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River Dance

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Countless times I have walked the riverside trail at Mississippi River County Park. I have seen the River’s bank and the boat launch during the ice and snow of Winter, the overflowing water of Spring, and the drought of Summer. I know where the low spots are that stay muddy and mosquito-laden, where certain flowers grow, and where the deer like to graze. I am also familiar with Bend in the River Park on the other side of the River with its canopy of Oaks on the high bluffs that overlook the Mighty Mississippi. On Saturday of Labor Day weekend, I saw the River from the River’s point of view. Chris, Emily, and I launched our trusty Alumacraft canoe into the softly-rippling water. I was the duffer—not the desirable position, especially for my sixty year old joints, but a needed one when canoeing as a trio. I sat on a floatation cushion in the middle, on the bottom of the canoe, while the more experienced paddlers took their seats.

The water was low from our ongoing drought. Little beaches of sand appeared in places, many unseen from the land above them. While logs that have fallen into or floated down the River could be seen from the park trail, from the River’s view, they became an integral part of the boundary between water and land—they were much more noticeable, more usable, and more artistic.

Some of the shallow parts of the River were a horizontal painting of aquatic plants and algaes that dragged the bottom of the canoe and slowed the competent paddling of Emily and Chris.

Other shallow parts were clear and glowing with golden sunlight that revealed millions of fragments of mollusk shells and often a complete bivalve pearlized shell. A whole new world of underwater life not seen from the land-side.

Beautiful blossoms of Purple Loosestrife populated the islands. It is not a desirable plant for wetlands, lakes, and rivers and is categorized as invasive and noxious. They have thick, woody roots that form a dense web that can block natural drainage areas and outcompete native plants.

Native Willows thrive with their feet in the water and provide shelter for many of the inhabitants that live along the River.

A young Belted Kingfisher flew among the branches along the bank. Her crested head and distinct breast feathers identified the small fish-eater.

Another well-camouflaged water bird, a Green Heron, posed on a fallen log like a museum display. No movement, anonymity, and hopes of not being detected—all natural behaviors to enhance their food-finding fishing.

Joe-Pye Weed grew along the banks, their rosy clusters of flowers an important source of nectar for butterflies and bees at this time of year.

Another late summer flower to adorn the banks is Sneezeweed, a member of the Aster family. Its bright yellow petals and yellow-green ball-like centers make a cheery sight along with sunflowers in the green expanse of riverbank.

We paddled for three and a half to four miles; our goal was the dock of friends of ours who live down the road from us. The downstream current was negligible since rain had been so scarce the whole summer and the southeast wind blew the waves against us. Seeing the landscape from the River’s viewpoint in our relatively slow-moving craft was a peaceful gift in the late-summer morning.

We circled around the north side of an island away from the channel where boats and jet-skis were beginning to make waves. I saw a Great Blue Heron standing in the shallow water, and we stopped paddling to watch the Great Bird on this Great River. We watched a slow-motion dance, beginning with a bow. Its long neck and long legs curved and bobbed, lifted and stretched, pranced and turned until it finished with a flair, standing tall and elegant on its home stage.

We left the island performance and concentrated on reaching our goal as the sun shone hotter, the River became busier with boats, and my legs grew stiff and tingly from inaction.

Goose down feathers floating on the algae and water

Our River trek took two and a half hours. Emily expertly landed us beside our friends’ dock. I awkwardly unfolded my legs from the bottom of the canoe and tried to move my uncooperating hips over the canoe seat while ‘staying low,’ in order to get to the ladder. Let’s just say I was not as graceful as a Great Blue Heron. But our canoe trek was the highlight of my weekend. It was wonderful to see this familiar River from ‘the other side,’ from the River’s point of view. There are so many things we miss or even dismiss when we look at some thing or some body or some issue only from the safe, familiar bank we are used to. Even the fast-boat river riders see and experience the River differently than the canoers and kayakers. It is an issue as old as time. Walk a mile in my shoes; paddle a mile (or three) in my canoe; work a day in my job; live a day in my skin. All impel us to live in empathy and understanding of people who are different from us and who experience life from a very different island of reference. I hope the River Dance reminds us all to live in empathy, peace, and grace.

Walking in Sun Sparkles

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Me making decisions is an excruciating exercise for most of the people around me who do so ‘normally’ or God forbid, quickly. This decision-making can be about buying something or doing something or getting someone to do a repair or whatever. It takes me a long time to decide. It’s part of the fall-out of my perfectionism, I think—I’m afraid I will make the ‘wrong’ decision. So I look at things, read endless reviews, think about it, wonder if the quality is ‘good enough,’ question the future utility of the object, look at it again, think about the pros and cons, wonder if I have enough energy to do something, think about the ramifications, and the craziest of all, wonder what other people would do or will think. It’s exhausting just reading about the process, isn’t it?!

