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Spring commences

Spring commences

Winter passes in vignettes on a steadily moving carousel of frames. The snowy dim days of January give way to cold but bright February sunshine. The skiing was quite excellent for the majority of the winter. We took adventurous swims in the nearshore waters of Lake Superior, exploring the chunky slurry of ice that formed and melted and formed again, in repeated cycles over the last several months. 

We marveled at the towering cliffs of ice and snow, like mini glaciers hanging over our local bay, washed ashore by a ferocious east wind. We took a trip out east, snow fell in record amounts in our absence. I planned on paper for the season ahead. I hiked on the coldest days, and I thought. I listened to the latest science and the latest news. March arrived with perfect spring skiing conditions and ice coated miles of Lake Superior shoreline, again. The whole season passed like a book you can’t put down. Before you know it, It’s over and it's time to start the next one. 

The wind picked up today, it’s early April. The kind of raw and biting wind that signals the beginning of spring. It’s movement, turbulence— drying and thawing the frozen world. Life starts to stir. Goldeneye ducks have arrived in the harbor, snow buntings and dark eyed juncos are foraging in patches of open ground. The deer congregate in herds migrating closer to shore from inland, away from deep snow, and wander through town nibbling brown grass. The alders and birch develop shiny brown catkins, seemingly overnight and the willow’s branches swell with furry buds. The quaking aspen joins in, a week or so later, suddenly bursting with bud development. 

My younger son celebrated his 23rd birthday recently, each year he becoms a finer young man and evermore a caring, creative human being. He is a gift. It also means that I steadily march towards middle age. Each year brings a little more reckoning and acceptance.  

I start seeds by the hundreds for the flower farm, and they germinate in the warm sun radiating through the window. I try my hardest to follow my carefully planned sowing schedule, resisting the temptation to pour all of them into the potting mix at once in an impulsive fear that it might already be too late. I know it isn't. 

And indeed, the news is chronically bad to worse, day after day after day. Emotions flare in cycles of despair, fear, anger, disbelief and resolve. Resolve to remain educated, to back science and evidence based research and beliefs, to stand by human rights, to never become numb. In our little corner of the world, to remain connected to all of it as part of those living through these times. To remain calm as others stray into conspiracies as a way to explain chaos, fear and unpredictability and as an avoidance. I find resilience in nature, in disturbance as an instrument of change, and in the hope that as a pendulum swings, eventually it swings back towards equilibrium, towards rationality and justice and a better society is the result. 

I find the kernels of hope in the age of accountability, and in neighborism as a model through the darkness. I start my seeds for the season ahead and try to spread pieces of momentary happiness through my work as a gardener. I hope it makes a droplet of difference. 

 

Tags: April early spring Nature writing seasonal writing Spring spring in northern minnesota

