signs of life

Spotted this little dude while out on a freshly walkable trail. The flood waters have receded, and the snow is mostly gone, so it feels good to get back out there.

The sun was shining on the little muskrat, lighting up his pretty fur. He busily munched on something while I stood not far away watching.

Later, I surprised two deer in the woods. Further on, I spotted two more deer across the river from me. We all studied each other intently before they decided they would go ahead and dip their noses into the water.

During my walk, I also noticed all the birds singing, and caught sight of that proverbial harbinger of spring in Michigan – the robin.

I love all these joyful signs of life. Yay for spring!

dog walks at the shelter

Walks with my canine friends at the shelter continue. There is always a need.

Most of my furry buddies are pretty excited to get out into the snow, delighted to snuffle their noses a bit in the white stuff. They want to chase things down into the bushes, and explore the tracks of those who’ve gone before them. There are actually quite a few birds flitting around in the trees and brush, teasing the dogs with their chirps.

Some of the residents are so incredibly loving and anxious for affection — they are more interested in cuddling or petting than walking. A few are so bruised from their personal histories that they are petrified with fear. It breaks my heart on both ends of the spectrum.

They wear the ghosts of their histories. Just like people, they are each interesting and individual and feeling. I am glad they have a safe, warm, and caring place to be right now, but I am sad for the path that led to their arrival there.

I come away from my shelter walks with a smile, but always feeling blue, too.

the long month of february

Contrary to the simplistic assertions of the calendar, February is, in fact, the longest month of the year. Ask any Michigander.

The cold, the snow, and the dearth of sunshine conspire to thwart our typical notion of time. Where once life carried on with abandon, now the terrain is silent, stark, and foreboding. The snow is piled up into formidable mountains under heavy, grey skies. The short days of winter are long and wearying.

Rarely does the sun emerge from behind those walls of gray clouds to beckon us to venture forth. It’s cold. Really cold. All the time.

Precious few dare a walk or run. It’s a lonely endeavor. Still, for some of us, there’s an instinct that compels us get out, to move one’s limbs, to feel the whole arc of our selves.

Sidewalks are generally a thing of the past, of course. Where folks made the effort and actually did clear their sidewalks, those turn out to be the most treacherous stretches for walking anyway – they have turned into unmaintainable ice sheets.

As a result, one walks or runs in the road, and at their peril. The roads themselves leave little space for a pedestrian. The snow and the ice encroach on the traveled portion of the pavement, forcing one to be wary and nimble, always prepared to negotiate oncoming traffic. It’s a sketchy endeavor.

It’s actually not strange to be forced to stop now and then just to figure out how to get from one point to another, like across a street. There may be such an amalgamation of dicey ice and snow mountains and traffic that it demands to be puzzled out in advance. Sometimes, the best course of action is actually to turn around and go back.

Nevertheless, those of us committed to walking or running persist. It remains, always, uplifting to get out into the air, if frigid. To see the trees, to hear the birds and be amazed by them. To spy the squirrels, still about their business somehow. To observe the dark river push its way through the stark landscape, sometimes carrying icy chunks. To feel the freedom of movement in space. To simply allow one’s mind to relax and expand beyond the confines of indoors.

I admit to feeling restricted to walking. The roadways are just too unpredictable and hazardous for me to feel safe running. And I am anxious to run. I need to run. I have considered an indoor track, but I yearn for the outdoor one. It’s how I feel whole.

Regardless of my petty needs, the reality is that February just carries on. And on, and on, and on.

I know, however, how these long, bleak days finally transform, making the wait somehow worth it. The little clues begin to show themselves before spring arrives and revives all of the life of this strange, harsh, sleeping world. Then, the long month of February becomes a fleeting illusion, a dream half-forgotten on waking.

It won’t be long. The calendar is proof of that.

embracing the polar vortex

The snow flies around me, tracing wild paths through the air. The wind sweeps it over and down the roof of a house, and then, up, up, and it suddenly swirls into a small tornado – fast and fantastic.

I am in the middle of a frigid ballet, dancers on every side, and everything white.

The white and the wind become all one thing, and I am not quite sure of my path. My booted feet feel for the track of a car in the road. The streets are empty now.

I look ahead but can only see white. The wind stings my face with cold. Little needle-like flakes of snow make a constant, biting attack.

I tug my hat down low over my eyes, and pull my scarf up. I shove my twice-gloved hands into my pockets, curled and flexing against the cold.