Mother Nature seems to have been in my indecisive mode when it came to Spring this year—she allowed the snow to melt, then made it snow; warmed things up, then froze things; showed the tiniest bit of green, then brown, brown, brown. But we no longer have to search for Spring—Mother Nature is all in on the Spring decision! It was a long time coming, but Spring is bursting forth everywhere! With the snow melt, ice melt, and Spring rains, the Mississippi River has overflowed its banks. When it comes to wildfires and floods, though we most often think of them in negative ways, there is a time and place for each of them. Fires and floods have been an integral part of our ecosystem since the beginning and bring benefits to the plants that inhabit the places that are affected. A floodplain is low lying ground around a river that periodically floods. It is rich with river sediments and nutrients and has a diverse and abundant plant population. As I walked along the River at Mississippi River County Park, I could see the flooding of lowlands and islands.

With the water and nutrients from flooding, and the warm sun of Spring, vegetation was springing from the ground. The trio of leaves of Trillium were unfurling on their long red stems—soon a single flower with three petals will emerge from the foliage for a short period of time until the whole plant dies back for the rest of the year.

The early-blooming Spring Ephemerals have an accelerated growth cycle, taking advantage of the sunshine that filters down before the trees produce their leaves. Dutchman Breeches like to grow on the drier embankments by the River.

Bloodroots were in their full glory! Their single leaf with scalloped lobes wraps like a blanket around a single flower. Often the flower blooms before the leaf unfolds.

Gooseberry shrubs are one of the first to leaf out, and the spotted leaves of White Trout Lilies carpeted the forest floor, where a week ago it was brown.

A few had begun to bloom, and the bees were already gathering pollen and sipping nectar from them.

Hairy Wild Ginger was also unfurling from its underground sleep. The low-lying red flowers were still in tight buds.

The backwaters of the Mississippi—those ponds and streams that often stay filled year-round—were also flooded. I crossed a bridge that had streams of water on both sides that I jumped across. Turtles had their sunning logs poking into the water, and when I got too close, they plopped into the pond leaving only air bubbles behind.

I thought the inland trail would be passable, but very soon after the bridge, water spilled over it. The first ‘puddle’ had an edge of vegetation and a stick that helped me pass with only a little mud on my shoes.

I spotted a Great Blue Heron in the flooded area beside the trail and knelt down to get his picture—what a handsome bird! He walked among the sun sparkles and red Maple flowers that floated on the water.

When I stood up, he flew a bit farther away where I could see his long legs, and I realized how deep the water was where he walked in the flowers and sparkles.

The next trail ‘puddle’ was long and too deep to skirt by. I realized that I wasn’t going to get through without getting my feet wet—so into the flood water I walked. It was warmer than I expected at this time of year. I must have walked through four or five flood puddles before I got to higher ground. I had walked this path many times before but never in water up to my knees!

At the end of the last flood puddle, I found a downy feather, half white, half gray, among the debris and Maple flowers. Smiling to myself, I joyfully celebrated that Spring was really here!

My indecisive decision-making is time and energy consuming, and I had an ally in Mother Nature this Spring. But like Mother Nature’s all-in commitment to Spring this week, once I make a decision, I rarely change my mind or regret the choice I made. I’m still trying to hone down my process. In certain areas of my life, I am able to make faster decisions with confidence—like the Great Blue Heron, I stepped into the flood waters without deliberation. There is a time and place for everything under heaven. In our limited thinking (compared to the Universe), we often judge things as good or bad, wise or foolish, right or wrong, and yet we don’t see the whole picture—that fire can rejuvenate, that flood waters can fuel growth and sustain lives, and that we can joyfully celebrate all the seasons of our lives.

A Great Wind is Blowing

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Time and the wind never leave anything alone. –Marty Rubin

There was no ignoring the wind. No ‘cooling breeze’ upside could be proclaimed, for the weather wasn’t warm and snow was coming down…sideways. We tried to time our trip to South Dakota for when the morning temp nudged above freezing and before the wind was at its worst, but it picked up speed the farther west we drove as the snow piled up alongside the road in places. And that was just day one of the gusty tempest. Night and day it continued, leaving nothing alone.

