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: When I Get to Heaven

When I get to heaven, tell me there will still be woods,

          Where a sauntered pace

          May be had without needing to keep

          One’s bearings of time or space,

          Forests with birds and creatures

          And bits of splendor that take breath away:

          Spring Beauties and Forget-Me-Nots,

          Summer’s ferns and fungus,

          Autumn leaves that crackle afoot

          Belying midwinter’s absurd stillness;

          And, yes, one with whom to walk who enjoys it as I, or as You.

I do love the woods.

When I get to heaven, tell me there will still be canoes,

          That skim cold, pristine lakes,

          Leaving wakes

          That last not long,

          By quiet stroke and firm hand

          Easing gently over mirror calm,

          Or bobbing swell and wave

          Into bright, hidden bays

          Where eagles nest and loons dive,

          Or sliding into dark, night water

          Silver by moonshine all the way to rocky shore.

I do love canoes.

When I get to heaven, tell me there will still be seasons,

          When color palates fly -- 

          January’s blazing whites,

          Lupine’s spring, a rainbow’s July,

          Aspen’s or maple’s fall,

          Living greens, waning yellows, dying reds,

          Late summer suns whose early setting

          Have always made me sad

          These things have to end,

          Like winter hearth-fires that blaze like those suns

          But then look so cold when the morning comes.

I do love seasons.

And if there be foolishness in me

For laying such earthly hope upon heaven’s landscape,

Have mercy on me, Lord:

I love this world you made.

It’s what I know.

(Endnote: I saw the rough idea for this poem many years ago, anonymously cited, so it’s not completely original to me. But at that time, I added significantly to it and adapted it so extensively that I cannot now recall what was original and what is mine. To this day, though, I am still unable to come up with a source, so if any part of it sounds familiar to you and you can set me straight, I’d appreciate you letting me know so I may give credit appropriately. Thanks.)

~~ RGM, October 31 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...*: 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