Warner Lake County Park Archives

Peace of the Pine Forest

May 29, 2022 by Denise Brake 5 Comments

I’ve been crying a lot lately—not for me and my station on this good, green Earth, but for other people. I cried for the victims of Putin’s war—the mothers and children who fled their homes, the fathers and brothers who stayed behind to fight, the old and infirmed who couldn’t flee and were bombed to death, and for every lost life and destroyed city. The tears escape my eyes when I watch the news or see the headlines—it is my knowing that what I am witnessing is antithetical to Goodness. Last week it was for the grocery shoppers in Buffalo, New York who were targeted and killed because of their skin color. This week, the tears flowed again for the young students and teachers at Uvalde, Texas. It could literally happen at any school at any time. Even the mass shootings happen so frequently that the mourning for the one before has hardly begun before it is ‘lost’ to the coverage of the newest one. Not to mention all the other, pervasive deaths by violence. Not to mention the perverse political rhetoric around the ‘reasons’ for the deaths. It is soul-crushing.

I know for sure that the fallout from each one of these violent losses of life is far-reaching and will be long-lived. Many of the victims, the families, the first responders, and the witnesses will carry the burden of trauma with them for their lifetime. The price we as individual persons and as a society pay for violence is unbelievably staggering. In the midst of a political culture that is not doing all it can to help prevent such tragedies, an individual person can feel overwhelmed and impotent in the face of it all. What do we do? Let me begin with a story that presented me with an important lesson.

Seventeen years ago when my father-in-law died, my brother-in-law sent a message to us that ended with “Peace be with you.” I was already in a state of activation—death, grief, loss, change—and I remember exclaiming rather indignantly to Chris, ” How can we have peace at a time like this?!” I did not understand at the time that my brother-in-law was offering a gift to each of us individually—that in spite of our loss and grief, we could have the comfort of peace. I did not accept that gift at the time—I didn’t know how—but since that time, I have not forgotten that offering. I have tried again and again and again to find peace within myself in the midst of my own pain and loss and of that of the world’s. A substantial part of finding peace in a time of crisis or a reaction to it, is learning to calm down our activated bodies—and when a person has an ingrained trauma response, it takes lots of practice to change. One of my practices to calm down and find peace is to go to the woods—I did it intuitively as a child, and I do it intentionally as an older adult. I find peace in the Pine forest.

So we went to Warner Lake County Park where I left Chris and his healing hip to sit beside the lake. He could see the Pine forest across the water. He was in the midst of the noise and exuberance of young adults who were already free for the summer and were anxious to sunbathe and swim in the chilly lake water. I tried to appreciate their exuberance even as I gladly walked away from their noise. Come walk with me into the forest.

According to florgeous.com, Violets symbolize honesty, protection, dreams, healing, and remembrance. May it be so. Peace of the Pine forest be with you.

A Season of Neutrality

November 29, 2020 by Denise Brake Leave a Comment

I am not neutral about my high school Chemistry class—it was the best thing that happened in my life that year! Many may be on the opposite side of the spectrum remembering tortuous labs and wondering why the heck the periodic table is even a thing. Most may just be neutral about it—I did it, it was ok, not memorable, not torture, I barely remember it. But remember learning about atoms with their nuclei of protons and neutrons with orbits of electrons filling the energy levels and how it all fit so perfectly as diagrammed on the periodic table! So good! But just the neutrons today—they make up the nucleus of atoms along with protons. Protons have a positive charge and repel one another. (The electrons orbiting the nucleus have a negative charge and ‘bond’ with the protons to sustain the atomic structure.) The neutrons have weight or mass similar to the protons, but they have no charge—they are neutral. They in essence neutralize the positive charges of the protons and keep the nucleus, and therefore the atom, intact.

We are in a neutral time of year—most plants are dormant, the weather is neither warm nor cold, and we’ve had some snow, but nearly all has melted. We’re still in Autumn, but the majority feels like it’s Winter already. And the colors of Nature are neutral—grays and light browns—when everything seems to blend into its surroundings.

But every once in a while on our hike at Warner Lake County Park, there was a bright and shining electron or a colorful proton (so to speak.)

What would the world be like if everyone loved and studied Chemistry and Biology–the science of how our world and bodies work? As with any subject, politics included, there are people who love that subject, study it, teach it, research it, and dedicate their lives to it. They know the protons and electrons and neutrons of their subject.

The best thing about being neutral and not believing or disbelieving in anything is that the nature reveals the truth in front of you automatically. –Aishwarya Shiva Pareek

Sometimes the nature that reveals the truth is as simple as counting numbers or as complex as cyber security. The complicating factor is our human nature. We all want things to be the way we want them, but that’s not the way Life goes. Being neutral means being impartial, not helping either side, unbiased, objective, even-handed, fair, open-minded, and detached from the outcome. After a nasty partisan election season, we need a season of neutrality. Let the grays and light browns calm down the system for a period of time. Let the sporadic bursts of color elucidate mistakes and missteps of the past and illuminate the path for the future. Let’s be neutrons for a while and keep our nuclear family and our world at large, intact.

Untying the Knots

November 10, 2019 by Denise Brake 4 Comments

Remember when you learned to tie your shoes? Or when your children did? How long it took to learn all the loops and over and unders and pulling it tight and even? How it took concentration and practice and patience and determination? A plethora of life lessons in the learning of a simple task.

We planned an after-work hike this week. Our destination was the mesmerizing pine forest that has a way of lifting our spirits into the treetops and grounding our feet into the carpet of pungent pine needles. I was surprised to see snow on the ground when we got there, though I shouldn’t have been—the temperatures had stayed below freezing all week since the scattered snowfall.