If anyone questions the value of trees planted in a ‘windbreak’ or ‘shelter belt’ around a home or for livestock, these were days that proved their worth without a shadow of a doubt. When I walked beyond the trees, the wind literally took my breath away, and I could not speak. By the third day, the bluster had diminished a bit, and we drove around Oakwood Lakes to see the waterfowl. The geese and ducks on the water were like surfers, bobbing up and down on the whitecap waves, giving in to the power of the wind and water.

Some flew against the wind for short stints, perhaps to find a more welcoming environment that didn’t consume so much of their energy.

Others had their feet firmly on the ground with a bank or rocks that helped to block the terrific wind.

There was a menagerie of waterfowl coexisting against the elements and with the elements—the wind their adversary, the water their foundation. It was wonderful to see Canvasback ducks with their beautiful red heads, sloping black bills, and shining white backs. They intermingled with others in a pileup against the shore—their heads tucked down in rest mode with some relief against the wind.

A dark slash of a wind tide in a shallow pasture puddle drew a line across the newly-melted snow and ice.

I was hoping to see some Pelicans, and my Mom noticed some of the big birds as we drove by another section of the lake. We walked along a grass road, the cold wind hitting us in the face and wobbling our cameras with every attempt to capture the peculiar and lovely birds. A bank of snow and a tangle of tumbleweeds gave the pair a bit of respite from the wind, even as they bounced around on the waves.

When I got too close, they took off to put more distance between us. Their black-tipped wings, mostly hidden in their swimming position, were in stark contrast to the alabaster white of the rest of their feathers. Their orange bills and dark orange feet completed their dazzling ensemble (the whole of what they are).

A pair of Great Blue Herons flew into a cove and farther up the shore stood another solitary fellow, his long legs and neck braced against the wind, his feathers flattened and fluttering.

The wind doesn’t leave the leafless Oak tree alone either—it will prune any dead or dying branches with a snap of its power. But the strong, hard wood of the Oak tree and the deep, expansive roots offer the best resilience to the bullying, beating wind.

Time and the wind never leave us alone, even as we wish for it to do so. How can we be halfway through the fourth month of the ‘new’ year already? Who else has ‘lost’ time to the pandemic years? Time and the wind itself aren’t the culprits—it is what they do to us and how we handle them. Too little time? Too much wind? I think all of us have experienced both. So how do we navigate the power of time and the wind? I think both require us to maintain a strong foundation, whether that be faith, intention, self-awareness, gratefulness, or physical protection (or likely all of them and more.) Catherine the Great proclaimed, “A great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache.” In my experience, it gives you both. It can be hurtful, harmful, harrowing, and take your breath away, and it can spark imagination, ideas, and new directions. We can’t outrun or outfly the bullying wind or the restless time, but we can accept its power, brace ourselves with resilience, and surf the ups and downs in our own lovely, dazzling ensembles.

Aqua Terra Part II + Aeris

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I think we all have a natural affinity to the earth or water, either through our long lines of ancestral DNA or the environment or most likely, both. We are the products of nature and nurture. Water is beautiful to me and intriguing. I love the aqua reflections and ripples, cascades and still pools. I’m also not very comfortable in bodies of water like those deep lakes in the BWCA—I carry some fear and an extra dose of caution. But the land…that’s a different story. I feel at home on the land. It is my home.

We camped at Blue Mounds State Park with my Mom. Both her and my Dad came from farm families in eastern South Dakota. The land was their home, their livelihood, and the entity they interacted with on a daily basis. My parents farmed for a living for a short period of their married lives, but the connection to the land continued and was passed down from their parents through them to their children.

We awoke when the lake behind us was waking up—the Great Blue Heron was fishing for his breakfast, stalking the wetland and darting his long bill into the water, then stretching his neck to let the fish slide down his lengthy gullet. The sun popped up over the horizon, coloring the dawn sky with the same hues as the quartzite rock that lay in the ground around us. A pair of geese landed on the water, their ripples separate, then merged. And the mega-chorus of blackbirds lifted from the cattails into the aeris.

We cooked breakfast and readied ourselves for hiking. We planned to go on Mound Trail, described as one long, gradual hill—1.5 miles one way. It followed the fence line that enclosed the bison, so we were hoping to see them again. The mowed grass trail was easy to walk on, and as described, the slope was gentle. The tallgrass prairie had gone to seed—the grasses, most of the flowers, and the weeds. Whenever we turned around, we marveled at how far we could see, and then realized we weren’t even close to the top of the Mound.

