Please Hold

It is snowing like crazy. Roads are closed down. Cars are in the ditch. Businesses are closed due to the weather. Grocery stores are short on eggs. Flights are being cancelled. Schools are on snow days. Plans are being put on hold. Earlier this morning our neighbor came to plow our road, and in the process got his rig stuck in the ditch. A few minutes later my husband and two other neighbors rallied together with snow shovels, tow straps, and pickup trucks to pull him out.

In short, it’s winter. The days are short, the nights long, and there is an otherworldly stillness that fills the air with the sound of silence.

Winter is a reminder that life is unpredictable. It can change in a heart murmur, a snowstorm, an icy patch of road, or a power outage. It’s a time to remember that we are meant to rely on one another. Check in with each other. Share a meal, lend a hand, and maybe a snow shovel.

Winter is a reminder of the importance of slowing down and allowing life to come to just short of a halt. We ignore these slower days at our own peril. Times of dormancy are necessary for life to spring forth in new ways. In nature, and, in our bodies, our work, and our souls.

Winter is a reminder to be present to the here and nowness of our lives. It invites us to set aside our to-do lists and settle in for a spell. Lord willing and the creek don’t freeze, there will be ample time to get back into the groove of doing. This short season offers the possibility of establishing a pace and a rhythm for the year before the year establishes one for us.

I’m writing this as I am on what might be a five-hour hold time to book reservations for a much anticipated trip to Scotland later this year. The snow continues to fall outside my window. There are good leftovers in the fridge for dinner, firewood is stacked on the porch, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are in the playoffs, and I’m at my desk writing.

Winter is life’s way of putting us on hold. Minus the elevator music.

To Begin Again

She was born on August 8, 1953.

Compassionate. Creative. Courageous. She arrived on the planet with these innate qualities in tow, and they are the stars by which she steers her ship, come what may. Always has. Always will.

My best friend for almost 50 years, Kristine Patterson wears her heart on her sleeve, while always leaving ample room for yours. There are more creative ideas in that beautiful heart of hers than most of the rest of ours put together. Refusing to let fear have its way with her, she steps out where angels fear to tread, and invites them to come along. And they do.

Like most of us, life didn’t turn out as she expected. More glorious goodness than she ever thought possible, and more pain and loss than she thought she could bear. Time and again she has had to call upon her compassion to keep her heart open, creativity to make beautiful the life that is hers, and the courage to get up every day and choose to begin again. And never more than when the life she had worked so fiercely to build got blown to smithereens. It would have been so easy to give in and give up. To allow her heart to harden over, her creativity to wither away, and her courage to falter and allow fear to bully its way into her soul. But she never did.

One day at a time, she chose to begin again.

Moving into a small bungalow on a quiet street beneath a towering Dutch Elm, she began building a home in her own heart. The home that had been waiting for her all along. Sweeping out any old stories that had held her hostage, she made room for new ones that offered her freedom. Grieving what had been lost, she slowly opened her heart to what was to come. Sifting and sorting through the cupboard of her life, she held on to the goodness and beauty that still held true, and let go of that which no longer did. Or perhaps never had.

Her hands found their way to clay. The clay became works of art. Each work of art became a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

Her heart found its way to new love. That new love became a new life. That new life became the next chapter in the story that began 70 years ago on August 8, 1953.

Today marks the beginning of another trip around the sun for this magnificent friend of mine, and I can’t think of a better way to celebrate her birthday than to join with her and say, Today, I am choosing to begin again.

A Seismic Shift

On May 18, 1980, at 8:32 in the morning, Mt. St. Helens erupted. It was the deadliest and most destructive volcanic eruption in U.S. history.

On that same day, a 32 year-old geologist was living in New Zealand with his wife, and a 26 year-old buyer for Nordstrom was living in Tigard, Oregon with her husband.

A month later that same geologist was back for a short visit to the U.S. for a family wedding in the state of Washington. Borrowing a car, he drove from Seattle to the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, WA, where he handed his CV to the scientist in charge of hiring. Returning to New Zealand he began applying for teaching positions. In September of that same year he received a call from that same scientist who offered him a job. He accepted the position, moved to Vancouver, where he worked as a research scientist studying lahars (mudflows), like the one that occurred on Mt. St. Helens. His family grew as he and his wife welcomed two daughters into their home.

The 26 year-old buyer watched the eruption on the news, fascinated by the immense power that only the natural world can wield. She continued her career in the fashion industry, and she and her husband brought two daughters into the world too.

In 1989 both of their marriages ended.

They were each single for 5 years.