As we neared the bridge, I noticed a beaver dam—straight and expertly pieced together with the chewed-off logs and sticks. Wouldn’t it seem like quite the impossible task for a little beaver to be standing with stick in mouth surveying the river before him? (The lodge is on the edge of the bank in the upper left corner of the photo.)

As much as we wanted to ‘get away’ from the stresses plaguing us, we still needed to figure some things out, so resolutely began our discussion as we walked. It quickly fell apart as Chris brought up a hot button issue prefaced with “You’re not going to like this, but…” I should say, I fell apart—my hackles raised in defense, I stopped in my tracks—like I couldn’t think and talk and walk at the same time. That wound that had scabbed over and re-opened time and time again. My voice raised in pitch and volume and intensity. (As much as I try to be reasonable about this, at this time in my life I don’t have the bandwidth to be very reasonable.) We tried to talk about it a little more, but my stomach and chest were tightening. I stopped again and said, “I came here to untie the knots in my insides, not to make more.”

So we walked on in silence, and the trees began to loosen my tightness. I thought about knots, these knots in my stomach, how I work every day to ease them—and yet here they are again.

And when we got to the Pines, I realized I was surrounded by knots. Every branch of every tree becomes a knot in the wood.

With the self-pruning Red Pines, the knots are more obvious as the lower branches fall off and the darkened scar or knot is left behind.

We walked on a trail that we hadn’t been on before, and we found a small, three-sided log shelter. I sat on the log bench with my back against the back wall of logs and looked out at the forest. An orange glow of Oak leaves shone through the branch-bare trunks of the near Pines.

I studied the structure around me—the knotty log walls, the knotty ceiling planks, the less-knotty heartwood timbers. I guess we’re all made of knots.

Without growth, we wouldn’t have the branches and wouldn’t have the knots.

The sun was getting low in the sky as we walked the snowy, leaf-strewn trails back towards the car, and the woods got darker.

The moon was shining over Warner Lake in the dark blue sky over the dark blue water with relief and reflections of black silhouetted trees and branches. I breathed a sigh of untying

We begin our lives by learning to tie the knots—we grow and develop, sending out branches of discovery. We tie the knots of relationships—family, friendships, and marriage. We tie the knots of learning by piecing together facts and making connections. Looking back now, that part seems easy.

Have you ever stood in a lumber yard selecting boards for a project? I was taught to choose the boards with the least knots. The knots are hard to nail through and often weaken the wood. As the tree grows and gets older, there is more heartwood with less knots. As we grow and get older, we learn the loops of life, we practice the overs and unders, and we begin to untie some of the knots that no longer serve us, especially those that form in our insides as we stand before a seemingly impossible task or unwanted situation. We’re all made of knots—hard, curled places that often make us feel weak—like my old wounds that make me unreasonable at times. But I’m thankful for the trees, the forest, and the Pines that help untie the knots inside me, and I’m thankful that I’m building heartwood.

Inhaling the Color

December 3, 2017 by Denise Brake 2 Comments

When the kids were younger, we spent hours each day on art projects—finger paints, crayons, sidewalk chalk, markers, watercolors, acrylic paints at the Fisher-Price easel with stubby, color-coded brushes, and many more. Emily was a visual learner and artist from a very young age. She held a pencil correctly when she was one year old, she drew detailed pictures of our family, and she would come home from kindergarten and describe the color and style of clothes and shoes her teacher wore (fast forward to Stitch Fix!) I can’t remember how old she was at the time, but she went through a period when she was coloring with crayons that she would put one in her mouth and pretend she was smoking. When I gently admonished her for emulating smoking, she replied that they were special good rainbow ones with vitamins and fruit! That memory was recently revived for her when she saw an ad for rainbow-colored personal essential oil diffusers—cylinder-shaped diffusers of essential oils that you inhale into your mouth and out your nose—just like her childhood idea!

Color is a scarce commodity in Nature as late Fall morphs into Winter. Our Thanksgiving weekend hike at Warner Lake County Park was devoid of much color, but we were able to find some interesting hues by looking closely at the gray-brown landscape. Red berries of a woodland perennial persisted among the pine needles. Red-violet branches of Red-twigged Dogwood brightened the lake shore, and scarlet berries of a Viburnum looked enticing against the sleepy gray background.

Rusty orange leaves cling to the understory Ironwood trees through most of the winter, making them easy to identify. Bittersweet vines produce vibrant red-orange berries perfect for Fall decoration.

Happy yellow-gold seedheads remain from a prolific-blooming wildflower. Golden stands of grass lined the ice-covered Warner Lake.

Healthy green moss covered a fallen tree, outlining the upended roots and trunk. A fallen cluster of green pine needles, thanks to a nibbling squirrel, intertwined with the brown needles that were shed earlier in the season.

The hiking day began with blue skies and active, fluffy clouds of white before a front of gray clouds and sprinkles covered the cerulean. A few days later the day ended with a rainbow-colored sunset painted on the western easel of sky.

One of the gifts of Winter, when the landscape is devoid of color, is the simplification of sight. With the leaves gone, the structure and essence of a tree is obvious. There are less things to look at—no flowers or colors to capture our attention for a second before it moves to the next thing. Time seems to slow a bit. The things that do capture our attention are worth noting and examining. Late Fall and Winter open up the opportunity to look closely at ourselves—what is our structure and essence? What is the understory of our life that has been covered up with the exuberance of Spring and Summer and that is now easier to identify? How do we outline a healthy life? How do we intertwine the old parts of ourselves that need to be shed with the green, growing parts that need to be expressed? The season of my life when the kids were young was busy, fun, full of laughter, love, and creativity—an exuberant, colorful Spring! Emily taught me that we can look at things differently, that we can re-create a negative into a positive, that we can breathe in the special healing rainbow goodness of Life.

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