From My Nature Journal: A Walk in the Woods and a Missing Piece in Christian Discipleship

I was fortunate last week to serve as program director of a week-long retreat experience for pastors in our denomination, a retreat we call “Deeper in Christ.” Intended for our clergy in a season of discernment, in need of rest, or simply looking for quality, guided quiet time with God, we do a couple of these a year through the generosity of the Lilly Foundation, and our venue this time was one of our favorites, St. John’s University and Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. We had a great week together.

New England has nothing up on Central Minnesota this time of year, and the fall colors were spectacular, even deepening over the several days we were there. In such a setting, and with the warm and inviting weather we experienced, we urged retreatants and staff alike to get out and enjoy the sanctuary of God’s creation every opportunity they could. St. Johns’ property includes vast hardwood and coniferous forests, oak savanna, prairies, wetlands (some complete with boardwalks for up-close inquiry), and gorgeous riparian habitat around a large northwoods lake. Trails completely traverse the property, and one can walk or hike numerous routes without ever stepping foot on the same terrain twice. Wildlife abounds -- deer, squirrels, raccoons, eagles, great blue herons, and songbirds and waterfowl of many kinds. I even nearly stumbled upon a small black bear shortly after dusk one evening. I must say that I always enjoy seeing a bear on a trail, but especially when it is running away from me rather than towards me. 

Benedictine hospitality is also stellar, what with their rule of receiving guests as one would receive Christ. It is one of the things that make this location one of the top three or four retreat centers in our rotation. Even the architecture of the guesthouse takes full advantage of the natural beauty, with large picture windows, patios and terraces overlooking woods and water views. Fall color? In various coniferous greens along with the deciduous reds, yellows, oranges and golds of the hardwoods, it is truly a varied palette. And the trees? There are red and white pine, even some jack, red and sugar maple, white birch, poplar, cottonwood, red and white oak, black and blue spruce, hemlock, ironwood, balsam fir, tamarack, eastern white cedar and willow, let alone many smaller species -- but just as colorful an assortment – such as dogwood, alder and a nearly breathtaking sumac. 

One late afternoon, several of us staff went out to walk a trail together before the dinner hour. We all were smitten by beauty upon beauty as we navigated the trail up and down through its varying topography, and my dear friend and sister in Christ Debbie turns to me and says, “Rick, how is it that we appreciate so much the beautiful diversity of a forest and yet struggle so much in our culture to appreciate and see the beauty of human diversity?” Debbie has been a respected leader for many years in our denomination in the area of Christian formation, and one of her many specialties has been justice ministries as we have worked to pursue a missing piece of evangelical discipleship, that of racial righteousness and reconciliation. An African-American, she recruited me many years ago to help resource this important work among our pastors and churches, and it has been one of the most meaningful labors of my career, and Debbie one of my most beloved mentors. She continued, “I sit on the guesthouse deck or in my room and treasure the beauty of diversity displayed before my eyes, and I ask, ‘Why? Why is it so hard in the human realm?’”

What an important question. Why indeed? 

There’s no question as to whether nature thrives in diversity. It always has. Even in cultivated settings, a large rose garden of the same hue of red hardly captures the beauty of one with a variety of colors. In fact any garden with all the same flower, say, yellow lilies, scarcely captures the senses like a garden with varying textures, colors, sizes and shapes. Even a basket of mixed fruits portrays a greater attraction than a bowl of green grapes. And then I think about farming practices and what we call our economies of scale that result in vast monocultures, whether Midwestern corn or overseas palm oil plantations. These all end up requiring pesticides and fertilizing chemicals to replenish the soil with what would be produced naturally if the culture were more diverse. Now I can’t go far on this subject because I know very little about farming, but the point is made. Nature thrives in diversity.

...How is it that we appreciate so much the beautiful diversity

of a forest and yet struggle so much in our culture to 

appreciate and see the beauty of human diversity?

Yet forests and gardens and farming are one thing. Cultural diversity is completely another. The challenges of forestry and agriculture, though very important in the realm of creation care (another oft-missed piece in Christian discipleship), usually seem infinitely simpler than the racial challenges we face. And yet the reason I write this blog is because I find, again and again, that nature has very important things to teach us, and that what it teaches is confirmed over and over in the Bible. God’s word could not be clearer than it is on the beauty of the human family -- all people -- created in God’s very image. 