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November in the Tree Fields

November in the Tree Fields

" the nutcracker sits under the holiday tree, a guardian of childhood stories. Feed him walnuts and he will crack open a tale."  ~ from 'The Nutcracker' by E.T.A Hoffman   Growing Christmas trees is a long game. Evergreen trees cut for the current season were planted 15-20 years earlier, and shaped each year to resemble the familiar and iconic Christmas trees we cherish. Karen Smaby was an old hat at this game. She lovingly planted and tended her Christmas tree fields near Grand Marais for over 30 years. She was slight and soft spoken with a subtle and dry sense of humor. I think few people actually knew she was the mastermind behind the trees they bought downtown at the gas station. The sign on the stand out front simply read 'Locally grown'.  Every year she called me on the phone to ask if I wanted to help her again this year. She waited with baited breath as I told her “yes of course, I would love to help you, It’s my favorite time of year.” It was true, I loved it. I was the only employee she ever had in 30 years of growing trees. And she only agreed to let someone help her the last seven years of her operation, and life.  Karen’s tree fields sat on a corner of road 12 miles east of Grand Marais known as Babineau corner. Named for the French Canadian man who first settled there, Mr. Babineau cleared the fields originally to grow potatoes. Supposedly he was something of an innovator. He built a wooden water tower along with wooden piping to catch water off his roof in order to have gravity fed water. This and other feats of rustic engineering to support his homesteading efforts made him a quirky legend amongst the back to the land neighborhood that migrated to these parts in the late 1960's and 70’s. Karen was one of those among them and clearly had reverence for this land, its history and forbearers.   Karen worked at various times throughout the year in the tree fields. She planted seedlings in May, pruned and sheared in late June and cut brush in July and August. In the fall, she walked her fields, carefully tying different colored flagging tape to the tops of her trees. The various colors indicated different grades of quality, and the final location; whether local market or wholesale. She always joked it was a very sophisticated system, downplaying how much time she had spent inspecting, sorting and selecting. It was obvious how much she loved those trees and her dedication to the work. She cut the ones she had selected for that year setting them on the ground next to the stump.  My job was to find and pull the cut trees out of the field, sort them by flagging color and piling them together. Over 4 fields and 3 acres I hunted for trees and hauled them out making piles by the driveway and main parking lot. I loved it because I didn’t have to be the boss. All I had to do was show up and work. It became a rhythm and a strategy. Which end of the field to start with, where to blaze the path across the snow, where to stage my piles. This path would become well worn as I tromped back and forth, moving dozens of trees, piling them into pyramids awaiting pickup or loading. We always worked in early - mid November, so the first batches could go out ahead of the Thanksgiving weekend. My clothes always ended up smelling like pitch and I usually had to shed layers for the exertion could be immense. One year, a freezing rain had come after a heavy snow, burying all the cut trees lying on the ground in a foot of heavy, wet, extra weight! Some years we were dragging trees across wet grass. Karen always worried about the weather and hoped for the best. She taught me to wear a double layer of wool mittens instead of gloves. Your hands stay a lot warmer and your mittens smell like Christmas for the rest of the winter. I loved this work, dragging  trees across the snow, the repetition of it, and how after awhile you sorta got in deep with it. The piles, the trees, the early winter ponderings, the season behind you, the year ahead. And because in late November, I wasn’t quite ready to head indoors for the long winters’ rest. I told her many times how I loved it, but she didn’t believe me for some reason.  Karen knew all the ins and outs of the craft and I respected her knowledge and years of experience. She always made the same jokes, like “I’ve arranged for this light snowfall to look like a snow globe just for your workday today”. Or while bailing trees that the person pulling them through had just enough time to have a smoke in between…? She always cautioned me to take my time while dragging the trees out. To watch out for stumps and holes and take lots of breaks. And that this was the year she might start using her new electric chainsaw. But, then again, maybe she would save it. I knew she never had a sharp scissors for cutting the netting after each baled tree so I always brought my own. She was always so delighted when I pulled it out. She was thrifty yet particular. She had her systems, and her ways, and was a bit of a perfectionist with the trees. She always wore old boots and old gloves, and was very reluctant to upgrade her tiny, rear wheel drive, circa early 1990’s pickup to a 4 wheel drive truck. The upgrade would have served her well for the big icy hill she had to navigate, every trip to town to restock the trees at the gas station. Which deserves mention; she had perfected a loading system for hauling trees in the tiniest truck possible. She could fit seven good sized Christmas trees into the back of the 6' x 4’ truck bed. She did this by laying the first horizontally behind the cab window, and building a tight pyramid of six more parallel to the bed; making sure to interlock the branches. They were so tucked in together and actually fairly secure that she only hastily threw a thin rope over them and tied them down, just as a precaution. This was rustic back-to-the-land enterprise at its finest. Common around here until only recently. Mr. Babineau would have approved. She was a remnant almost, of a bygone era. Folks who kept it really simple. Stuck to the knowledge base their craft, frugally maintaining the highest quality of end product. Nowadays, we need marketing and an online presence and a brand. I feel fortunate to have been a witness to the old ways and to be a bridge into the new one.  Karen would only sell the absolute best trees. And truthfully, they were perfect. And way too cheap. She told me that if I took over the business I could raise the prices. And that she had been meaning to, but couldn’t bring herself to do it.  It didn’t work for my landscaping season to buy the tree farm. And I didn’t know she wanted to sell it because she was sick. She had been diagnosed with late stage pancreatic cancer and continued to work, hoping to sell. She kept her illness to herself, as a very private person. When I finally heard the news she was in hospice. She died just two months later.  Every November Karen’s legacy comes to the forefront. The trees she planted still go to markets elsewhere and you can still buy them downtown. And her spirit is still there in those fields. It’s a whisper, but I say hello anyway every time I drive by. I loved those seven years in the tree fields. Seven Novembers, in the company of Karen Smaby. 

