expanding on wonder

Wonder is walking out the same door, looking out the same window, walking the same path every day and seeing something new each time; or if not seeing something new, seeing something as it had never been seen before, or as if it had never been seen before.

Wonder is the deep sigh, the gasp upon spotting an eagle, the inward smile upon being serenaded by a sparrow. It is what makes one take notice of the smallest starflower, a butterfly, or a gleaming-winged unnamed insect.

Wonder is the sense of how every note in a Mozart symphony is just right, just as it should be, and how did one mere mortal conjure up the One True Voice?

Wonder defies words. To reduce a sudden sensation of wonder to a vocalized exclamation is to trivialize it. I feel pretty silly when I hear myself utter "Cool!" when I behold a soaring eagle. An eagle isn't cool. An eagle just is.

Note: I got into a groove at work today, and I wrote this out with pen on a scrap of paper, in about fifteen minutes. I haven't edited or added to it, yet. Let me know where I should go with this.

Springtime is just too much

Too much happening. Too much bursting forth into new life. Too much to be done, and not enough time in these precious days.

I actually broke down yesterday, broke down because there was so much I wanted to get done but my human self was lagging and wanting to just savor the moment. Guess which side won.

But this morning I awoke, feeling strangely disoriented. Hung over, maybe, if I had drunk more than normal, which I hadn't. I felt as if I had no compass, and the world was spinning wildly, a whirligig of birdsong, sunshine, and strong coffee. Another day of too many possibilities looming before me.

After breakfast, scrambled eggs and ham (all local- woohoo!!!) I wandered out to my garden, trying to put off the inevitable task of washing the dishes. I thought about planting the few potatoes left over from yesterday, the ones I had cut up because I didn't have enough Yukon Golds to plant them whole. Then I saw them. Actually, saw him first, flying overhead, gracefully diving and dipping in a flight I had never seen before, like a visitor from afar, giving a slight chuckle as he swooped on wings that defied gravity.

"What in the hell was THAT!" I found myself exclaiming out loud. The flight pattern, the white and black of the bird, seemed totally foreign to me. It had to be a new bird, a life-lister, something I had never seen before. I found myself wanting to believe that, that it was not just another ordinary bird, as if there is such a thing.

It turned out to be an extraordinary bird, and one I had seen before, a male Northern Harrier, quite common around here. But the way it flew was something I had never seen before, and soon I was to know why. This was no ordinary flight, but a dance. A mating dance. I saw him retun, soaring, with a female harrier, and they soared and swooped around each other like poetry. The dishes waited while I watched as they soared and called together, then landed just across the swamp. I waited and watched.

As I waited, I observed a pair of song sparrows, first calling to each other, then mating in one brief moment.

I saw the harriers several more times throughout the day, each time heralded by the high, thin "Keeeiiir! Keeeiiir!" call of the female. The pair seemed to be enjoying just soaring, flying together.

Springtime is just too much. Everything bursts forth, in flowering, mating, growing, and soon it will be overgrown in the vines of summer. But for now it is just enough, when I open my heart to the dance.

By the way, I am listening to the first toads trilling tonight, and I heard tree frogs today. I think I heard one ovenbird, and I put out the hummingbird feeder but no takers. I will know the moment they arrive, and isn't that knowledge awesome!

six years ago today, or how things came around in a circle

Six years ago I sat in the very room I am sitting in now, working the same job, but it was all about to change. I was due with my second child, and my husband had just accepted a job offer in another state, which meant once the baby was born I would never be here again. I would be leaving my job, which I had come to like; selling our house, the one we had had built for us in a rural subdivision, the only house I'd known in my married life; moving 600 miles away to a place where I had no friends or family; and being a stay at home mom to two young children.

Six years ago I wanted to sell our land. If we were moving that far away, I could not bear the thought of having a piece of land, a place I loved, but not being able to visit it as often as I wanted. It turns out I was wrong, and keeping the land is what saved us. We had talked of living here, but that seemed like such a remote possibility, one I was not sure I could make the transition to at the time.

Six years ago was my last day here at the office. I went home as usual, made dinner, went for a walk, and read bedtime stories to my two year old son. As I was rocking him, I felt the familiar tightening, the beginning of contractions. It seemed like forever before he was finally weary enough to fall asleep in his bed. I took a warm bath, but it did not comfort me; the contractions kept coming, faster and more intense. I told my husband what was going on, but not to worry yet, I was going to bed for a while, it would probably be hours before anything happened.

Then my water broke. Hours collapsed into seconds as I went into transitional labor on the way to the hospital. I don't know how I walked in, all the way to OB on the second floor. By the time we got into a room I was ready to lie on my side, nauseous and irritable. I asked for Nubain, but by the time the nurse brought it in, it was too late; I was pushing. My doctor arrived just as the baby was crowning; moments later I heard a little cry and "You have a daughter!" Nina was born at 1:30 AM, Friday the 13th, 1999, after under four hours of labor. She's always been impatient and determined.

