This is the same flow where floating funeral pyres cremate thousands of human bodies. Over 30 years ago, 25,000 cadaver- eating turtles were introduced to consume any partially burned corpses. I don’t wallow and frolic in these waters but instead move on.

After those foul-tasting waters I need the ethereal blue water of melting Greenland glaciers. Sadly, it tastes like too much glacial water is in this snow. How long will it be before cities and towns along the seaboards are wading in the glacially fed oceans?

Rolling over I take a few strokes and find tiny sips of the grandest of all lakes: Superior. This is water with a boreal essence; birch, fir, spruce and pine. I taste birch bark canoes that once plied these waters paddled by Anishinaabe and later French Canadian voyageurs. Other subtle, clean flavors of lake trout, herring and whitefish emerge. But like the Ganges, the water of Superior houses the dead and I don’t dwell on the memory of the quick sinking Edmund Fitzgerald taking its crew of twenty-nine. Time to swim on.

I enter the tropical waters of the Amazon River. I can detect schools of piranha, and the faintest taste of the pink river dolphin that are disappearing. With the largest watershed in the world discharging ten times the volume of the Mississippi into the Atlantic at its mouth, I’m convinced I can taste the jungle muskiness of the jaguar that swam across the river.

I swim on; now into the waters of the Colorado River. This taste must be from far upstream, as this over-tapped river is relegated to a mere trickle when it reaches its terminus at the Gulf of California.

In 1869 this mighty river carried John Wesley Powell and his small crew through the roiling waves and surges within the towering walls of the Grand Canyon. I recognize this taste. You see, like Powell, I have been tossed and flung out of a raft in these powerful, latte-colored waters.

Later, in 1878, after Powell was named to head the U.S. Geological Survey, he stood before Congress trying to convince them that the West did not have enough water for human settlement. His plan to slow homesteading, encourage settlement close to water and eliminate irrigation through much of the arid Southwest fell on deaf ears.

Today this same water is pulled out of the river all along its 1,450 miles to quell the thirst of growing cities, vast fields of alfalfa and orchards. In this era of drought and water shortages growing demands on a limited water supply are spawning backroom discussions about diverting Great Lakes waters to the Desert Southwest where clearly alfalfa and cities shouldn’t grow. Now nearly 150 years after Powell made his argument, we are seeing how his words are sadly prophetic.

Swimming on, I need some lightheartedness. Here I feel the energy of cavorting porpoises, penguins and humpback whales. It seems to my untrained eye as if they are all engaged in play. And the sperm whale with its catch of a giant squid has welled up water that has deep tastes from five miles below the surface. What unknown species depend on this water?

I don’t do well in the huge ocean swells and I find calmer, crystalline waters. Sips deliver subtle reef flavors. Corals (not as bold in taste as they used to be), butterfly fish, groupers, angelfish and so many more give this drink a complex nature. It hardly seems possible such tranquility can morph into mighty tsunamis or give us tidal energy to turn giant turbines that power lamps, televisions, computers, heaters and on and on.

All this swimming tires me. Before climbing out of my snowy ocean, I roll over again on to my back and stare into the blue sky. All these waters have cycled through millennia. Changing from solid ice, to vapor and to liquid the amount of water on earth is finite. Every drop of blood, piss, sweat and waterfall has been here before. Each ocean wave has been calmed on a tranquil woodland pond. Every human tear has likely stormed out of thundering clouds in a downpour.

Exhaling geysers of warm breath into the cold air, I resemble a spouting of a whale. Who will taste my breathing? Who will cry tears born from my breath and what life will swim in my waters?

I rest in the cradle of snow and wish I had the perspective of looking down from thousands of miles. Our planet is like a colored jewel with a preference towards large swatches of blue. This is our water. It’s what makes life possible. And like our planet, my own body is over 50% water.

Standing in the shallows of snow, I brush the snow off me and stamp my way indoors. In minutes I am sitting by the kitchen fire to warm up.

Snow is in the forecast. I wonder what flavor stories might be pushed off the driveway?

