A Lake Superior Morning

in Roseville

 

There was a time when inspiration leaped at me. Surrounded me, surprised and awed me. Those were Lake Superior Days. I wrote columns about them. I wrote a book about them. Then we moved.

Recently, I woke to find Lake Superior beckoning from our bedroom window in Roseville, where we now live. A band of heavy blue, spanning the horizon to the southwest with no end in sight as it had in Schroeder. The thrill was momentary of course, my rational brain denied the Lake’s presence in south central Minnesota. It was a day of miracles, nonetheless.

A walk in Central Park that afternoon, revealed tiny blue violets carpeting the ground, reminding me of my daily walks on the Superior Hiking Trail, as I followed the birth of a spring landscape from flower to flower: Bloodroot, Dutchman’s britches and marsh marigolds as they pushed their way toward the sun. In Roseville where we now live, spring perennials do not appear in such abundance, but the violets adorn the trails. Miracles too.

During that same walk, I also witnessed what I had never seen on Lake Superior, the touchdown of seven magnificent Trumpeter Swans. With a raucous babble of loud bugles and horns, their arrival shattered the silence. Eight-foot wingspans battled for space, so heavy that they scooped rather than touched the lake as they landed. The first to find balance rocketed after others, necks stretched low and long like glorious white shafts of light.

I imagine that you, like I, have experienced a sense of lightening with the gradual lifting of Covid-19 restrictions. Leaving the apartment without donning my mask feels strange. A feeling of being exposed, the air fresh around my face, my expressions no longer limited to crinkled eyes – Covid’s simulated smiles of greeting and pleasure. While others enjoy a greater sense of freedom, Bill and I find our lives more confined as his increased need for oxygen demands we limit our departures from the residence to less than two hours. Because his health is so at risk, we wear or carry masks wherever we go.

When I returned from my walk in Central Park, I came across these lovely words from Mary Oliver.

But I also say this: that light/ is an invitation to happiness/ and that happiness/ when it’s done right/ is a kind of holiness/ palpable and redemptive.

May your lives be filled with light and happiness. May holiness become a daily experience.

 

 

                                        

                                       

When Seeking the great, don't miss the small things

Beryl's Fall 2014 Newsletter

October 16, 2014

Cramer Road Maple

From mid to late September, Highway 61 from Duluth to Grand Portage churns with vehicles bearing fall color groupies rushing to catch the fall color before it peaks. This year, road repair interrupted their race northward, releasing long lines of vehicles in batches from enforced delays. They speed off like headstrong students only to encounter another enforced delay several miles up the road.

Unable to race to anything-- hampered not by traffic, but by a fractured pelvis – I was forced to get my fall color fix in smaller doses: the aspen shimmering gold through the living room window, the wild honeysuckle in its ocher and red march across our hillside, the hoard of hungry cedar waxwings devouring the lush berries on our mountain ash trees. On September 21, Bill drove me up the Cramer Road known for its flaming maple arch where I could peer into and under the forest canopy. It feels as if I am standing within a stained glass cathedral. In the past, we've tried to capture the full sweep of mountains on fire with color, but the sights we remember most clearly are views of those mountains as seen through an iridescent film of translucent leaves or the vision of a single orange maple flirting between dark green spruces. Not everyone is satisfied with such miniatures, however. On September 23, Bill encountered a photographer marching grimly along the Oberg Loop. “Isn't it glorious?” Bill enthused. “Hell, no,” the photographer grouched. “It’s past peak. A waste of my time.” Bill wondered how he could have missed the color through which he was walking.

Emily Dickinson captures, in few words, what I've been trying to say in two paragraphs and what we witnessed this morning.

I'll tell you how the sun rose -- / a ribbon at a time.

I've begun rereading Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life by Phillip Simmons, a brilliant young author who died at the age of 35 from ALS. Simmons brings warmth and even humor to these essays written as the disease drains what is left of his life. When I grouch about the things a fractured pelvis makes downright difficult if not impossible, Simmons reminds me that there is beauty to be experienced now, perhaps in this very inconvenience. I keep going back to this book, learning how Simmons came to terms with his disabilities and finding within its pages insights into how to deal with my own. In one of his final chapters, Simmons writes, “Now I find myself in late August, with the nights cool and the crickets thick in the fields. Already the first blighted leaves glow scarlet on the red maples. It’s a season of fullness and sweet longings made sweeter now by the fact that I can’t be sure I’ll see this time of the year again....”

Updates on the Sequel to the Scent of God
The Glass Calyx: a Mother’s Journey to Forgiveness is now with a trusted final reader and then off to an editor. Of course, as I wait, I’m stricken with all sorts of insecurities. Have I really told this story? Can I really tell this story? Will the reader want to read this story?

Enjoy what's left of fall and may winter prove a kinder relative this year.

Black wolves and jolly hungry otters

Beryl, are those ducks?” Bill asked. I followed his finger to where a wide v-shaped wake speeded toward our shoreline. Binoculars revealed, what we’d never before witnessed in our 15 years in this house: two  otters racing toward shore. We watched in delight as they clambered, in their wonderfully playful way,  up the rocks. Their heads would bob into view and then disappear, as if they were having difficulty mounting the rock. “Oh, please,” I thought , “don’t take off for some more easily climbed rock.” They didn't leave but finally managed to breach the rocks, dragging with them a very large fish, which they then – very  un-playfully—proceeded to devour. It didn't take long, then off they went, their V-shaped wake pointing away from our rocks, until they disappeared into the deep blue of the Lake’s body.

Bill was also the one to sight a large wolf loping toward him up our driveway as he drove down towards the house. While I've been seeing wolf scat and bear scat on our driveway, I've not spotted one in the process of leaving its mark. For that matter, I've never seen a wolf on our property, period, though others have. My son and his wife spotted a large black wolf near our unattached garage, and a neighbor spotted the “Biggest black wolf” he’d ever seen heading down our driveway. So, where was I when all these things were happening?  Obviously, in the wrong place. I did see a black bear cross our driveway in a heavy morning mist but that time Bill was with me. Perhaps I need to hang closer to him both in and out–of-doors.