We moved, but somehow what we were moving to seemed to elude us. We moved again; the job, the location, the finances, never seemed quite right. Three years went by in a haze as we chased what we wanted, what we had a vague idea of but didn't know how to get there. Coming back to the land was always like coming home; it was becoming the center of my universe.

Then we landed here, when Nina was three and had a one year old brother. It was as crazy and unplanned as anything that ever happened. We lived day to day, not knowing how we would get by, but somehow life was starting to feel right. Six months later, my old job opened up; I walked in the door just like I always had, and it was as if nothing had changed, nothing except me. Somewhere on that wild crazy journey, I learned what I wanted out of life.

You could say we ended up here, right back where we started, because our other plans didn't work out. I believe, however, that there was one plan all along, one we gradually came to know. The treasure we sought was not necessarily the treasure we would find.

Happy birthday, Wild Neen.

the joy of music

I was asked to play music for the church service last Sunday. I don't really have a long list of repertoire that is suitable for church; my guitar/vocal list includes songs more along the line of Greg Brown's "Lord I Have Made You A Place" so usually when I'm asked to play something I take the opportunity to learn something new to me; I'll pick a gospel tune off a bluegrass album or find an old-timey sounding hymn. For someone who practices as seldom as I have lately this is living on the edge; I have literally worked out chords and arrangements the hour before the service. This time I chose "Morning Has Broken" and worked out a Cat Stevens style arrangement for guitar minus the pretty key changes (I don't know enough chords to do that! )

While I was sitting outside on the back step practicing on Sunday morning, I heard the sound of music coming from the cook shed. A Celtic music program was on the radio (KUMD-Duluth) and Vincent had turned it up loud. Without too much prodding from me, he has taken an interest in Celtic and bluegrass music. He kept yelling to me "Mom! Come listen to this great music!" I think it was Seamus Egan on flute, doing a fantastic set of jigs and reels. We couldn't help but dance to it. Vincent brought out his Indonesian drum and started pounding out a beat. I took over, drumming and dancing. We laughed, we danced, we whooped under the tall pines. Now that is LIVING.

I need to get my son started playing an instrument, now while he has this sense of the true joy of music. And I want to be able to make music with him, and with the whole family. I have this vision of us sitting around the woodstove on a cold winter night, picking and singing, the music echoing up into the rafters.

Rainy Sunday morning

Russ and I are up a little before seven; it is raining and we are drinking coffee. The kids are in various stages of waking up, but for now there is mostly quiet. We are talking about our search for meaning, how we want to find who we are and what we were really meant to do on this earth, in this life. I don't want to go to the grave with nothing more but good intentions. We talk about our quest for the direct spiritual experience. Some people seem to find great meaning in going to church services, but that has never done it for either of us. We think what it would be like to belong to a true community of believers, who did not follow any one scripture word for word but opened ourselves to receive the spirit directly. And we would have some incredible bluegrass gospel music at every service.

We talk about how our closest spiritual experiences have been in nature, particularly on beaches. We recall one beach in Mendocino County, California, where we spent a totally unprogrammed day listening to the waves, building driftwood sculptures and using driftwood sticks to drum on the bigger logs. It seems we felt close to God then. We talk about other places, other beaches: Edisto Island in South Carolina, Park Point in Duluth. We talk about our childhood memories of beaches and wild places, Russ in the coastal lowlands of South Carolina at his grandmother's house, I at my grandpa's place on the St. John's River in Florida. I used to walk out on my grandpa's long dock and watch herons, egrets, anhingas, snakes, crabs, and other creatures at the water's edge. The best times were when we would take the boat out; we even saw manatees out in the river.

We talk about fishing, how Russ took it for granted that everyone had a mile long pier on Lake Erie to fish from as a child. He and his buddy used to go out every day and fish for perch; it was within walking distance from their houses. They didn't need an adult to drive them, and it was totally unprogrammed, not "soccer practice at 6 at the humongous complex ten miles away from home".

We talked about travel, how we long to go back to some of these places in our childhood and discover new places. Public schools make it difficult; travel must be planned during school breaks, although it can be done during the school year the administrators make you feel like you are breaking the law and disrupting your child's learning process if you want to take them out for a week or two.

Lately we have been discussing the need to preserve folk knowledge, of building techniques, cooking, canning, sewing, and knitting. I don't know how to knit; I learned to crochet as a teenager and made one afghan, but I am curious about knitting. I want to spin wool and make wool socks and sweaters. We look through the course catalog from North House Folk School in Grand Marais; here they teach everything from knitting to boat building. Perhaps I can revive some of my Scandinavian heritage through knitting.

Just some rambling thoughts on a rainy June morning.