 

The Spoken Word

 

 

Finally, it seems we have been delivered a touch of honorable Minnesota winter. The cold front has a way of eliciting whimpers and slowing things down. This is the weather that inspires Nancy and me to pull our small wooden rocking chairs closer to the kitchen woodstove.

 Nancy said, “It feels like a day off.” That pronouncement reminded me of our first date.

Over 20 Mays ago I invited Nancy to do some plant collecting with me on our family farm. Hardly a typical first date but it served me well. Rather than consider it an odd outing, she quickly accepted. Her nodding smile and willingness to head afield set into motion the potential of love.

We spent two hours collecting plants to place carefully in my plant press before we returned to the house. Lunching and chatting in the yard, we learned about each other. We both relished a day off from our work.

Suddenly I jumped to my feet, told her to wait right there and dashed into the house to pull a book from my bookshelf. Rejoining her, I reverently opened the green cloth cover bedecked with gilt and floral decorations that bore the title Days Off by Henry Van Dyke. Printed in 1907, this book like many others of Van Dyke is a visual treat.

I began to read aloud the first essay: “A day off keeps a person from becoming muscle-bound in their own task. Such a day leads us out, away from our own garden and into curious and interesting regions of this wide and various earth, of which, after all, we are citizens.”

Thus began a long tradition of Nancy and me reading aloud. Besides reading books on our own, thus far Nancy and I have read aloud over 70 books together. Some of them have promoted great discussion, such as issues of racial injustice unveiled in Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson or the core question of nonhuman consciousness brought to us by Carl Safina in his well-crafted book, Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel.

Reading the classic novel Big Sky we wondered if Pulitzer Prize author A. B. Guthrie was giving the reader a lesson in humility when his young, early 19th century Missouri River traveler, Jim Deakins, was pestered by hordes of mosquitoes around an evening campfire. Deakins grumbles, “What’s the good of a gnat anyways?” He pauses before answering his own question. “They don’t serve no purpose, unless to remind a man he ain’t such a somebody.”

Every year we reread Truman Capote’s holiday classic, A Christmas Memory, and every year we release a freshet of tears.

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is perhaps my favorite read. Oh how we guffawed when Huck swims out to a large river raft and spies on the loud boasting by the Child of Calamity and Bob. “Look at me! I’m the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam’ed by an earthquake, half-brother to cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on my mother’s side!”

Nancy and I have been provoked and inspired by Daniel Quinn’s amazing novel Ishmael. This is a book I believe should be required reading for all high school students. It is a series of philosophical dialogues between a gorilla and a man. “The world doesn’t belong to us, we belong to it. Always have, always will. We belong to the world. We belong to the community of life on this planet–it doesn’t belong to us. We got confused about that, now it’s time to set the record straight.”

When we encounter a beautifully crafted sentence we often pause, back up, and read it again. Tara Westover, in her critically acclaimed memoir, Educated, gave us several read-over sentences. Leif Enger’s novel, Peace Like a River is another well-crafted book and should be read aloud.

We were saddened last week to hear of the death of poet Mary Oliver. She is my favorite contemporary poet. I feel as if I have lost a dear friend.

Mary Oliver would not allow something so trivial as cold weather to keep her from going out, notebook in hand, to ponder things like grass stems, a feather, or the shape of a naked winter tree. And so on this day off, it is only fitting that we boot and bundle up for a short hike into the frigid woods.

Upon returning to the house I pulled one of our Mary Oliver books from the shelves. Back in our rockers and close to the warm stove I read aloud an appropriate poem with Nancy.

 

When Death Comes

When death comes 
like the hungry bear in autumn; 
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; 
when death comes 
like the measle-pox

when death comes 
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: 
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything 
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, 
and I look upon time as no more than an idea, 
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common 
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, 
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something 
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say all my life 
I was a bride married to amazement. 
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder 
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, 
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Finding a Mountain Wren

“The mountains are calling and I must go.”

-John Muir

 

I buckled my snowshoes and carefully swung the pack on to my back. The operative word, “carefully,” is used for two reasons: to care for my back and more importantly, to care for the cargo of a bundled-in-blue, one-year old granddaughter, Eleanor.