At some point up the trail we encountered a small group of Bison mamas and babies just basking in the sunlight. Sprays of purple Asters and an occasional Sunflower bloomed in the prairie grasses. Prickly Pear Cacti were scattered throughout the Mound prairie, most often by the boulders that protruded from the ground where the soil was thin and heat from the rocks provided them a desert-like environment. At this time of year, the red fruits of the cacti contrasted from the green paddles and the long, white, needle-like spines.

At the top of the Mound by a landmark boulder called Eagle Rock, we had a full 360 degree view of the surrounding terra. Adventurer, lawyer, and painter George Catlin, on his journey to the nearby Pipestone quarry in 1836 wrote:

“There is not a tree or bush to be seen. The eye may range east and west to a boundless extent over a surface covered with grass. The grass is green at one’s feet but changes to blue in the distance like the blue and vastness of the ocean. Man feels here, the thrilling sensation of unlimited freedom.”

From Eagle Rock, it was a short hike down to the former home of Frederick Manfred, author of many books, including Lord Grizzly (made into the movie ‘The Revenant.’) The home and surrounding land was purchased in 1972 by Minnesota State Parks and transformed into the interpretive center (now closed due to structural problems) and Blue Mounds State Park.

The rock used on Manfred’s home was salvaged from the first school built in 1897 in Luverne that had been originally quarried from this historic red rock quarry. The old quarry site is available to climbers, one of whom we talked to who had just free-climbed the steep wall. Meanwhile, my knees got weak as I inched towards the edge and looked down at the beautiful red rock.

We had 1.5 miles to return to the trailhead on the Upper Cliffline trail loop that passed by the quarry. And here I want to give kudos to my Mom, whose almost-mid-80’s birthday we were celebrating. It was a warm, sunny day for this substantial and interesting hike, and she kept up with us ‘young-uns.’ Young and old are such relative terms—weeks ago we were the ‘old ones’ with our kids in the BWCA, and now we were the young ones. My Mom is an inspiration—I hope I’m still hiking and exploring when I’m her age.

Back at our campsite, we rested, built a fire, and assembled our ‘hobo dinners’ of ground beef raised on my Mom’s pasture land, potatoes and onions dug from her garden, and carrots I bought and cut up–lol. We wrapped it all in foil and threw them on the red hot coals. A delicious dinner in fifty minutes along with a tomato and cucumber salad from her garden! She is still a woman of the land—my terra-mother.

At evening sunset time, the resident heron was standing in a golden pool of water—aqua gold—stealthily placing one foot in front of the other for some late-day fishing. The blackbirds were once again noisily settling into their cattail shelters. And as darkness fell, the moon reflected its golden light on the midnight blue water.

The next day, we added ‘aeris’ to our aqua and terra—the air or atmosphere. We hiked at nearby ‘Touch the Sky Prairie’, a joint venture between the Brandenburg Prairie Foundation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Photographer Jim Brandenburg splits his time and love between the Northwoods forests around Ely and the southwestern prairies where he grew up. We had followed his path between these two places. I understand his divided love—the prairie never leaves you, and new places can take up residence in your heart.

While I appreciate the water, I love the land, the earth, and I most specifically love the prairie. It is in my DNA and from my terra-nurturing Mom. The prairie allows a person to ‘see.’ Nothing gets in the way. The prairie holds the water, allows it to flow, and meets the aeris with humbleness. It showcases the large bodies of animals, colorful wildflowers, boulders of geological wonder, and a magnificent sky. The tallgrass prairie has diminished to a small percentage of the land since George Catlin wrote about its ocean-like qualities—fields and trees have replaced the waving grasses. Visiting these historic prairie vistas, with bison and purple asters, reminds me of the ripples generated by one person’s life and choices and how those ripples merge, interact, and combine into one entity. The terra-earth is all of our homes, the aqua-water sustains each one of us, and the aeris-air gives us life. It’s a thrilling sensation.

Aqua Terra Part I

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When we emerged from the wilderness of the Boundary Waters in August, I bought myself a bracelet made from Aqua Terra Jasper to remind me of my amazing week. Water and land. Life-sustaining water and body-grounding earth. The colors of blue-green, sand, and reddish-brown swirled and intermingled on the beads, every one a distinct work of art that together embodied the look and feel of Nature’s offering to us in the Boundary Waters. The stone of peace.

Four weeks after leaving the peace of the Boundary Waters with our kids in far northeastern Minnesota, Chris and I traveled to the southwestern corner of the state to camp for the weekend with my Mom. We met at Blue Mounds State Park, just north of Luverne, in the county named Rock, which we quickly saw was merely an accurate description of the land. As we settled into our campsite—my Mom with her self-renovated retro camper and us in our little tent—we soon discovered that Aqua Terra would also be the most compelling environments of this prairie place.

