Do you ever have trouble sleeping, weighed down with cares, anxieties and fears? Scenarios that look ridiculous in the light of day can often look completely plausible in the night. The darkness of the room can penetrate your very soul in those moments. And this is where we must do battle. Find the right weapon and wield it.
I found one such weapon many years ago in Psalm 4. The whole psalm is a balm to one in distress, but in the night when the world is silent and my soul is sore afraid, I reach for the nearest sword, words that I memorized for safe keeping:
In peace, I will both lie down and sleep, for Thou, O Lord dost make me to dwell in safety. Psalm 4:8
If King David can call upon the Lord’s peace in the night, then so can I. And so can you.
And if you need a picture to inspire you, here’s my son and his newborn son, living it out.
I’ll probably delete this in the morning, after lying down and sleeping in peace tonight.
What do you do when everything comes crashing down? You go back home – and that’s just what I did, devastated, wounded and humiliated, like a soldier returning home after a disastrous failed campaign. I did some Olympic medal-worthy wallowing in my sadness and tried to escape it all by visiting my bosom buddy Sara who was attending college in Duluth. While there I went to see a counselor who suggested that perhaps SD had treated me poorly. Somehow this was a new thought, but once introduced it blossomed quickly into full-fledged rage against SD, accompanied by torrents of profanity in my journal. It was shockingly easy to give way to this very dark anger, but I also realized that my life had to go on, so when I went back home, I got a full-time job working at an insurance company.
I spent the next part of my life in recovery mode. Even as I struggled to get over SD, I had what we now call “trust issues.” I had given myself, body and soul, to a man who ended up rejecting me. I didn’t know how to overcome that. One of my friends told me that no matter what, I always had myself. Thus began a long season of protecting myself, body and soul, at all costs. I came to understand that I couldn’t depend on anyone but myself. In spite of my fear of being vulnerable again, this didn’t stop me from developing one crush after another on men that happened to enter the orbit of my life. Although many of my crushes were one-sided, I did some dating during this time. I even turned the tables and asked a couple of guys out instead of waiting for them to ask me, proud of my feminist bona fides. One of these guys had forgotten who I was but upon being reminded, rallied enough to say he’d meet me somewhere. He never showed. Ouch. “I am woman, hear me roar!” I was one part hopeful, one part fearful and one part bitterful (okay, that’s not a word, but it should be!). Not a great combination for relationship building. But on the plus side, I wrote scads of poems and songs about the breakup and unrequited love – I really think I could have given Adele a run for her money.
The only thoughts I had about any sort of god in those days was the unobtrusive god of the aforementioned Serenity Prayer. I wrote out the SP several times in my journal, but it wasn’t a prayer so much as it was a mantra to help me calm and center myself. I wasn’t thinking about the God of the Bible – heaven forbid! Anything but that! In fact, Sara and I had gone to an Overeater’s Victorious meeting together once after my break-up with SD. This was basically Overeater’s Anonymous except with Jesus added back in. Both of us stayed studiously quiet during the meeting, uncomfortable with the religiosity of it all. To our horror, when it was time for the meeting to adjourn, they couldn’t adjourn it like normal people – oh, no, we had to stand in a circle and join hands while someone prayed. And this was no ordinary prayer, either. It was a full-fledged charismatic prayer accompanied by the sounds of everyone in the circle (except us) saying over and over, “Jesus, Jesus! Yes, Jesus!” To our ears, it sounded like a lot of hissing. As soon as the hissing was done and the final amen pronounced, we bolted out of there like we’d just escaped from prison. Safe in the car, we talked about how odd and awful and uncomfortable it was. We agreed that while it was okay to believe in a god of some sort, this Jesus stuff was taking it all a bit too far.
Meanwhile, back at the insurance company, I was eating a tuna fish sandwich one day for lunch and decided to go back to college to become a dietitian. I was interested in food and interested in eating disorders – seemed like a perfect match. I started up the next fall and on the surface it appeared that I was well past Recovery and sailing boldly on the good ship Victory, but I continued to vacillate wildly in my emotions.