We waved goodbye to the downhill skiers and headed up a slope directly opposite the mountain ski runs. In short order, the first pitch of the climb demanded a quickened cadence of my breathing. While I tried to fall into a sustainable rhythm, Eleanor asserted her protests. Perhaps her kicks to my flanks were urges to move faster. I was grateful for the lack of baby spurs.

Easy breathing became more difficult and clearly audible. At the front edge of an exhale, I told Eleanor, “Let’ stop for a break” (puff) “to look at the new day.” (puff) I would argue she is an exceptionally bright one-year-old, but I’m sure she could not decipher my declaration. By now her flank nudges had disappeared and her vocalizations had become bubblier.

Those clear, rising and falling baby notes, like a bird’s sweet song, have given rise to my occasional affections to my “little wren.”

Back and forth we steadily switchbacked up the trail through the forest. The previous night a fresh snowfall on this Washington mountain had added another four inches to the snowpack and flocked all the trees with pure crystalline highlights. Finally we stood before a fork in the trail. Do we take the groomed left or the unbroken path to the right?

“Hey Little Wren, let’s take the road less travelled.” I stepped into the deeper snow and added, “Never ever underestimate the road less travelled.” Her reply was a soft, cooing affirmative.

Finally we were beyond switchbacks and on a gentle, more lung-friendly section of trail. In short order it was apparent that my wren was limply roosting and engaging in a most serene, soft song of slumber. A glance over my left shoulder spied her tipped head bedded in precious sleep.

We passed a small routed that sign that said we were on the Crystal Creek Trail and that I was just over two miles from the famed Pacific Crest Trail. Known as “the PCT” this path is over 2,600 miles long and runs from the Canadian border all the way to the Mexican border. For the next ten minutes I fantasized about Eleanor and I backpacking the PCT together someday.

Moving quietly under the tall tree canopy I began to quietly sing and sermonize. I praised the unbroken span of tall Douglas and Noble fir trees with their slightly shorter companions of western hemlock and yellow cedar. Here, I explained, we are in the company of royalty and saints. And here, I admitted to Eleanor, is where I am most humbled.

I carefully crossed  a narrow foot bridge over a lively stream. Tumbling like a writhing dark ribbon in the snow through the  forested mountainside, the water music anchored me for a moment.  I ached to hear the explosive, seemingly tireless song of the tiny and shy winter wren. But given that it was December in the mountains, the winter wrens and most other songbirds had migrated to warmer latitudes. On this day we heard only the occasional guttural squawks of ravens and the sharp cry of a Stellar’s jay.

Every time I hear a winter wren sing, I am awed by its ability to let loose such an exclamation all in one breath. It is not unusual for one loud vocalization to cover nearly ten seconds. How is it possible that a bird that I could easily hide inside the gentle hold of my closed fingers cast out such a long song?

I wondered about the May dawn chorus here on Crystal Creek. I imagined the bubbling notes of the tiny mountain wrens with the ethereal, flutelike background of a hermit thrush song. Both are among my very favorite bird songs and to hear them together in the same moment would be sheer bliss.

Eleanor slept through my shuffling sermon.

“No matter, little mountain wren, someday we will sit together, under a forest canopy, and let ourselves get lost in such a duet.” I smiled with the obvious classification of this newly discovered wren species, the mountain wren, with its scientific name, Troglodytes eleanorii.

For now the creek was making the only noise. The snow buffered all other sounds. Here we could not hear the ski lifts, the distant sounds of skiing laughter and whoops.

I was mesmerized by the silence. After spending some weeks in a fully urban setting, this was pure tonic.

Arrangements had been made to reconnoiter with Eleanor’s mom and dad for lunch down at the lodge.

I was less than a mile from the PCT but gaining it would mean we would be late and possibly incite a needless state of worry. Reluctantly, I let good sense prevail over explorer and I side-kicked a turn around and returned on my own trail.

With the return trip following my own tracks the going was easier and faster. I continued my walking silent meditation interspersed with snippets of sermons. And the rare, one-of-a-kind, mountain wren took it all in while sleeping, head on my shoulder, beneath a majestic cathedral of fir.

 

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