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: Psalms and Calms in the Storm

("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.)

Give to the Lord, you creatures of heaven,

give to the Lord all glory and power.

Give to the Lord a glorious name;

bow down to the Lord in holy splendor.

The voice of the Lord sounds over the oceans –

crashing thunder above the deep seas.

The voice of the Lord is power;

the voice of the Lord is splendor.

The voice of the Lord splits the cedars;

God splinters the cedars of Lebanon.

God makes Lebanon skip like a calf,

Mount Hermon skip like a wild young ox.

Slashing the sky with lightning-swords,

the Lord’s voice makes the desert writhe;

The desert of Kadesh quakes.

In terror, the deer flee God’s thunder,

that snaps the limbs from the trees;

in the temple, God’s glory appears.

The throne of the Lord is above sky and sea;

the Lord will rule forever.

Lord, give strength to your people;

Lord, bless your people with peace.

Psalm 29, The Psalms: A Translation for Prayer and Worship,

by Gary Chamberlain, The Upper Room

With no intent to make an illusion to the image of my “Blowin’ in the Wind” feature title, out of almost nowhere a heck of a storm just came through this afternoon. For two hours, through a dead calm, I could hear intense thunder growling from a distance, then the rain and wind pounced on us like a cat. After fifteen minutes and a half inch of rain, it was gone and quiet again.

I don’t know if storms are burlier here in this part of the Northwoods than other places where we’ve lived, or if the 100-foot hemlocks that surround our little cabin in the woods just make it seem so, dancing madly in the tempest as they do. During the mayhem I love to sit on the three-season porch and watch, almost makes me feel like Captain Dan lashed to the mast in Forrest Gump. Actually, I confess it also allows me to quickly get pans under the roof leaks that spring up out there during squalls when the wind direction is just right, leaks I can never seem to locate up top to repair. Of course, if from the roof I climbed one of our ‘cedars of Lebanon’ and weathered the gale from that vantage point, I‘d not only be one up on Captain Dan, but I’d do a nature trick John Muir pulled off from a Sequoia in the high Sierras…

Add some hail to the mix of these storms and it’s just crazy -- the trees give some shelter to the cabin, but the lake looks like it’s shaking right out of its basin, little six to twelve inch splash pillars skipping above it as far as the eye can see, which usually isn’t far in the downpour.

Perhaps peace in the storm is the image

the psalmist intended all along…

But back to Psalm 29, its metaphors and similes arrest me each time I read them. They come from the heart of someone who knew both the outdoors and his God. Wild. Unpredictable. Powerful. But Glorious! As awesome in bedlam as serenity. And that’s one of the things I love most about the Psalm, the way it ends. We’ve just been given a birds-eye view (at least a bird in a tree) of a stormy uproar showcasing the strength of God, and the psalmist is bold enough to ask not only that God would also give such strength to his people, but that God would additionally bless them with peace, a grace seemingly opposite that presented in the previous words.

Perhaps peace in the storm is the image he intended all along.

Jesus awoke and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” The wind ceased, and there was a great calm. (Mark 4:39)

~~ RGM, July 9, 2016

P.S. I wrote a couple years ago on storms and their effect in producing strength and resilience in trees, and some surprised scientists who had made some hasty assumptions about weather’s influence on plants. A lesson for a different day, you might want to check it out. Click here to be taken back to that July 2014 post.

POTM...*: The Season of the Loon, Part 2

(*Photo of the Month)

Among the varied beauties of the Northwoods, including the amazing array of its flora and its fauna, and the multiplicity of its landforms, there is nothing that seems to draw out more enthusiasm by the locals than loon watching. People here are passionate about ‘their’ loons, and, here on Beatons Lake in the western U.P., Gail and I often find ourselves fervent participants in that passion.

To be sure, we count ourselves uniquely blessed that our lake association has chosen to place one of its two nest platforms in our bay, which graces us with perpetual loon activity early in the season, and then more frequent than normal activity after the typical late June or early July hatch. It is a rare year when at least one chick, if not two, isn’t successfully fledged here before our very eyes. (For an earlier blog entry in which I write more extensively about loons, click here; this entry will concentrate on some other things.)

I’ve been keeping track of our lake’s loon success for twenty years now, and we’ve had far greater fledging success since the platforms were placed than prior. What’s a nest platform? In a completely natural setting, a loon will nest onshore in as safe a place it can find; but the eggs in onshore nests are subject to radical predation by raccoons, snakes, skunks and weasels if the parent can be driven off, and the birds themselves are preyed upon by wolves, bears, coyotes and bobcats. A nest platform floats offshore, allowing much greater likelihood that eggs will be successfully hatched. There are still dangers to chicks after hatching both from above and below the water’s surface (mainly eagles and snapping turtles), but fledging success is vastly benefited by offshore nesting. Consider: in the five years I know of before the first platform was placed here in our bay, we had two successful fledgings in five seasons on our lake (average -- .4/year). In the six years that the first platform nest was placed here in our bay, eight chicks were fledged (average – 1.33/year, more than triple the success). And in the nine years that we’ve had the two platforms operative, twenty chicks have fledged (average – 2.22/year, nearly six times the success), including one season (2007) where the two nests produced three fledged loons, and two seasons (2010 and 2013) where they produced four! Nine of these twenty came from our platform and eight from the other, with three chicks successfully hatched and fledged that were born onshore (2009, somewhere on the lake, and 2014 here in our bay); in both of these onshore hatchings, the parents had been driven off after laying their first clutch.

