From My Nature Journal: Making Peace with Western Washington Weather While On the Road to Rhodies

Okay, it’s time. I’ve been here long enough and I’m done bellyaching about Western Washington weather. And though it’s stretching me, I may even be ready to begin making peace with it.

No, Colorado, that doesn’t mean we don’t still miss you desperately, and the utopian weather we’d relished all our years with you. Your year-round nearly predictable sunshine was a hiker’s delight, and this Vitamin D deprived region could use a bit more of it. Oh, weather is predictable here from October to May, too, if you want to call ‘rain and within six degrees either side of forty-two’ predictable. It’s just that it’s about time I stopped moanin’ and groanin’ about how much we dislike the rain here. They said it would take a year for us to get accustomed to it. They lied. We’re still not used to it. That being confirmed, it’ll take an act of the will to make that happen.

And so, as an expression of that will and a symbol of my new resolve, Gail and I went to REI a few days ago and I outfitted myself with some serious Gore-Tex raingear, inaugurating it yesterday with relative success. No, I’ve never paid that much even for a Minnesota-worthy winter parka, or maybe even the three winter jackets put together that I’ve owned in my entire adult life. Still, though I can’t yet say that I LIKE hiking in the rain, at least I’ve made a start of it.

But in addition to my brand-spanking-new orange raincoat, there’s another thing that is motivating me these days: we’re coming up on rhody season here in the Pacific Northwest. Yup, the Pacific Rhododendron -- the Washington state flower -- is about to make its annual showing. Our little acre here in the woods outside of Coupeville, in fact ALL the wooded areas in the region, are nearly covered with the dazzling things, and we can hardly wait to see them in bloom, yes, even while we hike in the rain. In fact, it’s going to take a hike in the rain to see them, rhodies, among the loveliest of state flowers.

Rhododendrons are found in numerous places around the world. In fact, a thousand of these evergreen species are known in Europe, China, Australia and North America. Besides, horticulturists have cultivated many hybrids for garden plantings over the last two hundred years. But the wild Pacific Rhododendron, rhododendron macrophyllum to be precise, may be one of the most beautiful, especially in the context of its natural environment. A leggy, understory shrub that can grow to twenty feet and more while it reaches for light beneath towering conifer groves, its large, showy and prolific light pink to purple blooms stand out refreshingly on gray, misty days, particularly amid the dark, wet trunks of enormous Douglas Firs nearby. Made prolific due to toxins in the plant that make them unpalatable and unbrowsable to deer, it is that aforementioned rain combined with the acidic soil beneath those gargantuan conifers that make conditions right for the rhody to thrive.

And those trees themselves present another ambience unique from my more familiar Midwest haunts: on wooded trails snaking through giant fir groves, it might be upwards of fifty feet from the forest floor to the lowest branches, leaving a cavernous, auditorium-like opening akin to a large room, one full of flowering bushes. R. macrophyllum, which literally means ‘rose-tree large-leafed,’ stretches from southern British Columbia to northern California, and is variously known as the Pacific, California, Western, Coast or Big Leaf Rhododendron, or the California Rosebay. It was first described for science by famed botanist Archibald Menzies, who collected the plant in Washington while accompanying the Pacific Northwest exploration of British sea captain George Vancouver in 1792.

So back to the rain. The Bible says that God causes his rain to fall on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45), inferring that his manifold blessings are heaped upon both those who revere him and those who have not yet learned to do so. I am grateful for wild rhododendrons, how they will beautify the forest under dark and rainy skies. My new raincoat and I are ready for them now.

“Consider the lilies,” Jesus said, “how they grow. They don’t toil or spin, yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as one of these. But if God so clothes the grasses of the field… can you not trust God to care for you?” (Matthew 6:28-30)

~~ RGM, February 26, 2018

From My Nature Journal: Restless

[Another year has turned. Many reflect on the passing of time in these first few days of a New Year. I recently ran across this piece in my nature writings, reflecting on such a time some years ago. My prayer is that it will be a blessing to any who are experiencing a season of restlessness.]

In light of a wind of change that has been blowing over me, I have been thinking lately of seasons: I seem to be coming off a long season of unrest, the exact nature of which has not been clear. Depression? No… Anxiety? No, not quite that either. But restlessness? Disquiet? I think for now, those seem to describe it best.