Right behind our campsite was a short path through a few trees to a cliff of red rocks that overlooked a narrow, dammed lake of Mound Creek. It was the inhabitants of this aqua environment that captured my attention each dawn and dusk and serenaded us each night. With our late afternoon arrival and my mini-exploration, one creature stood in the shallow water in front of a field of waving cattails—a Great Blue Heron. He was statue-still, a little bent-over looking, shoulders drooping as his wings hung down in rest or resignation.

He had some unruly chest plumes, but also a tuft of down feathers at the back of his head—a young one, perhaps? His eyes closed and opened in his stillness.

Down the lake a ways, there stood another aqua-creature, again as still and quiet as a statue, and they seemed to be watching one another. A Canadian Goose stood rather awkwardly, one foot behind the other, with a bent head and neck looking in the direction of the heron. Beside her on the water were little piles of down feathers—at first I thought she had been preening herself, but that usually happens when the bird is relaxed, and she was not relaxed. Perhaps there had been a scuffle of territory between the two? They both stayed in the same position for all the minutes I watched them.

There were some waterfowl who seemed not to have a care in the world—a few immature Blue-Winged Teal (most likely.) Happy ducks swimming through duckweed.

After our quick, light supper, we drove to the Bison viewing platform where the rocky, rolling prairie terra sustains a herd of over 100 bison, including the spring-born calves.

There were many outcrops of Sioux Quartzite rocks and boulders, pink to purple in color from the presence of iron oxide and millions of years of formation. Some of the boulders were as big as a buffalo or is the buffalo as big as a boulder?

The boulders are used as ‘scratching posts’ for the bison and have been for many thousands of years. They rub their wooly heads and necks against the corner of the rocks, and in doing so, smooth the boulders to a shiny pink texture while relieving the itch of shedding their thick winter coats.

Another way bison scratch is using a buffalo wallow in the dirt. They may rub their heads or actually roll in the dirt to help with shedding, to get relief from biting insects, or to cool down in the heat.

Officially, these animals are American Bison—Bison bison as genus and species. But many of us call them buffalo. When the French fur trappers came here in the 1600s, they called them “boeuf” because they looked like the buffalos of Asia and Africa (Water and Cape Buffalos). I tried to call them bison for the weekend, to get my brain and mouth re-trained, but my default is still ‘buffalo.’

Gestation for a bison is 283 days—9.5 months—and the calves are 25-40 pounds at birth with a reddish-brown coat that darkens with age. So even by September, they have coats like their parents, and only size helps to identify them from far away. They are also growing horns already—both males and females.

As we watched, the bison peacefully grazed across the pasture and up the hill, disappearing over the horizon. They graze for nine to eleven hours each day, year round, using their massive heads to move snow aside, if need be.

The earth supported their huge half-ton to ton bodies. Bluestem grass, along with other prairie grasses and wildflowers, is the staple for nourishment to sustain their large frames.

As the sun sank in the western sky and the bison grazed away from us, a flock of blackbirds swooped across the sky, and a pheasant rooster squawked and ran through the grass. Deer leapt across the prairie, their coats burnished by the setting sun. And the nearly-full moon revealed itself as the sky darkened.

Back at our campsite, we heard where the blackbirds were settling for the night—that ‘field’ of cattails by the lake behind us. The chorus of their chattering continued long into the darkness. More geese flew in to Upper Mound Lake, their ‘Aquabnb’ for the night. We heard some rattling calls from the heron who may not have been so happy to share ‘his lake’ with all the others.

In the dusky light, the red rock cliff had a pink and purple glow about it—the firm terra at the edge of the fluid aqua.

The environments themselves—terra and aqua—are incredibly diverse—the number of different species of grasses and perennial wildflowers in a native prairie is in the hundreds, if not thousands. The lakes and streams support the same diversity of aqua species. But the showstoppers of our weekend at Blue Mounds were the birds of the lake and the bison of the land. Both were enchanting. When was the last time you were enchanted? And what was the source of that enchantment? Was it a temporary ‘high’ or a deeply satisfying ‘knowing’ that you were experiencing a bit of magic? The aqua-creatures and the terra-creatures were captivating, especially the heron and the bison. The source of that enchantment was Mother Nature—the creator of all that sustains us, all that supports us, and all that flows within us. Peace.