"Consider the birds,"

Jesus said...

This year, it looks like there will be only two fledged between the two nests, so it won’t meet our nine-year average. Black flies drove both nesting pairs off both nests in late May or early June, but the pairs persisted and each laid a second clutch successfully. I am told that if a first clutch of eggs is two, and the bird must abandon them, the second clutch can only be one; the obverse holds as well – if the first clutch is one and the parents are driven off, the second clutch may be two. On our nest, one egg was first laid, the pair driven off, and then two eggs were laid on the second attempt; only one of these hatched successfully, though. (Our lake’s ‘Loon Ranger’ actually recovered the partially hatched egg after the nesting pair had left the nest for the season, displaying it at our association meeting in August.) The remaining juvenile seems healthy after these two months. On our lake’s other nest island, one egg was first laid and the nest abandoned, then two eggs laid on the second attempt, with two chicks successfully hatched, but within days one went missing to predation; the remaining juvenile also seems healthy and ready for the cold to begin. Both will have to be off the lake by freeze up in late November or December, the parents long gone before that. While it’s on my mind, a quick shout out of thanks to our Loon Ranger, B, for all her good work!

Finally, about the photos... Gail and I can get some pretty cool shots right from the comfort of one of our dock chairs. They come in awfully close when they make their fishing circuit around the bay, and it’s a more rare but very real treat to see them swimming like torpedoes under the dock, turning, as they say, on a dime, as they change directions in pursuit of a meal. If they’re floating or fishing more lazily in the middle of the bay, we can sometimes even call them in by standing on the end of the dock and jiggling our hands at arm’s length. They’re actually curious creatures and will check out a curiosity; of course, it probably also gives our neighbors something to talk about when they see us performing so. The photos here include close-ups of a lovely mature bird and of a three-month old juvenile with indistinct markings, a curious one near the dock, a parent with a chick pair in sun’s shimmer, a pass-by while floating in the canoe, and our whirligig imposter. (No, it hasn't snowed up here yet this year, though we did 

have our first frost warnings last night...)

“Consider the birds,” Jesus said (Matthew 6:26).

~~ RGM, September 11, 2015

QOTM...*: Robert Franklin Leslie

(*Quote of the Month)

It seems to me that only leaves possess

the secret of a beautiful death.

                                                           

                           ~~Robert Franklin Leslie

Photos taken Sept 28-Oct. 1

Sometimes the simplest little quotes jump right off a page and into my heart. Such is the case with this one. I was cruising along in nature writer Robert Franklin Leslie’s simple little The Bears and I, and was halted by this lovely (and mostly true) reflection. Perhaps it strikes me all the more because I happen to be surrounded as I write by nature’s fall color frenzy going on around me here in the northwoods of Michigan. Maple’s oranges and reds blaze around me, along with oak’s scarlets and russets, and aspen’s, tamarack’s and birch’s golds, all interspersed with the various evergreens of the conifers. I walk the woods these days spellbound by its almost aching beauty, almost asking God with each step what possessed him to even think of creating this astounding display.

So the quote grabs me, “…only leaves possess the secret of a beautiful death.” Yet I must admit it has not been completely true in my experience. As a pastor for many years, I have been able to observe many deaths up close and personal, and some of them have been beautiful as well.

I think of a couple old saints who died during my pastoral tenure in Minnesota. One was Joe, who lived into his upper nineties, a gentle and thoughtful soul who always had candy in his pockets for kids on Sunday mornings. I once asked him what he attributed his longevity to, and he quipped just as fast as a blink, “Well, I like people, and I never eat cold potato salad.” Alrighty then, thought I… I’ll have to remember that one! His death was beautiful, as was the life celebration that followed by those who loved him.

Another beautiful death was Hilda’s. Single and childless all her life, she lived as a constant blessing to others around her, often giving the proverbial shirt off her back. She was fairly poor and lived in a mobile home on the east side, but when I heard the story that, before she gave her church offerings, she regularly laundered and crisply starched and pressed her greenbacks, just to give of her best to her Master, I became a lifelong member of her fanclub. She is one of the first I want to see when I get to heaven. Like Joe, her death was also beautiful – she was ready to go and, a smile on her face, ready to let go.

My own mother’s was another. Wilma also had this way of living a full life in the midst of great simplicity. All of us in the family had this sense of the blessing and goodness not only of her life, but even of the last hard years, and even the manner of her passing. When some of us met with her pastor the day following her death, the pastor’s first words to me were, “I am so sorry.” And I was surprised to find myself saying that it occurred to me that, except for the fact that we would miss Mom greatly, most of us were finding very little in this circumstance to be sorry about: Mom was at peace with God, at peace with the world, and beloved of absolutely everyone who knew her. We all should be so blessed when it is time for each of us to lay it all down.

The arresting beauty of an autumn forest, and the joy it can bring, seems kin to the joy that is expressed in lives and deaths like that of Joe, Hilda and Wilma. Yes, of course, there have been many deaths I have walked alongside that have not been so beautiful, and I suppose that brings me back to my quote of the month. Some deaths can be beautiful, some not. But here in the woods today? Today, everywhere I look I see only loveliness. Talk about ‘finishing well,’ or going out ‘in a blaze of 

                                                     glory!’ Maybe, overall, leaves DO possess the secret after all.

And maybe, just maybe, God whispers through them to us the very same secret, that there can be beauty, even hope, in such a thing as death.

~~RGM, September 29, 2014