I am exhilarated out in this fresh, new world.

I feel the extremeness of the moment, and notice how the various parts of me react: my hands, my feet, my face, my legs. I feel my shoulders hunched and taut against the wind, or tentatively relaxing as I turn away from it. I feel my breath captured and stolen by a rush of wind, leaving crystals on my chin.

I meet this new small planet with tension and abandon. A fierce joy rises up in me to be out in this uncontrollable wildness, to be humbled by the elements and awed by the eerie beauty.

There is no fighting it, despite the plow trucks periodically careening, seemingly giddy and meaningless, through this transformed land.

There is no fighting it. Can we take this cold, white moment to heart and resolve not to fight with nature, not to destroy nature, but to respect and work – in love and wonder – with nature?

This fearsome frozen minute reminds us to to live in harmony with our earth, not just because nature will win in the end, but because it is a needed part of us – we are intertwined, we are whole together.

peace, love, music

Biting cold and snowing. You know, a typical January day in Michigan.

Of course, I was out in it. Walking seemed like a safer mode of transit than driving, anyway.

When I set out, I didn’t have a big agenda. Somehow, though, I eventually found myself standing in front of the music shop.

Although I was unaware of conscious intention, this was no accident. The music shop is not on the way to anywhere. I had never been there before.

I was cold through and through by this time, so I headed inside.

Long story short, about a half hour later, I emerged with my new ukulele carefully nestled inside its case to make the long, snowy trek home.

True, it was a purchase I’ve been thinking about for months, but why it happened just then, I have no idea.

Once I got home and brushed all the snow off the case, I got the ukulele out and started experimenting. My suspicions were well-founded – this little instrument is just plain fun. I quickly learned a few chords, experimented with strumming, and started singing.

Turns out, the singing is the hard part. I can’t remember the words to anything. But I will! Now that I have the uke, I am inspired to learn some new old tunes.

It’s portable. It’s easy to learn. It’s music. Awesome! Even better, the shop hosts weekly get-togethers with group instruction. I am totally in.

I have, of course, already tentatively mastered “Blowin’ in the Wind,” even now successfully able to recall the first verse and chorus from memory. Progress. Bob Dylan’s words startled me all over again:

“…how many times must the cannon ball fly before Before they’re forever banned?…”

My feline best friend is not as convinced as I am about the ukulele. While very much interested in inspecting it as it lay quietly on a flat surface, he was having none of it once he discovered the strings make sound!

We’ll see if he eventually gets brave enough to come out from under the bed while it is in play. On second thought, maybe it’s the singing that sends him into hiding. Something tells me, he’ll adjust.

Super excited to launch this little musical journey. I see a lot of potential for my new, portable friend.

I’m also  looking forward another little journey later on, a local peace march on this day we remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his ethic of love.

feeling the slow

I recently got to do a few miles on the Fred Meijer Heartland Trail. This time of year, it’s rather a lonely place, but I did spy shoe prints, bicycle tracks, and both dog and deer prints in the places where snow still covered the trail.

The day was not actually terribly cold, but it felt like it, with the biting wind. My hands felt frozen inside my gloves, and I dearly wished I had brought a scarf. Nevertheless, as always, it felt so good to be in motion and close to nature.

I wished I could just keep going. When the warm days come, I would love to take my bicycle and do the length of the thing. It traverses the country fields and woods, and a number of small towns. In all, this particular trail extends some 42 miles.

I love the little ghosty things you notice along some of these trails – artifacts of their previous life as a railroad. It’s always delightful to spot an old mile post marker, or to see pieces of the old ties off in the brush. Sometimes there are the empty buildings that obviously stood where they did precisely because of access to the railroad. They had a life, once, and held lives.

I love all that ghosty stuff.

There’s less and less of it, I notice. Progress seems to mean getting rid of things, or updating them to look like something else.

As everything seems to go faster and deeper into all things technology and capitalized, there is something about feeling the slow. When you stand still in those places, it’s the life, the people, you feel. It’s the evidence of personal things, hands-on stuff, the actual relationships that played out in those places that somehow strike one.

As the trail comes into a busier town, it makes me feel more absent, more anonymous, more unseen. Here, there are actual people, not just evidence of them, but there’s a kind of disconnect. They are coming and going, looking at their phones, and hurrying along to the next… what? But I suppose that’s just the way it was, at least in some respects, way back when.

