The blizzard and the willow

During the blizzard on Saturday afternoon, my husband and son started pulling on jackets and acting as though they were going to go outside.

"I'd better go with you," I said. "I am supposed to go out to the fields."

"I don't think you're going to get to the fields," my husband said. He was right. Standing on the deck felt like enough of a wilderness experience to me. The snow was falling hard, and each flake made a quiet, sharp sound as it hit the hood of my jacket. The wind was so cold that it hurt bits of bare skin around my eyes that I had not been able to cover up. It rushed between our parked vehicles and made huge snowdrifts in front of our cars and trucks. White plumes came whistling off the peak of each drift.

My son crouched down and busily started digging paths through the snow. He was joyfully engrossed, and eventually headed out for his fort behind the garage, but we called him back because we did not want him to disappear from our sight. As a child I used to be able to entertain myself like that outside, but it does not come as easily to me now, and so I busied myself carrying boxes into the house from one of our cars. Like my son, I wanted to be doing something purposeful while I spent more time outside.

Carrying those boxes was tough. I had to lift up my legs high to trudge through the deep snow, and the wind had turned deadly cold. It hissed ominously through the trees to my north. With the last box in my hands, I thought disapprovingly, "This is really overdone. This clearly goes beyond the limits of good taste.” Right away, I was shocked by my arrogance. It doesn't seem right to take a superior attitude with a blizzard.

At that point, I felt what I can best describe as a change in pressure just to the east. Instinctively, I looked in that direction and saw the huge weeping willow tree that stands just outside my kitchen window. I waited there with a box in my arms, and I understood that I was being asked go to that tree. After setting the last box inside, I trudged around the house and found a place for myself just inside the fringes of the willow's swinging branches.

I have wanted to feel a connection with this enormous tree since we moved to this house a year and a half ago. Late in the summer, I allowed the power company to remove some of the willow's branches, and I felt uneasy with the tree for months. Throughout the fall, I talked to it, stood with it, and even rested with my arms wrapped halfway around its trunk, but I only felt anger and shame. Not knowing whether this was coming from me or coming from the tree, I finally asked a friend to drive out from Minneapolis and stand beside it in with me. This friend of mine has a very loving heart and has been willing to stand by trees with me before. On the couple of occasions, I have experienced a very clear feeling that the trees appreciate her presence. I appreciate it too.

On the day my friend came, I had a migraine, and so she stood outside alone. She eventually came back into my living room and reported that although she does not often experience these things, she felt a special warmth at the end of her time with the willow. A couple of days later, my attention was drawn by the sound of the wind in the leaves of the willow, and as I looked up into its branches, I felt a wildness and a powerful pull from the ground to the sky. It was magnificent. I believed that the tree was speaking to me in its way.

Standing beneath the willow in the blizzard, I heard an intimacy between the wildness of the tree and the wildness of the blizzard. The storm was not a stranger but a relative, and something of it would remain with the tree long after the snow passed. I believe the tree wanted me to understand this. I stood listening to the sound of the ice flakes and wind hitting dry leaves that still cling to the yellow willow whips. I noticed the snow drift near my house, evidence that the tree had slowed the North wind before it hit my home. Before I was satisfied that I had heard everything that I was meant to hear, I trudged back through the house and went inside.

My husband greeted me as I peeled off my jacket. “I was worried about you!" he exclaimed. “Did you go to the fields?”

Blizzard

There is a blizzard warning in the Rice County, where we live. Early this morning, our neighbor's field of tall, brown corn stalks appeared to be last thing on earth before the white oblivion of the bare, snow-covered fields farther south. Throughout the morning, our world shrank. Gradually, a veil of white slowly drew closer to the house as heavily falling snow hid all but the closest rows of corn. Now the corn is a blurry shadow, and I cannot see the woods that stand across the street. Snow piling up against my window is striated with layers of dark and light, recording the different qualities of the snow, the changing moods of this storm, which lie beyond my understanding.

Everything we had planned for the day has mercifully been canceled, except for my plans to bake Lucia buns. Our children will get up in the darkness tomorrow morning, and speaking in whispers, they will put on special clothes and assemble a tray of Lucia buns and hot drinks. Then, lit only by my daughter’s crown of candles, they will slowly walk in and serve us breakfast. In past years, I have struggled between wanting to watch them approach and wanting to open my eyes when they are beside the bed because they are always afraid we will wake up before the appointed moment.