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Snippets from October

Snippets from October

  10/9 October is: The winding down of the seasonal life. the last of the flowers are cut. Pumpkins are harvested, frost overnight, A rich coating of sparkling frost covers grasses and shrubs. Like sugar syrup poured over the ditches and hillsides.  The grasses turn brilliant gold. Gardens are cut back and winter fencing goes up. Cheers from the high school football game fill the neighborhood and days get shorter and shorter. The natural world turns inward. My body seems to respond in kind with less and less energy and more desire to partake in other aspects of yearly life.  I am a ball of momentum that will soon careen to an abrupt halt. Tension is ready to unwind, thoughts ready to deepen. Ready for other aspects, but the letting go of the outdoor working rhythm woven into my body is a bittersweet transition. Leaves hang on in short afternoons. Asters leaves turn red with white puffy seed heads. Maples are bare which is honestly the most beautiful of their forms.  10/12 I went on a run on a cool Sunday morning in the woods. I crested a little hill and caught sight of a poplar tree adorned in gold against a moody blue sky. Interesting how there is such a glow when the light grows dim and the trees lose their green. When the natural world makes the turn towards dormancy. Against the smell of decay, fallen leaves on green grass, the world overhead is awash with color and brilliance. Snapped a picture and resumed my watch for the last mile and a half. And I was lost in thought about the golds of October. Brilliant gold grasses, fat orange pumpkins, gold poplars, gold moon, gold twilight. 10/14 There is an overhanging branch, arching and graceful, in a couple of places along the roadside. I look for them instinctively as I drive those stretches. It holds itself up, out and over the ditch, through heavy snows and high wind. I notice them in all the seasons. They wear fresh green in the spring and a yellow shawl in the fall. In winter I adore them the most, the basic structure unencumbered.  They are landmarks to me and they’ve been there for a decade or more. Like an outstretched hand from the poplar and birch, saying hello, reminding me of strength and grace, even when I tire of holding myself up.  10/15 We rake leaves and clean paths. Put up fences to protect shrubs from deer, wandering and hungry in the winter months and in the lean weeks of early spring. We leave the stalks standing and the button seed heads of summer flowers to entice foraging birds and encourage overwintering insects. We sweep and clean the garden landscape until it feels prepared. Not too much but not too little. Until it’s just right. I think of Wendell Barry when he speaks of the body’s daily work. I go through these motions in fall, as I have done for 16 years. I tire at the same time each year as the light and temperature wanes, even when I don’t expect to. We are tethered together, the gardens and I, by these seasonal cycles. They tire also, and drop back to the earth for a winter’s rest.  10/16 I think it may be the peak of the golds these days and I feel as though I’ve strayed into a Bob Ross painting. This is the moment when a sharp wind is around the corner, about to blow through and the curtain of gold falls. All the leaves come down to abruptly commence the browns of November. It is my sincere hope, as we end the garden tending for the year, that our efforts have been instrumental in lending a moment or two of true peace, of centering, and a glimpse of some sense of harmony that exists in the world, despite its injustice, drudgery and sham. To go looking when the despair settles, and even for a moment, to return to the simple eternal order of things. There is a patient persistent resiliency if you look closely. It can and does aid in restoring hope.    10/21 Under a thinning canopy, the kaleidoscope of the understory and ground cover lights up! Brilliant red bush honeysuckle, creamy yellow thimbleberry, moose maple the color of Beaujolais Nouveau wine. Russett and tawny grasses including some that turn gold or even burnt orange. Spectacular. Standing amongst the grasses are hazelnut, birch, poplar, and mountain ash saplings- resplendent miniatures of their respective elders’. The rain brings down even more leaves. I am turning my thoughts to plant craft. Dried bundles of flowers and herbs still strung up on strings, drying since the long days of summer. They are about to become wreaths and bouquets for holiday gifts or botanical novelties to keep around the house as the snow piles up.  Today as I raked up leaves and cut back gardens and as the coming rain threatened our work day, a  raven’s persistent voice was among the few birds left in the trees.  As the woods grow quiet and the weather cools, the raven’s cawing is a pensive time travel. To times, years ago, in Alaska’s interior, when I first encountered ravens, and to time spent with Ada, an elderly Athabaskan woman. I was a college student, working as a volunteer for the fish and wildlife service, studying historical Athabaskan uses of medicinal plants.  Ada was then a 75 year old woman and very much engaged in the traditional Athabaskan subsistence lifestyle. She was hard to keep up with. With gnarled, capable hands, a lively spirit and a magnetizing smile she made baskets and dug spruce roots, tanned hides and collected food, along with so many other things, seemingly constantly. Anyone eager to learn and willing to venture out with her she called her ‘grandchildren’. We helped her with her fish nets and collected birch bark. She taught us Athabaskan words, the word for Raven in the upper tanana dialect is taatsàan’, and the name I still think of when I hear them. Ada lovingly practiced the traditions of her culture with materials from a land woven into her people. She taught me the value of persistent practice and refinement. Of resourcefulness and ingenuity. For me, witnessing this as a young woman was a privilege and a gift. I always think of her when I wind a wreath, on account of the way she coiled and stored spruce roots. It’s a very different thing, my floral crafts to her lived and practiced heritage, and I don’t pretend to recreate it. But I think of her at this time of year and I feel connected. To something larger, or her spirit, or the full circle of the past, or the rightness of things. Whatever the reason, the time of year has almost arrived, the time to bring the beauty of nature indoors.    10/26 I can understand why we can’t remain drenched in the splendor of fall, why Halloween celebrates death. Why we retreat indoors to roast the pumpkins and think about what winter will bring. We have a predilection to move forward, to anticipate what lies ahead and to keep time with the seasonal cycles as they present themselves in our environments. Today I cut down the frost kissed dahlias, rolled up the drip tape and cleared away the pumpkin vines. With the compost in a pile nearby, I will amend the beds in the coming weeks and plant the tulips. I look satisfyingly over the empty gardens and imagine them anew next season. I will plan and try new things. I think there is a personality type that lends itself to this type of existence. The one who favors trial and error, who likes the process of tinkering and discovery. The garden is the perfect lab for this kind of person, the creative type who likes plants. The one at work on herself as well, always in process, without the goal of arriving. Just summers to winters and the stuff learned in between, over and over, maybe gaining a little wisdom by the end.   