So it’s still early enough in the fall that there is a LOT of color out there. What are called ‘leafers’ or ‘leaf-peepers’ are out in droves, as usual, whether visiting the beauty of the northeast or northwoods, the aspen golds of Colorado, the diverse majesty of the Appalachians, or the western larch’s flaming yellows in the Northern Rockies. Do this for me: next time you’re appreciating fall color somewhere, say a prayer of appreciation for human diversity and for a personal commitment to racial reconciliation, a critically missing piece in Christian discipleship. Then act on that prayer.

Get outside.

~~ RGM, October 17, 2024

From My Nature Journal: Drama in the Woods?

Am up in the Northwoods for a short solitude retreat. There is quite a lot to think and pray through these crazy days, so, though the thought came up rather spontaneously, the decision has been a good one. Holing up at our little Upper Peninsula cabin, already closed for the winter, I’m hauling water indoors for utility, cleaning and cooking and hauling my body outdoors to use the outdoor plumbing, AKA our old ramshackle outhouse. Frankly, I’m glad the old thing is still there for such a time as this. 

Winter is still officially more than a month away, but one would hardly know it by looking outside. Yesterday brought blizzard conditions with several inches of snow and winds gusting over forty miles per hour. Temps are bottoming out overnight in the mid-teens and the lake is starting to freeze at its sheltered edges. But the little place is cozy and warm, and I feel blessed in a thousand ways. 

With the fresh snow on the ground, I took a detour from my daily outdoor walking circuit and cut into the woods on a slender four-wheeler trail, the snow of which had not been disturbed, not by humans at least, just to see what I could see. Am not here very often with new snow on the ground, and my friend Ed has told me of the delights of identifying animal tracks in fresh snow. I was not disappointed, far from it. 

I was first simply stunned by the amount of tracks there were to see, and all since the snow
stopped falling just last evening. These woods have been a busy place. There had been field mice and red squirrels. Fox tracks crisscrossed everywhere, following rabbit tracks that multiplied like, well, rabbits. Deer tracks were ubiquitous, large and small, then something I could only guess had been a porcupine. Several times I saw tracks of what might have been a small weasel or ermine. There was even a pile of bear scat in the middle of the trail as big as a dinner plate, but it must have been set down before the snow as there were no tracks nearby. Though I couldn’t be certain, it looked like a lone wolf had coursed through, but the paw prints were so blown over that it was hard to tell. The coolest track I came across was some kind of bird – Owl? Hawk? – that had hit the ground to snatch something and left its full wing imprints in the snow. Sure enough, I did a little checking and found from the right a set of rabbit tracks that met an abrupt ending, certainly that little creature’s ‘end of the trail.’ 

It was easy for me to imagine the drama that plays out right under our noses every single night and day in the woods. Just to find food amidst a harsh northern Michigan winter must be an incredible feat. But drama? I guess not. To truly call it drama would be to anthropomorphize it, because for animals, it is not drama at all, just the normal way of life. It only seems dramatic from my perspective. 

I am a steward of God’s creation, as are you, but I take joy knowing that God tends to the animals, who seem so very vulnerable to me:

Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. (Matthew 6:26). 

Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. (Luke 12:6)

So since I find myself thinking today with an animal mind, I’m remembering a poem I saved long ago, and if I’m correct, I think it’s from a book of blessings by John O’Donahue called To Bless the Space Between Us. It had this piece in it, entitled “In Praise of Animal Being.”

Nearer to the earth’s heart,

Deeper within its silence:

Animals know this world

In a way we never will.

We who are ever

Distanced and distracted

By the parade of bright

Windows thought opens:

Their seamless presence 

Is not fractured thus.

Stranded between time

Gone and time emerging,

We manage seldom

To be where we are:

Whereas they are always

Looking out from

The here and now.

May we learn to return

And rest in the beauty

Of animal being,

Learn to lean low,

Leave our locked minds,

And with freed senses

Feel the earth

Breathing within us.

May we enter

Into lightness of spirit,

And slip frequently into

The feel of the wild.

Let the clear silence

Of our animal being

Cleanse our hearts

Of corrosive words.

May we learn to walk

Upon the earth

With all their confidence

And clear-eyed stillness

So that our minds

Might be baptized

In the name of [*God’s] wind

And [*God’s] light and rain. 

~~ RGM, November 16 2020

[*The parentheses are mine. I couldn’t resist.]

Blowin' in the Wind: In the Woods with Wendell Berry

("Blowin’ in the Wind" is a regular feature on my blog consisting of an assortment of nature writings – hymns, songs, excerpts, prayers, Bible readings, poems or other things – pieces I may not have written but that inspire me or give me joy. I trust they’ll do the same for you.)

Some books take you where you want to be in the middle of a snowy winter, but can't easily make it there for the weather. Such a book to me is Wendell Berry’s A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997.