Last night, we celebrated Santa Lucia day in Northfield, and drove home just as the snow was beginning to fall. Dozens of children in white robes filed into the darkened room, glowing with the candles they carried, and singing the familiar Swedish song about light coming into the darkness. The song began to rise from the whole room as the adults joined in, until the whole space was filled with gentle, haunting melody. My mother-in-law, sitting beside me, said that if her father had been there, tears would have been running down his face. I could barely answer her because I thought that a sob might come out instead of words. I believe, in a special way, my children's great-grandparents were there, along with many others.

After all the children had delivered cookies and filed out again, someone flipped on the lights, and we began to sing Swedish carols. First, we listened patiently as a lady explained the translation of the lyrics. As soon as we heard each tune, my mother-in-law and I looked at each other with round eyes and exclaimed with delight, “Oh! It’s that one!” We knew them all. By the time folks were dancing around the Christmas tree, I was singing with unbridled gusto.

My heart still feels full from all that beauty. Like grief, deep joy can make it difficult for me to understand how the world can continue blithely on with all of its regular details. Today, my world can't carry on. Today, because of the blizzard, my world has stopped in awe and delicacy.

Just as I thought I finished this essay, my daughter called out for help with a terrible headache, so it only seems fair to add that some parts of my life are clearly carrying on as usual. That is okay. My cup runs over.

Going to the fields and coming home fast

During the last couple of weeks, I have been asking God how I should be spending my time. Should I be doing the laundry? Drawing up a budget for raising beef cattle? Teaching more exercise classes?

The only clear answer that I have felt in my heart has been, “Go to the fields.” I have heard this call periodically for over a decade, and I am never sure what to do about it. On Saturday, when I heard it again, I asked follow-up questions. “So, God, should I work on the beef budget because that has something to do with fields? Should I should turn down the invitation to teach another exercise class?” My follow-up questions are usually unproductive, but on Saturday, I heard an unsatisfying answer. It was something like, “You are making this way too complicated. Just go outside and hang out in your fields.”

That afternoon, I climbed a maple on the west edge of our shelter belt. The wind was strong on my back, and I draped myself along the length of a long, arched branch. I smelled the melting snow in the dried leaves and tried to soak in the mysterious evening colors of the winter sky. I told myself that I was soaking in some kind of light that might grow inside me to help light the world.

For the next three days I stayed inside, marveling at how easy it is to dismiss the quiet promptings of the Spirit. If someone asked me what I would want from heaven, I would tell them that I wanted a chance to stand surrounded by fields and trees and to listen with my soul to the music that rises up from them. Even with God asking me to do just that, I filled my days with "more important" work and stayed inside.

Late Wednesday night, I went out again, carrying a bucket of compost as if my mission were purely practical. After emptying the bucket, I strolled across our dark southern field to our property line, where the neighbor's corn still stands. I expect he will harvest it in the spring, as is his custom. The crunchy snow sparkled like the stars in the sky, and I stood in it waiting for my second sense of hearing to kick in. My second sense of hearing lets me listen to the song of trees, and plants and fields. Sometimes I have to wait for a while before I am blessed with it, and sometimes I wait for it in vain.

A gentle breeze from the west began to rustle in the dry corn. It sounded as though the whole field were suddenly alive and moving, and as my second sense of hearing kicked in, I became aware that the corn harbored no warm feelings for me. It wasn't exactly hostile; it was just wild and focused on other things. My heart started beating fast.

At that point, a coyote howled, and it didn't sound too far away. I sprinted towards the house, forgetting that I was running over the earth that Ian had plowed up for next year's garden. Our clay soil was turned in ridges that were frozen as hard as concrete. I tripped and went sailing into the air before crashing down with my thumb squashed underneath me. As I wriggled around on the ground in pain, several more coyotes joined the eerie song. I scrambled to my feet again as and limped to our back door. Standing safely in the doorway, I listened to the wild yipping and moaning and howling, trying to appreciate it. I couldn't. I know coyotes are God's creatures, and they wouldn't hurt a person, but they scare me beyond reason.

Inside, I found that my thumb was basically okay, but my shin and knee were impressively bloody. Looking around my quiet family room, I found more compassion for myself for spending the last few days inside. When God asks me to do something, even the simplest thing, I can never predict what lies ahead. It is not in my control, and it is not really about me. Staying inside, surrounded by my illusion of personal power, feels much more comfortable.

It lacks glory, though.

Turkeys

I knew the turkey that we ate at Thanksgiving. We did not raise turkeys this year, but my friend did, and I took care of her animals when she went on summer trips. My friend’s turkeys lived in a small pasture surrounded by a 4 foot wooden fence that was beefed up with chicken wire. As soon as they grew fairly large, the fence was just another interesting part of the landscape for the turkeys. They crossed over it freely to strut around by the barn.