In 1993 the then 45 year-old geologist placed a personal ad in a local newspaper favored by urban professionals. The then 40 year-old fashionista wasn’t looking for love, but while building a fire for the pizza-and-a-movie night she and her young daughters had every Friday, the words Romantic Scientist caught her eye as she crumpled up a page of the newspaper. An oxymoron if she’d ever heard one. But there was something about that ad that intrigued her. On a whim she wrote a letter to the romantic nerd, stuck a photo of herself with her daughters in the envelope, and drove it to the nearby postoffice before she lost her nerve.

A few days later she received a phone call from the geologist.

They’ve been married now for 29 years.

If Mt. St. Helens hadn’t erupted the geologist would have taken a professorship at a university somewhere, wouldn’t have adopted his two incredible daughters, or placed an ad in a paper on the West Coast. He wouldn’t have met the love of his life, nor would she have met hers. They wouldn’t have had the chance to love and raise their four shared daughters, welcome sons-in-law and grand littles, and build a crazy good life together.

43 years after the eruption of Mt. St. Helens I am still amazed at the forces that converge to shape the lives we have. At how we are all part of a great worldwide web of connection that can create a seismic shift in our lives in the blink of an eye, or in this case, the explosion of a mountain.

Credit: Krimmel, Robert. Public domain.

(With gratitude to "Loowit" or "Louwala-Clough" as she is known to those who named her long before people who look like me arrived on the scene. Leave it to a woman to shake up the world.)

It's not an oxymoron. It just feels like one.

To be active is to be energetic, engaged, and lively.

To wait is to stay put, linger, and to mark time.

Put them together and you have what is known as active waiting.

It feels like an oxymoron, but it’s not.

As I write this, winter isn’t over but spring is on the way. Snow is still on the ground while underneath things are preparing to grow. Branches are budding but haven’t yet bloomed. Mama elk patiently carry their calves while waiting to give birth once the vegetation they depend on for food is more plentiful.

Nature seems to understand the importance of actively waiting.

Human beings, not so much.

We are doers, not waiters, and trying to do both at the same time feels like a crazy maker. Like trying to rub your tummy and pat your head. We can do one or the other, but not both. We can either do something or wait, but not both.

But what if Nature knows what she’s talking about? What if she knows that wisdom lies in preparing for what is ahead by staying present to what is here now. By staying put while continuing to look down the road. Allowing things to unfold rather than forcing them before their time. Letting more puzzle pieces make themselves known while arranging the ones we have.

Active waiting might look like writing a little something everyday while allowing that creative idea to percolate. Packing up one room at a time here so so as to be ready to move there. Designing a new garden while snow is still on the ground. Applying for a job while still fully engaged in the one we have. Reflecting on what is on our side of the fence before talking about what is on theirs. Focusing on what is right in front of us while not losing sight of where we are headed. Being fully in the present while anticipating the future. Staying with what is so as to be better equipped for what is to come.

Active waiting isn’t an oxymoron.

It just feels like one.

Over Winter?

We are so over winter. At least that’s what I am hearing from almost everyone I know, and plenty of people I don’t. People are tired of the cold, the gray, the wet, and in my little neck of the woods, the snow that just keeps coming.

But what if winter isn’t done with us yet?

It’s been a long winter.

What, I wonder, is preparing to grow?

What, I wonder, needs a little more time in order to be ready to flourish?

What, I wonder, will show itself, if we are willing to wait but a little longer?

Whatever it is, I’ll bet it’s worth the wait.

Climbing A Mountain

Do you think you two have another climb up Mt. Adams in you?

Because if you do, we want to do it with you.

Translation: We want to get up there with you while you still can.

That conversation last year with our niece and her husband started it all. Tom and I had to think about it, given that we’re not spring chickens anymore. On our morning walk the next day we decided that while we might not have multiple more climbs in us, we probably had at least one. With that in mind we opened the idea up to the rest of the generation behind us, and in the end, three couples threw their hats and hiking boots into the Mt. Adams 2022 ring.

We’ve been training for it for a year, readying ourselves to be strong enough to make the 12.2 mile trek to the 12,281’ summit. Over the course of that climb we would gain 6600 ft of elevation.

However.

You can train all you want and still not make it to the top.

Different obstacles got in the way for different people. Some of the hardest work we did was internal. Can I do this? What if I can’t. How can it be this hard? What if I slow everyone else down? Will I be able to overcome my fear of heights? What if I get altitude sickness? What if my old injury flairs up? What if I’m the weakest link?

In the end we had to come up against those fears, which is what happens in life on and off the mountain. Eventually we have to face them in order to be free of them.

The first day we hiked for eight hours, most of it on soft snow, with 40+ pound packs on our backs. It was a harder, longer day than any of us had anticipated, and as the sun dropped lower in the sky we began to give out. The altitude was having its way with some of us, and it was clear we needed to make camp soon. Apparently my speech was getting very slow, nausea and serious dehydration arrived on our scene, and I knew we were in trouble when Tom couldn’t seem to figure out how to put up our tent.