When actual climatic seasons begin to change, it could be said that a restlessness settles in. In mid-season the weather seemed to have normed into an ‘at-restness,’ but within a short time after that, something happens – one may first notice it as a faint whiff, a color, a sound, a sighting – and a harbinger of change presents itself. It may be a September snow flurry or a faint peal of March thunder. Perhaps it’s a towhee at the February feeder or an early fall sundog. From then on, one notices more and more the cues and clues that change is in the offing. Even these become the norm after awhile, until finally the mid-April snow dump or the late fall Indian Summer provide the last vestiges, the death throes, of a season dying, and a new norm ascends reign.

Seasons of course are not known to be static, not always predictable or black and white, at least climate seasons, that is, unless you live nearer the Equator. Winter, spring, summer and fall progress and fade in turn, with their capricious timings and geographic variations. Our years in Minnesota convinced us that winter there seemed to rob a month from each of the most pleasant seasons -- spring and fall -- producing a five-month deep freeze that just went on interminably. That variation is all the more pronounced where my daughter lives in Alaska.

But then there are seasons that are exact, fixed: annual solar seasons of 365¼ days; daily solar seasons of 24 hours, give or take the occasionally added leap minute; lunar seasons of 28¼ days; celestial seasons of other planets that share our solar system, or other extra-terrestrial rotations within our expanding universe, calculable but too vast for most to notice. Are any of earth’s short weather seasons not tied to some of these?

But this is not all. We speak of seasons of life and death, epochs that affect every animal, vegetable and mineral. There are seasons of biological gestation, thirty-nine weeks or whatever. There’s apple blossom season, or morel mushroom season, ‘when the oak leaves are the size of squirrel paws,’ according to my dear hunter-gatherer brother Greg. There’s sugarbush time when the maples are running with early spring sap, or ‘those years the cherry tree grew by the garage.’ Then there are recognizable seasons of human time. ‘My high school years’ is an example of that, or ‘while he was in the military,’ ‘while I had that job,’ or ‘all that time Dad was sick.’ There are tectonic seasons of colliding plates, of mountain formation, volcanism, erosion. There are seasons of a friendship, seasons of childhood and adulthood, puberty, child-bearing years, empty-nestedness, old age. Ownership has its seasons: ‘those years we had the Ford conversion van,’ or ‘the time our cat Spencer lived with us (for certainly, does anyone ever really ‘own’ a cat? Actually, I think the cat looked at it as ‘the season he let us live in his house.’)’ Then there are seasons of place: ‘those years we went to the farm every summer’ or ‘our time at 1540.’ Of course, the longer a season the less it may be spoken of as such; for example, my family does not say ‘while we were on Rockwell Street’ the same way my wife’s says ‘our time on Hemlock,’ for our Rockwell season in Chicago was so long, fifty years, the only home some of us ever knew. In the same way, one does not say ‘my time in the solar system.’ Seasons tend to have duration. Not all their endings and beginnings can be pointed to, but some can.

Joni Mitchell had it:

And the seasons, they go ‘round and ‘round

And the painted ponies go up and down:

We’re captured on the carousel of time.

We can’t return, we can only look behind from where we came

And go ‘round and ‘round and ‘round in the circle game.

Still, I’m thinking these days that seasons sometimes define us, as it seems this season of unrest has defined me, at least from my perspective. I long for it to be over, glad the harbingers of its passing are becoming more frequent. Just the same, how I need again and again to be led to my immutable God -- “…Whose compassions fail not, Whose mercies never cease…,” and of Whom it is said possesses not a single “shadow of turning” (Lamentations 3:22-23 and James 1:17) -- while on and on, from my vantage-point, cycles on the music of the spheres. 

~~RGM

From My Nature Journal: Solstice and its Illogical Contradiction

Today is the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. Though the day officially launches the season we call winter, it curiously also marks a seemingly contradictory turning point: as of this day in the earth’s annual trek around the sun, the Northern Hemisphere increases its direct angle toward the sun’s rays. Consequently, here in the north, daylight will begin to lengthen starting this very day, as will our hemisphere’s warming, and these two phenomena will continue for the next six months until the summer solstice in June similarly heralds a return to winter. Of course, the opposite of these are true in the Southern Hemisphere: today is their longest day of the year.