When it was my job to care for the turkeys, I pulled up in the driveway and looked for them near that fence, expecting to see several of them roosting on top of it. Alerted by the sound of my car pulling up, they also looked for me, and soon they came running towards me. These were large, white birds with long necks and ancient looking faces. It was a daunting to see a flock of them racing towards me, but when they reached me, they gathered around earnestly and expectantly, tilting their heads so that they could focus one eye directly on my face.

The massive birds stepped right on my feet with their sharp yellow claws, and when I foolishly wore sandals, I had to run away from them. They pursued me. Even at the height of their enthusiasm, they seemed gentle, but when I peeked over my shoulder and saw those huge yellow feet reaching forward in great strides, I felt like I was running from a flock of trolls. I had to laugh.

Towards the end of the summer, my friend provided foster care for young black lab that was so energetic its body curled and lept like a banner on a gusty day. It joyously chased after the turkeys, and they responded by fluffing up the feathers on their huge impressive chests and mounting short, purposeful strikes at the dog, which retreated. The big puppy was too giddy to remember being chased and was soon after them again. The turkeys held their own.

The turkeys made the most amazing sounds as well. Before they really learned to "gobble," they made rich trills that sounded almost like water. I had never heard anything like this before, and I felt as though I were standing in a rain forest listening to an exotic bird song instead of doing some farm chores in the land of corn and soybeans.

People say turkeys are dumb, and I believe that our domesticated birds might lack some survival skills. Still, when I was around them, I had a sense that these birds have a variety of wisdom that is so old that we cannot easily relate to it. I could hear it in their rich calls and see it in their strange, mask-like faces. My heart feels richer because I spent time with them.

Our dog

We have a dog now. We really wanted an outdoor dog to let me know if anyone was poking around the house, to scare away possums and deer, and to help keep our chickens safe. Our next-door neighbor, who has been farming there for 46 years, recommended that we get something without a drop of birding blood in it because a bird dog would be more likely to go after our chickens. A corgi would be good, or an Australian Shepherd. Get a neutered female, he added, because the males tend to roam, even if neutered.

We got an unneutered male yellow lab. We didn't try to – our friends couldn't take him with them when they moved to a new place, and they have two little boys that love the dog. The whole situation just broke my heart. Besides, the dog is an outdoor dog, which is exactly what we wanted.

The dog is no longer an outdoor pet. A couple days after we got him, we took him to the vet, who amputated part of a crushed foot that had been bleeding for about two years. Because we were ordered to keep that foot dry and clean for 10 days after the surgery, we barricaded the dog in the front porch so I could care for him more easily. About halfway through his healing process, the big guy vaulted over our barricades and split his foot wide open again. As a result, the vet decided to tie up the injured foot in a sling, and tie a big plastic cone around the dog's head so he can't lick himself. When the dog walks outside, he lurches around like something on the brink of death, and his ridiculous plastic collar scrapes up bits of snow with every step. We are torturing the dog for its own good, but I just can't bear to think of him being lonely and scared while going through all of this. So he is lying in the kitchen right now (even though this is the cause of some family tension).

The whole problem is that this is the dog might qualify for sainthood. St. Francis of Assisi apparently said that one of the two things people can do to please God is to bear frailty with patience. If the same is true for dogs, then God must be delighted with this guy. In spite of everything, he remains unwaveringly gentle and cheerful. He gazes up at us with affectionate brown eyes and doesn't even chase the cats. I am completely in love.

My husband and I are concerned that our handling of this situation serves as a yet another sign that we won't be able to move past our city ways and be good farmers. This dog and our cats are a huge drain on time, money and energy that I could be putting into farm planning. That is a real problem.

Still, I couldn't imagine dealing with this any other way. I pray that if God wants me to go about this differently, then God should please consider changing my heart.

Climbing trees

A wooden ladder leaned against the enormous trunk of my maple tree. The rungs of that ladder became polished by my feet as I climbed up and down it, day after day and year after year. In that tree I enacted many imaginary dramas, clambering back and forth through different configurations of branches that formed distinct rooms. Sometimes I tried to climb into higher into the branches I rarely touched. Often, I just sat there. Things might have been different if I had brothers and sisters my own age to play with me or if I had parents who felt they had to keep me employed in profitable activity, but I did not have either of those things. Instead, I had time, which passed in a slow, wordless way, marked by shifts in the wind and changing shadows.

With that gift of time, I learned to wait silently with my head against a branch until I was filled with peace. It didn't happen right away, but if I waited long enough, I knew that a sweet, bright sensation would pass through me and leave me content. Then, I could sit in that tree without any words in my head, and know I was part of the branches, the leaves, and the wind. I was part of bird cries, sunshine, and the smell of mud.