We found ourselves on a rocky outcrop with just enough room for four tents. Except for the ground beneath our tents, we had to maneuver over uneven boulders and rocks that were just a sprained ankle, broken leg, or worse waiting to happen. The temperature dropped, the light grew dim, and the wind came up. I was reminded, in the way that only nature can illuminate, that we are always hovering between life and death. We are so much smaller than we like to think in the big scheme of things. It’s good to be reminded of that now and then, lest I take myself and my brief presence on the planet too seriously.

At times like these, the best of who we are shows up. Those of us who could, took over for those of us who couldn’t, because that is what love does. While we had worked to get our bodies strong, in the end it was our hearts and our love and commitment to one another that got us up there.

The summit awaited us in the morning.

For the last year we have imagined ourselves at the top, each of us believing that we could do this hard thing. Together, eight of us were going to summit Mt. Adams on Friday, July 15th, 2022.

In the end four did.

I wasn’t one of them.

Stay tuned.

I’m dedicating the next few posts to what I learned by not summiting a mountain.

A New Start To The Day

The news ain’t great these days.

Most mornings as I wait the recommended four minutes before I can press the coffee, I scan my email inbox. Along with the tantalizing smell of freshly ground coffee brewing, my senses are assaulted with the latest New York Times Breaking News Headlines. While there is the very occasional headline that to my heart constitutes good news—the swearing in of Judge Katanji Brown Jackson—most of the time what I read breaks my heart a little more—the past two weeks have almost put me under—and hope is hard to find.

It’s not a great way to start the day.

So, I changed it.

I unsubscribed to The NY Times newsletter.

I subscribed to Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s A Hundred Falling Veils: there’s a poem in every day

This morning I was greeted with my first poem from Rosemerry, about, of all things, hope. (You can find her poem, Longing to Be Seen here)

How we start the day matters. Along with coffee and time with my husband and our dog as the sunlight first hits the meadow, I’m choosing to start my day with poetry, and a little hope.

Maybe you will too.

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(Now before you go jumping to any conclusions, it’s not that I don’t want to be informed about the goings on in the world. I am simply choosing not to start my day there. Being part of a well informed citizenry matters to me, and it should matter to you too. Our democracy depends on it. There are good sources of news, as in real information as opposed to opinion and rhetoric out there, and, spoiler alert, they are not found on social media.)

Walking The Refuge

We took the dogs and headed out to the Conboy Wildlife Refuge. It was cold, and sunny, and the contrast of the brilliant yellow-gold tamarack trees with their nearby neighbors, the lodgepole and ponderosa pines could not be more stark.

Once on the three-mile loop trail, we talked about things big and small as the dogs raced ahead, always coming back to check on us. From the viewing platform at the half-way point, it was obvious that fall was giving way to the coming winter, which in turn could only mean the eventual coming of spring and the appearance of new growth. New growth that is only made possible by the death and dropping away of this year’s growth.

Walking the refuge loop trail is always a reminder that life is a series of new beginnings, leading to eventual endings, only to come upon new beginnings once again. It is also a reminder of the need we have as human beings to find refuge from our personal storms with a select few sacred souls. Those who will walk with us as what has been drops away in order to make way for what can be.

The Invitation

You do not need to know

precisely what is happening,

or exactly where it is all going.

What you need is to recognize the possibilities

and the challenges offered by the present moment,

and to embrace them with

courage, faith, and hope.

Thomas Merton

There is, it seems, always an open invitation from life, even in the midst of bittersweet endings and uncharted beginnings. The invitation isn’t to somewhere else, but to be fully where we are, for it is from here that we must ground ourselves to take the next right step. And the next, and the next, and the next.

Endings of any sort mean the letting go of what has been and the leaving behind of what we’ve known, which, if we let it, will lead to the melding of gratitude and grief into the precious metal of grace. The deeper the gratitude and the more profound the grief, the longer we may need to linger at the threshold between what has been and what will be. These are the days of intentional packing, intentional goodbyes, and intentional moving on. There will be days when we can only pause and rest, and others when we must forge ahead regardless of how weary we feel.

Whether the selling of the longtime home in which we’ve raised a family, the retirement from a meaningful career, the fading of a vision that cannot be brought to life, the loss of a breast, or the ending of a relationship that cannot live up to the commitments made, the invitation is to stay fully engaged in life. Right here. Right now. Trusting that the ground beneath our feet will hold, as it has, as it is, and as it will.

The Pause

Last week someone left too soon, and another lingered too long. Both are gone now, and regardless of the timing, death has a way of giving one pause. Of inviting us to linger at the edge between death and life and be transformed by what we find there. Of encouraging us to begin to live ever more fully even as we move surely toward our own ending. There is no good, perfect, or right time for a life to end, but when it has, we who remain are offered another chance to consider what to do with the time we have.