Some books take you where you want

to be in the middle of a snowy winter, but

can't easily make it there for the weather...

It is a collection of short pieces he wrote on or after Sunday walks on his Kentucky farm, and it’s filled with natural images and passions, deep environmental respect, and an ethic that reaches out and draws a person into ardent embrace of the land. One reviewer says his meditations here "...express a rich personal spirituality and affinity with the natural world," and yet I find the same holy reverence in his fiction as I do his poetry and essays; cases in point: Hannah Coulter, That Distant Land, and, one of my most favorite novels of all time, Jayber Crow.

I confess I’ve always struggled with poetry, but, interestingly, A Timbered Choir is a book that makes it easy for novices like me; yet it also invites more seasoned readers to its thoughtful woodlot saunters. I wrote once before on Berry, and will do so again, but you can find my previous blogpost featuring him by clicking this link, which will not only tell you a bit more about Berry himself but also shares another notable forest image.

The poems are without title, only separated by the year in which they were written and then numbered. Here is 1995, number 2, the complete poem. Let it take you to a place of peace and thoughtful repose.

The best reward in going to the woods

Is being lost to other people, and

Lost sometimes to myself. I'm at the end

Of no bespeaking wire to spoil my good;

I send no letter back I do not bring.

Whoever wants me now must hunt me down

Like something wild, and wild is anything

Beyond the reach of a purpose not it’s own.

Wild is anything that's not at home

In something else's place. This good white oak

Is not an orchard tree, is unbespoke,

And it can live here by it’s will alone,

Lost to all other wills but Heaven’s -- wild.

So where I most am found I'm lost to you,

Presuming friend, and only can be called

Or answered by a certain one, or two.

Of course, for me, that ‘certain one’ can only be the One I call the lover of my soul.

And here’s an excerpt from 1991, number 9.

To rest, go to the woods

Where what is made is made

Without your thought or work.

Sit down; begin the wait

For small trees to grow big,

Feeding on earth and light.

Their good result is song

The winds must bring, that trees

Must wait to sing, and sing

Longer than you can wait.

Soon you must go. The trees,

Your seniors, standing thus

Acknowledged in your eyes,

Stand as your praise and prayer.

Your rest is in this praise

Of what you cannot be

And what you cannot do.

In the midst of what seems my constant labor, I’ve often found the forest just the place of rest I need to help put all my work into perspective.

I pray you’ve enjoyed these.

~~ RGM, January 30, 2016

P.S. Each time I post to my blog, I send out an announcement of such on my Facebook page. Frequently there, I will ask my friends to consider sharing my post with others of their friends or family members whom they know may also find nature an important spiritual pathway to God. Let me place that request here for a change: do you know others, whether followers of Jesus or not, and perhaps particularly the latter, who find (or might find) these posts inspiring? Please consider sharing my site with them, www.rickmylander.com. I would treasure nothing more than that these words be shared as ongoing testimony to the creative glory of our good God. Thank you.

From My Nature Journal: Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

People often ask me if there are no more animals in the woods, as they so rarely see any. It got me to thinking…

I’ve read somewhere that the typical eastern United States ‘Hundred Mile Wood’ (by definition a ten-mile by ten-mile forest section, or a hundred square miles) contains on average 300,000 non-human mammals, believe it or not. Of that number, though, fully 220,000 are mice or smaller. Hmmm, that would be mice, bats, moles, voles, lemmings and shrews. That’s it. Twenty-two of every thirty mammals in the woods are in the mouse category, a full 73%.

Allow me a moment’s divergence. From this statistic it seems the place should at least be crawling with these furry little rascals. However, in spite of their ubiquitousness, they’re not often seen -- for reasons practical and reasons statistical. Practically, if they’re not hidden in their tree cavities or burrows, many of them are nocturnal anyway. So unless I am out at night with a flashlight, and then looking in the right place, I will not normally see them. But if I look at it statistically, a little math will keep me from having to watch where I step, as even this is not a high population in a hundred mile wood. In a place that big, that would be one mouse-type critter for every 12,672 square feet, on average, or one mouse-or-smaller creature in an area roughly 113 feet by 113 feet. So, if my average forest saunter is a thirty-inch stride, anywhere I stand in the woods I am, on average, a full twenty-three paces from a small rodent of some kind! Unless it’s up! Isn’t math fun? And their various nooks and crannies determine I’ll rarely encounter them anyway.