“I’m so depressed.” “I’m a survivor!”
“No one will ever love me.” “Who cares as long as I love myself!”
“Life is too hard.” “I will learn to face life’s challenges one by one!!”
“I have no self-confidence.” “You can do whatever you set your mind on!”
And so on. At least I had myself – but which self was that? No matter, I was getting good at using pop psychology to prop myself up whenever things took a downward turn. In the midst of all of this, a small pebble dropped almost unnoticed into the continuously roiling waters of my life. I received a letter from my friend Sara saying that she was growing closer to God and learning to understand about Jesus Christ. I believe she even made an appeal for me to do the same. Oh, Sara, you traitor! I was repulsed by the whole thing, but wrote in my journal, “I wonder if I am missing something?” That small pebble quietly and efficiently began making ever widening concentric circles of which I was hardly aware. The Holy Spirit was working in stealth mode.
After a beautiful night’s sleep at Camden State Park, we had our luxury breakfast of homemade sausage egg sandwiches,
packed up and drove over to Upper Sioux Agency State Park, which has a very interesting history. Before it became a state park, this was the Upper Sioux (or Yellow Medicine) Agency, established in 1854, one of the many American Indian agencies that existed to implement U.S. government Indian policies. Basically, this meant that the government wished for the native peoples to assimilate into our culture, learning our language and becoming farmers, rather than their current way of subsistence. In 1862, the Dakota people, 4000 of them, gathered at the agency, angry over unfair treaties and food shortages. When short-term provisions were given, it seemed that the conflict was over, but it soon boiled over into the six-week U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, during which time most of the Agency buildings on site were looted and burned. Here we were, almost exactly 160 years later, walking those war-torn areas, all the witnesses long gone, all the signs of battle and bloodshed covered over, but the memories were lurking where signs were posted.
The park seemed deserted when we got there around 9:30 a.m. The only public building for the park was closed and the only map available outside was wholly inadequate. We were going to have to rely on the signs along the route, in addition to the Avenza app map that Kris had on his phone. We didn’t see a sign for the beginning of the Hiking Club trail, but we found the path and set out on the 4.3 mile hike. It was mostly sunny, but still early in the morning – the temperature was a tolerable 72 degrees with a pleasant breeze blowing. Ah, this is more like it! I had my knee huggers on and started out with a confident, speedy stride, motivated by the knowledge that the temperature was rising.
There were some beautiful vistas at the beginning of the hike. We knew we were along the top of the Yellow Medicine River Valley and would eventually be making our way over to the Minnesota River Valley, but we weren’t sure how much (if any) of either river we would see. I heard the sound of cows in the distance and crossed the road to see if I could spot the culprits, but they were out of sight. So much for seeing native fauna.
There be cows behind those trees!
We noticed right away that there were lots of little frogs hopping out of our way as we went along the wide path. Lots. There were so many that I estimated I could say there were hundreds of them, but I checked with my Exaggeration Detector, Kris, just to make sure. He assured me that saying there were hundreds was not an exaggeration. It seemed odd that there were so many of them right in the middle of that path – why weren’t they hanging out in the brush on either side? Kris postulated that this might be the time of the year when the West-side-of-the-Path Frogs and the East-side-of-the-Path Frogs met in the middle for courting. I find that to be a credible explanation. Furthermore, you can imagine the Froggie Dating Game that must result. I present three Bachelor Frogs and ask you, if you were a single Frog maiden, which would you choose? This is how we amuse ourselves on the trail.
I had decided that today I would take NO photos of the flowers that we’d just seen the day before at Camden State Park, but would reserve my camera for new types of flora. It was a severe challenge and I’d say I was about 80% successful. Sometimes I just gave in to the allure of all that wild beauty, even if I’d seen some of it already. I’m assuming you will not judge me for my photographic excesses.