I can’t help but wonder what will we see along the trail some day when we look back.

encounters

I cut along between some apartment buildings, briefly noticing an angular, skinny guy on the far side of the building before the building comes between us. I keep walking.

Grey sky. Michigan winter. I pull my jacket zipper up snug against the cold.

I hear sounds, louder and louder as I come to the end of the building. As I come abreast of it, I hear it full and big and hurting. I turn my head to the right looking toward the terrible sobs I am hearing.

There she sits, as if she simply fell there, humped over, heaving her sobs on the snow-covered grass. Her hair, a flaming dark pink, waves with her painful breaths. She wails oblivious to me, to anything.

I begin to approach her, but just then, a car comes careening around the corner and up the street. It flies right up in front me, in front of the girl, and roars to a stop. The passenger side door opens and a young woman jumps out. She rushes toward the sobbing figure on the ground.

“We saw. Are you alright?” the woman anxiously asks as she strides purposefully ahead.

The sobs turn into chokes, as the pink-haired girl looks up, clearly fearful.

The woman immediately stops and puts her hands out.

“It’s okay. Are you alright?” she asks, a little softer this time.

Despite her brash hair, the girl on the ground looks like a fawn, tender and young and vulnerable. She cannot hold back her sobs. Clearly frightened of the newcomer, she scrambles to her feet with difficulty, almost falling.

“I’m okay,” the fawn asserts.

She has no pants on. Her legs are entirely bare where she has been sitting akimbo in the snow. They are bleeding. She has no jacket on, just a long, thin shirt.

“You don’t look okay,” the woman challenges, taking a tentative step forward.

But the fawn sees the approach, and she backs up, looking a little wild.

“I’m alright,” she is breathless with sobs.

“Your legs are bleeding.”

“I’m alright. It’s just he pushed me down the stairs. I’m alright.” The fawn steps backward, and looks fearfully at her approacher.

The woman stops in her tracks, and turns toward me, as if to defuse the situation. As she steps close to me, she says under her breath, “We’re calling the cops.” She jerks her head slightly back towards the car, where I see a man at the wheel with his phone to his ear.

The fawn turns and begins to flee in earnest. She runs, half-stumbling, back through the complex with her bleeding legs and surging sobs.

The man jumps out of the car and we all keep our eyes on the fleeing girl.

We step down the street, tracking where she goes. The man relays the information to the dispatcher on the phone, as we note her location. Eventually, the man and the woman jump back in their car and make a distanced pursuit.

The fawn makes her way through the buildings, the parking lot, heads across the street, stumbles down a side street. I can see her progress, and I can see the fear in her. She continues to look wildly back.

The police pull up and talk to the man and woman in the car, then they go the long way around to approach the fleeing woman from another direction. And they do.

The man and the woman pull up and tell me thank you, but I tell them the thanks are due them. Indeed, I am deeply impressed by their caring.

I continue on my walk, sad and shaken. I look back at the police car, and it doesn’t make me feel any better.

I wish, I wish…. what. I wish we could have put our arms around her. I wish we could have held her in her tears. I wish we could have heard her story. I wish we could have found a way to help her, and a way to help the sorry male that pushed her down the stairs.

And I’m not at all convinced that help is on the way.

Later that day, just as darkness descends, I am driving down a quiet street. I get to an intersection. On the far side of the intersection, two people are standing in the middle of the road. A large man and a small woman are angrily screaming at each other, close in to each other’s face. They punctuate themselves with hard, intense gestures. Hands open, hand close, hands point.

My headlights are trained on them, and they are heedless.

I wait. I wonder. I just don’t know.

The man take several steps back and turns without leaving. They stand angrily in my headlights.

I finally turn and drive away.

I wish, I wish. I just don’t know.

flight path

Absolutely spectacular day here yesterday. The temperature soared up to near 50 degrees, with blue, blue skies lavishing the scenery. Too good not to be out in it.

I ventured out this time to a town with which I am not familiar. I just wanted to explore a little.

Along the way, I travelled country roads, and that wonderful phenomenon took me by surprise: the way things just fall away from you as you leave the city behind and you begin to absorb the calm of the country. It feels almost physical. Worries, concerns, the general buzz of background stress just begin to drop away.

Once I arrived, I discovered that the town had a riverwalk. So, of course, I started walking.

As I set out, I heard the loud honking of geese just overhead. I quickly realized that I was surrounded by them – on the water, in the air, in the field. Apparently the migrating geese liked this location, and I just happened to be there at the right time.