But to return to the original question, we’ve covered so far only 220,000 of the 300,000 mammals in the typical hundred mile forest (or 300,001 if I count myself). “Surely the rest are man eaters, more highly visible and impressive,” you may say. Well, no, not exactly. As if the above statistic is not curious enough, another 65,000 of that original figure are between the size of mice and squirrels. All we’re doing is climbing the rodent chain a bit, and we haven’t even gotten to rabbits: we’re talking chipmunks, gophers and squirrels. These diminutive downy denizens constitute another full 22% of the mammals in our faire glen, and most of them are out of my sight a long way up in the trees. So that means that 285 of every 300 mammals here (95%) are squirrels and smaller! I can begin to see why it’s not particularly common to see animals in the woods at all, unless I am (1) incredibly lucky, or (2) I am there a lot, or (3) I am patient and intentional, or (4) all three of these, likely the latter.

So, only 5% of the mammals here are larger than a squirrel, many of which appreciate the fact that there are so many delicious little morsels to choose from on the a la carte menu. This would include rodents further up the depth chart like weasels, mink, hares, rabbits, skunks, possums, muskrats, coons, porcupines, woodchucks, otter and beaver (all common, but again, not frequently seen). It will include some of the less common large rodents like badgers, martens and fishers, and maybe a wolverine (but likely not). It will include the medium to large land mammals: red and gray fox, bobcat, lynx, coyotes, deer, black bear, elk and moose. And finally, at the top of the food chain, there may be wolves (in the north) and cougars (referred to in the west as mountain lion or puma, in the south as panther or painter), though both of these are quite rare and infrequently seen. (I’ve seen wolves but not cougars.) But 15,000 of these larger mammals in our woods? How come we don’t see them all the time? Because that, too, may seem like a lot, but the math again gives perspective, like this.

There are about twenty deer per square mile (the most common large mammal), a little better on average than one per quarter-mile-square. That’s actually a pretty large area to watch, 1300 feet forward and to the side, with a lot of cover between you and them and a diffused sight line they’re trying to maintain. They hide their cautious selves so well we likely will not even see the most numerous large mammal out there. So remember, they’re trying after all not to be seen by you! By numeric contrast, there may be one cougar (if that) in the whole hundred square miles. And I’d not want to come across it anyway, thank you, at least not on the trail (though I’d be grateful if I did). Here’s a true truth, however: whatever the large mammal, deer or cougar, they do see you! Maybe by eyes, ears or nose, but they know you’re there, and they’re trying their best to keep their distance.

                                                                                                           

All this goes to show why any serious woods-watcher would do well to consider every single sighting a blessing from God, even if it’s a mouse!

And God saw everything that he had made, and,

behold, it was very good. (Genesis 1:31)

~~RGM, from an earlier journal entry, 

Adapted for my blog September 4 2015

QOTM...*: John Greenleaf Whittier

(*Quote of the Month)

It has been a lengthy cold snap here in Colorado, longer than is typical, two weeks without seeing a nice fifty-degree warmup. Family members in Chicago, Minneapolis and Seattle have seemed to suffer worse than I, however, and it seems the ones who have had it the easiest this winter, relatively speaking, are my daughter and son-in-law's family in Alaska! So it all has caused the snatch of poetry that follows to stand out strongly: 

The moon above the eastern wood

Shone at its full; the hill range stood

Transfigured in the silver flood,

Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,

Dead white, save where some sharp ravine

Took shadow, or the somber green

Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black

Against the whiteness at their back.

For such a world and such a night

Most fitting that unwarming light,

Which only seemed where’er it fell

To make the coldness visible.

                                        ~~ John Greenleaf Whittier

Now having shared this, though, I have to confess: I am very sorry to say it, but poetry does not often turn me on. And I suppose the more complicated the poetry, the more quickly I lose interest, like, perhaps maybe, within nanoseconds. I have always wanted to love poetry more. Even to sit down with so fine a volume as Wendell Berry’s A Timbered Choir always sounds more inviting than it ends up being to me. I regret this very much, as some of the most wonderful people I know read it, write it, speak it and think it. I wish this were I.

(all photography by Rick and Gail Mylander)

Consequently, quotes from poetry masters will likely not often grace these blogposts. And though I’m not remembering where I came across this excerpt from American Transcendentalist poet John Greenleaf Whittier, this brief passage has the effect of nearly translating me to the edge of a winter forest at night, almost even feeling the piercing cold of the wind through my overcoat. It’s from a piece called Snow-Bound, published in 1866, and chronicles a memory the author had of his family holed up in their warm home during a blizzard.