It is curious to me that the first day of winter is also the first day of winter’s expiration, its demise. One would think winter’s opening day would portend more of the same with nothing to contradict it, nothing but cold, dark barrenness, bleakness, or as the poet says, earth standing “…cold as iron, water like a stone.” We don’t call it the ‘dead of winter’ for nothing.

But there it is, the illogical and illuminating contradiction: light. Its return mocks winter, scoffs at the cold, derides the bleakness. Each day that follows, the sun rises just a little earlier and sets just a little later. Winter anticipates spring, death foresees life, dark predestines light, cold envisages warmth: these are the paradoxes of the seasonal change we call the winter solstice.

So it is no coincidence that the early church chose to recognize the solstice as the most appropriate time to celebrate the birth of Christ. Now, in actual fact, Jesus’ birth likely took place some time during what we call October. I am not certain how that is surmised, but it has something to do with the timing of Jewish festivals and the typical season a census would have been called by Rome (see Luke 2:1-4), not likely the dead of winter.

But no. Indian Summer, beautiful as it is, just won’t do. To celebrate something as significant as the incarnation a time is needed that makes a statement, a time that belies its context, that refutes the cold, that calls out the stony spiritual stupor right in the midst of its bleak midwinter and long underwear. Solstice. Now there is an appropriate time to celebrate the Light of the world.

To celebrate something as significant as the incarnation, a

time is needed that makes a statement, a time that

belies its context, that refutes the cold, that calls

out the stony spiritual stupor right in the midst

of its bleak midwinter and long underwear.

And so we do. We know there is no life without light. Light begets being, a commonly known biological fact.

The same is true in the spirit world. St. John the Evangelist puts it this way: In him (Jesus) was life, and that life was the light for humanity. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:4-5). Or later, sharing the very words of Jesus himself, he writes, And Jesus spoke to them saying, “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life (John 8:12).” Or take it all the way back to the prophet hundreds of years before Christ. Anticipating the coming Messiah, Isaiah foretold: The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned (Isaiah 9:2).

Light dispels darkness, not the other way 'round. Open a door into a dark closet and what happens? Does the darkness come creeping into the room in which you stand? No, the opposite holds, and always will. Light outmaneuvers darkness.

So, solstice is here, one of my favorite times of the year, not only because of Christmas but because it heralds the return of summer. Celebrate the Light with me. Proclaim the truth of the Christmas carol:

          Light and life to all He brings,

          Ris'n with healing in His wings.

That's from Charles Wesley's Hark the Herald Angels Sing, written in 1739. Or, if you prefer, fast forward to Bing Crosby, 1963, in Do You Hear what I Hear?

          The Child, the Child, sleeping in the night:

          He will bring us goodness and light.

Let there be light!

~~ RGM, from an earlier journal and blog

entry I wrote on December 21, 2012

From My Nature Journal: Soul Seasons

Lord of Creation, God of the universe,

You are not simply summer to my soul.

Yes, I do love You in the sensuousness of summer,

When leaves wax and fields are a riot of color and joy,

When Your sun warms my skin,

And Your cool water revives my strength,

And long days become a sabbath-season that allow space, grace and growth.

Yet I also love You in the melancholy of autumn,

When Your earth dies a blood-red blaze of glory

And trees rain back their yield to the ground,

When something in me saddens amid the late-season blessing,

And I come to terms with mortality and winter’s approach.

But I love You as well in the dead of winter,

When wind howls over barren earth

Both outside my window and sometimes inside my soul,

When the heart can freeze like ice, or can rest easy, asleep,

Like a garden, patiently waiting for Your beneficent, restoring touch.

Finally, I love You in the giddy burgeoning of springtime,

When quickened life bursts from somewhere deep and wonderful,

A resurrected earth mimicking a resurrected Lord,

And something also in me is embraced by resurrection,

As the cycle of life again begins its turning.

You are every season to my soul --

Summer, fall, winter, spring -- together.

You transcend them in a timeless time and space beyond Your good earth.

Grant me to walk fully awake through the seasons,

Never missing the slightest nuance of Your vast overture of love. Amen

~~ RGM, December 7, 2017