They were wary, but neither did they flee. It was such a treat to see them all, and so close, and at this particular moment – a moment of change.

I wended my way along the path, also noticing that there were quite a few ducks, carrying on a rather lively discussion, too.

When I had walked a ways along, I looked back across the field where so many geese were resting. Just then, two people walked out. Instead of walking the path, they walked straight into the field. And, naturally, this inspired the entire assembly of geese in the vicinity to take to the air. It was a lovely sight to behold, though I was chagrined that their stop-over was interrupted.

I just stood and watched the rising layers of geese, easily forming their orderly flight arrangements. Up, up, up, and sailing off into the blue all together.

I wonder how far their travels will take them, when I’ll see them returning. Why now is the right time.

So much that I don’t know. So much beautiful mystery in life.

hey, it’s a start anyway

New Year’s Eve day we had reports of a snowstorm moving in. So, that morning, I am happy to say that I did get out and on the move, hoping to beat the storm. During the first mile, I began to feel the cold pings of sleet, but forged on. It picked up, but never got overwhelming. It turned out to be a great, invigorating run.

The snow didn’t materialize according to schedule. First, there was the long, steady sleet, and eventually it was rain. At a couple of points, it was actually raining pretty hard, with puddles and all. It wasn’t until late in the evening when the rain finally turned to snow. That, of course, meant ice.

I had originally planned to participate in an organized hike on New Year’s morning, one of those First Day Hikes, at a place I had never before visited.  When morning actually arrived, however, it was pretty clear the roads were really too treacherous to get to the starting point. 

Nevertheless, I still made myself venture out on foot. It was a tentative, careful exploration. It was indeed very icy everywhere.

I slowly headed for one of my familiar routes nearby and I just walked, rather mincingly. I knew running was out of the question, but I carefully and gradually picked up a little speed. Most of the time, I crunched my way through the grass since the sidewalks and the roads were really not safe.

I crossed paths with a couple of teens who were delighted to discover just how slippery it was out. They weren’t making much headway, and one took a tumble, but they were getting a good laugh out of it.

All in all, I covered about five miles, albeit with much retracing of steps – happily meditative. I noticed my own footprints as I came upon them, and felt that apparently I actually had made my mark, if ephemeral, on the world.

My New Year’s outing wasn’t fast, but it was good. It made a cheerful compromise, in keeping with my plans for the new year. Staying in motion is so important for my physical and mental/emotional health.

I consider it a good start to 2019.

just noticing

Many thanks to CalmKate at Aroused  for providing me with the inspiration for a wonderful exploration. Her Friday photo prompt, “Leaves,” could have been satisfied with some of the autumn leaves I captured earlier in the season, but I decided it would be more fun to go see what I could find right now – a bit of a challenge with winter having already moved in and taken over around here.

I love the way a prompt happily forces me to be on the lookout or to think with a different perspective.

I started out in town, just because I had stuff to do. I skirted along up and down the streets, looking at everything with fresh eyes. I found myself popping into the new cat cafe for a quick visit, as well as a brief stop at the food co-op where some red kale could not be resisted, it was so beautiful!

I noticed that all the trees along the main drag were bereft of leaves, except for the occasional tree covered in dead, brown leaves that refused to let go. I did spot some surprising bright green bushes in front of one large house, but nothing else really spoke “leaves” to me.

I continued on my quest, now headed for the trails. There, I discovered just the merest bits of green peaking out here and there, in a sea of browns, greys, blacks, and white. Most of the leaves are on the ground, wet or frozen, and clearly getting into the whole composting thing. The trees were bare, save for a few now-exposed nests.

The awesome part was the birds. As I carefully observed my surroundings, I could hear them twittering all around me. I paused and just watched for awhile. The longer I watched the more I saw.

Black-capped chickadees hopped from twig to twig. There was a pair of yellow birds – finches, I suppose? I spotted my first winter cardinal – that wonderful bright red in the middle of everything. There was also a woodpecker having at it, a rather small one – gonna have to look him up. There was also plump black squirrel with a nut in his mouth who made a study of me before capering off.

I would have missed all that, along with the rushing river, and the amazing black dog I met, named Bernie, along with his human friend – if it had not been for CalmKate’s invitation. I may not have a particularly amazing photo to show for it, but I am grateful for the inspiration that got me out the door right then, alert and curious to life.