Not a poetry reader? Then try this: read it through twice, silently and very slowly. Then read it aloud even more slowly, pausing not at the ends of lines but at the punctuation marks. See if this kind of read-through doesn’t cause you to visually enter the scene, maybe even make you want to pull your collar up just a little bit around your neck.

The tempest comes out from its chamber, the cold from the driving winds. By the breath of God ice is given, and the broad waters become frozen. (Job 37:9-10)

~~RGM, February 5, 2014

QOTM...*: Peace

(*Quote of the Month)

                          Keep within me

               a stillness

               as deep and sweet

               as a forest's

               in mid of winter.

                               ~~Alistair MacLean, Hebridean Altars

Says the Psalmist, speaking the words of the Almighty, “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10).

In my estimation there may be nothing in nature that epitomizes stillness more than a snow-shrouded winter wood. We were able to enjoy a bit of that this week during our holiday visit with family in Minnesota. Having brought our snowshoes along in the event the snow would be deep enough to do some shoeing, we were not disappointed; it was a veritable winter wonderland. Gail and I also get to enjoy lovely forest environments blanketed in snow just several miles west of our Colorado home.

The quotation is from a 1937 collection of Celtic prayers, sayings and blessings, titled Hebridean Altars: The Spirit of an Island Race, by Scottish historian Alistair MacLean. (Interestingly, this is a different Alistair MacLean than the prolific Scottish novelist who wrote The Guns of Navarone; I had thought they were the same man!) Altars is a classic in Celtic spirituality and includes quotes the historian MacLean gathered from the Outer Hebrides, the rough islands on the northwest of Scotland facing the North Atlantic. It may be that he also gleaned some of his material from the earlier and more voluminous Carmina Gadelica of Alexander Carmichael published in 1900.

I love the quote, though. Of course, the simile’s main evocative purpose is not to reference the woods but rather the inner peace also spoken of in the Psalm 46 Bible verse. That feeling of repose or tranquility would be a welcome sense for us all to enjoy as the Christmas season winds into the New Year. May you know, and know well, the peace of God that transcends all understanding (Philippians 4:7).

~~RGM, December 27, 2013

QOTM...*: Wendell Berry

(*Quote of the Month)

…The woods has many doors going in and out. It is full of rooms opening into one another, shaped by direction and viewpoint. Many of these rooms are findable only once, from a certain direction on a certain day, in a certain light, at a certain time. They could not be returned to either now, after years, or then, after an hour. Windows open in the foliage, through which, maybe, we could see a hawk soaring or a distant treetop suddenly shaken by a gust of wind. Sometimes these rooms and vistas seem arranged for us, for our pleasure, as in a human garden. But these, of course, do not constitute the woods, which is not a garden, and is not understandable and foretellable so much as a garden is. We come sometimes into a place of such loveliness that it stops us still – and holds us – until some changing of the light seems to bless us and let us go.

(Wendell Berry)       

One of our favorite places in the world is a small bit of woods in the middle of the Ottawa National Forest in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We have spent many years going back there, and over that time have spent uncountable hours combing that bit of woods and the expansive woodland that surrounds it. We know its colors and contours, its clearings and swamps, its rocks, plants, animals and, yes, its trees. And many times, many times, we have seen the ‘rooms’ of which Wendell Berry writes. Many we remember to this day.

The woods has many doors going in and

out. It is full of rooms opening into one

another, shaped by direction and viewpoint.

Berry (b. 1934) is a farmer, essayist, novelist, environmental activist and poet who embodies what I consider the best of an ecologist’s heart: a heart for God, a heart for people and a heart for God’s creation. Though many are acquainted with his writing through either his poetry or his incisive commentary on sustainable agriculture and the uses of appropriate technologies, it is his fiction that first captured my attention when daughter Sarah gave me his Jayber Crow, in which the above quote is found. Several of his novels and collections of short stories chronicle the intertwined lives of the people of the imaginary Port William, Kentucky; but the reader quickly comes to see Berry’s simple yet profound convictions as an environmentalist playing out in the character development and story lines of his fiction. Pick up a copy of his That Distant Land at your public library, and you will be introduced to a host of his characters over a century of time, many of whom are written of or referred to in his novels. This is no Father Tim of Jan Karon’s Mitford Series. These are characters in which you, like me, will find yourself, undergoing the normal challenges and pleasures of life -- strong characters, purposeful characters – yet in the midst of profound change and cultural shift.

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But back to the woods. We’re heading up that way again soon, you know, and are looking forward to going in and out of its rooms, enjoying the changing perspectives that sun, angle and atmosphere will present, receiving the blessing it always has to offer, and then moving along.

~~RGM, August 22, 2013