In ninth grade, when my family built a new house on part of our land, I lost my tree. The tree was still there – I think it is still standing today -- but when I climbed it, our new neighbors could easily see me. Ninth graders, I thought, were a little too big to climb trees so conspicuously, and so I stopped. With that, I lost my way of relating to God, although I would not have been able to put those words on it at the time. Before ninth grade, I understood the peace that I found in that tree was part of my world, like a small child understands its mother's love to be an inevitable part of existence. When I could no longer climb the tree, I believed the loss was an unavoidable part of growing up, and I felt ashamed by my frantic grief.

I was a young adult before I recognized my time in that tree as a holy. When I started to attend Friends Meeting, the process of settling into waiting worship was completely familiar to me from my time in the maple. Instead of sitting with my head against a branch, I sat on a chair in a room full of people and I learned that I could find the peace of God there, as well. I felt the relief of someone who has been freed from a chronic pain.

More than 20 years after I stopped climbing my beloved maple, I have begun climbing trees again. This fall, I have occasionally let myself wander out to the maples on the western edge of our shelter belt and pull myself into their branches. Yesterday, as I sat down to write an essay for this blog, I kept hearing in my heart that it was time to climb a tree. I fought the frivolous urge valiantly until something in my heart said, "You are being disobedient.” With a sigh, I turned off the monitor and went outside. As I approached the trees, I suddenly had to fight back tears, which passed as quickly as the shadow of cloud. I pulled myself up into a maple, looked out into the turned earth of the cornfield, and breathed the earthy scent of the neighbor's cattle. The narrow tree limbs that bent down to the dry grass were so smooth they became golden with reflected sunshine. Fragrant leaves called me from the base of the trunk, so I swung myself down and flopped down amongst them, arms stretched wide as I gazed up at the brilliant pattern of slim gray against the blue. Like the tree limbs, I felt radiant with reflected light.

On getting what you want

At least once a week during this beautiful autumn, I had to cajole my children to go outside. The sun was shining on fall leaves, a mild wind blew, and the fields around us lay like blankets of flaxen colored corn and green alfalfa. In spite of this, my son wanted to sit on the family room floor and put together Legos, and my daughter wanted to sit on the couch and read.

“Go outside!” I told them, and they dragged their feet as if they didn't see the point of it. "The world has things to say to you,” I urged. "You need to go out there and hear those things now, because it is harder to hear the world when you are grown up. You have to learn the language of the outdoors while you are a kid.” They finally yielded, my daughter carrying her book out to her climbing tree.

Then, last week, the weather turned suddenly. The wind got raw and so strong that it blew over a small tree in our shelter belt. It rained, and then the sky brooded purple as it prepared to snow. The cold edged its way into my bones, and I sprinted whenever I was outside so I could warm up again as fast as possible.

During that afternoon, we went over to visit our friends. As I was wrapping up my hour-long chat with Molly, the mother of that family, all of our children all got dressed in warm gear and inexplicably went outside to romp and wrestle in the wet grass. We watched them through the window with wonder. We finally got dressed and went outside, too. Molly was going to feed her calves, and I was going to round up my children and take them home.

The children had other plans. They had been waiting for us to come out of the house so we could march with them through the corn fields, looking for ears of corn that had fallen down on the ground when the combine passed. On one level, this seemed absolutely ludicrous to me. On another level, it seemed like exactly what I have been hoping for, so I tied my hood around my head and followed the whole crowd out to the fields. The wind was so strong that I staggered a couple of times. A piece of rigid pink insulation as large as a twin mattress went cartwheeling over the gentle slope before us, blown by the gale. I was grateful that I had worn my big rubber farm boots because frigid water stood on the ground between the wretched rows of shorn corn stalks. I shivered so violently that my right arm seemed to take on a life of its own. Finally, the ridiculousness of it all gave me the giggles.

In the meantime, the children pranced along as though they were fawns on a lovely spring day. When they found a little cache of grain on the ground, they would cry out with glee, “I am rich in corn! I am rich in corn!” Sometimes there were tears if their riches were not distributed equitably, but then they took off in another direction and found a new treasure trove with enough to satisfy everyone. After what seemed to me like an eternity, everyone had enough corn, so we turned towards home. Now the ears of useless field corn sit on our counter as mementos, but they will soon join the compost.

It was a miserable experience, but now the colors of the brooding sky and wet corn stalks will be part of my heart and the hearts of my children. The buffeting wind will remain with us as an experience of unbridled power. I believe that while they were looking for corn, my children were learning to hear the language of wildness. I find myself wishing in vain that one could learn that language while staying warm and dry.