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Ode to September

Ode to September

I wish I could live the whole year basking in September. To have more time to watch the dynamic, but gradual shift. Summer relenting to its' time. With completion and readiness, the Northern Hemisphere starts to fade. The transformation is steady, and leaves nothing untouched. I fumble to contain it into words on account of my reverence. I yearn to notice each thing as it changes, and never want it to end. September is a cathedral, full of light and ornament and I am a passerby, taking long glances but always on my way to somewhere. I make a mental catalog of each progression, to savor it a little longer. The first to succumb is the spreading dogbane, in the ditches or on the trailside. A stark yellow emerges from the edges signaling the first of fall has come. The ferns nearby turn crusty. I have watched in August the goldenrods plump with pollen come into prominence, and the asters in their diversity building strength to join the show. The hawks start migrating. One by one, every few minutes, darting through, on their way to catching a thermal. The fireweed let go of its' last blossom, all the way at the very top, near the first day of the month.  My friend and I liken it to a sand timer, when the fireweed first starts in July. It blooms from the bottom of the raceme first, and on up the stem it goes. When the flowers reach the very top, summer's run out. September turns the spent flowers to tufts of silk, and on wiry stems windborn seeds are set adrift on the breeze. After a few weeks, the leaves dry a rusty red and the clumps of silken seed still clinging to the stems resemble clumps of snow. The white masses in the waning green roadsides every bit as beautiful as the pink flowers of July. Amongst the trees the maples go first. On the hilltops, midmonth. Saturated and dominant, the forest is drenched in reds and oranges, the smell of tannins slippery underfoot after a rain. Iconic and quick, the maple leaves fall early, giving way to the golden birches and poplars at month's end.  The leaves hold steady on sculptural branches of ivory, ashenand inky trunks. The way they glow against a backdrop of conifers, quaking in the mild air, is what I most long to keep about September. The pin cherry and the bush honeysuckle turn wine red and the mountain ash and moose maple are a watercolor wash of reds and oranges covering the green picture they once were. Driving to work or on my favorite trails I am overcome. How can there be so much breathtaking in this world? Why do we get so much wonderful before the world goes stark and bare? The waves in Lake Superior stretch out in the east wind as they are wont to do in September. Warm water tumbles ashore in lower light, but wind is still gentle, the arctic air not yet arrived. I imagine these are the trade winds, though I know they aren’t. But the air is sublime, warm, subtle, just a touch balmy. Apples fall, bluebird skies are impossibly perfect. The firewood is brought to town. I count my pumpkins in the patch, 17 this year! And the dream of filming duck feet underwater was finally realized. September is complete. 

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