But I also found an exquisite dragonfly that sat for a very long time on the edge of a twig. Those critters hardly ever sit still, so I was pleased with its patience and composure. I think it looks just like the first airplane made by Orville and Wilbur Wright. Or perhaps I should say that their airplane borrowed on God’s design – that’s more accurate.
There were plenty of monarch butterflies flitting about, but they just wouldn’t stay put. I made many attempts, but only got one photo and by golly, you are going to look at it and appreciate the effort, even if it’s not fit for National Geographic (or even Local Geographic) Magazine.
Also, I experimented with the Silhouette feature on my camera. Can you blame me?
We saw evidence that horses had been on the trails. I did not take photos of said evidence. You’re welcome. Every time Kris saw these little piles, he’d comment that there was a road apple tree overhead dropping its fruit. I’m very fond of this man and his sense of humor.
The Hiking Club trail description said to “Look for red-tailed hawks gliding along with the air currents above the valley.” I was definitely on the lookout, so when I saw a bird way up high, soaring on those air currents, I called out to Kris, “Look! A red-tailed hawk!” I felt quite smart about being able to identify this bird, even though I had absolutely not previous experience in red-tailed-hawk identification. Was it one? You decide!
We moved through the paths quickly and for once, I was ahead of my husband for much of the time, driven by the knowledge that the hotter it got, the slower I’d go. And lo, it came to pass. Eventually, the heat and humidity caught up with me and we (me and my knee huggers) began to lag a bit. The cicadas had started their buzz-saw music. Ah, cicadas – the sound of summer leaving. When you hear them, you know Fall is waiting in the wings. By this time, we’d seen so many frogs, that I asked permission of the Exaggeration Detector to upgrade to the description of thousands of frogs. Permission was granted.
We continued on and finally came to a sign with a map. Uh oh – we recognized this map. We’d seen it early on in the hike and were not supposed to be seeing it again. Somehow we had missed a turn. We turned around and went back up the trail to see if we could figure out where we’d gone wrong. At this point I began to resent every extra step, but that’s just me. I get crabby when I’m hot and tired. We came back to a fork in the path and even though we still weren’t sure where we were (even the Avenza map failed us), we realized we were right by Employee Duplex No. 1, which we’d seen earlier from the other side at a distance. It boasts of being one of the earliest duplexes built in Minnesota, originally erected in 1859-60. Unfortunately, the original building was burned during the previously mentioned War of 1862. Someone bought the building in 1866 and rebuilt it for his family. In 1974 it was reconstructed to its original appearance by the Minnesota Historical Society and here it stands. It’s an attractive brick building – I wonder what it’s used for now. Probably some bureaucratic silliness. I cozied up to the windows and tried to get a photo of the inside with my phone camera. Fail.
From this point, we had no way of knowing where to go to get back to our car. We’ve been watching the series “LOST,” so the ominous music was playing in my mind as we tried to get our bearings. If Kris is Jack from the series (and of course he is), then I would be Hurley. But that’s another fanciful departure from reality. We decided to walk down the road, rather than trying to find the continuation of the actual hiking trail and voila, the picnic area and parking lot appeared before too long. We hadn’t parked in that lot, but we knew where we were from there. With a little more meandering we came to our cheerful little blue car and called it a day. It took us about an hour and 45 minutes to do the hike.
Knee score: 6. Longer hike with some ups and downs. Parks/Miles: 44 out of 68 parks – 131 out of 197 miles.
I’ll probably delete this in the morning unless the frogs get to me first.
We are somewhat surprised to find that this late into 2022, we’ve only done one hike. In past years, we’ve usually had 5-6 hikes tallied up by late August. With all our travels and a wedding in June out West, hiking hasn’t been on our minds. But recently my good husband spent some time working out an ambitious schedule to get us back on track (as it were) and here we are at Camden State Park, the first of 12 hikes to finish out the year.
At this point, all of our hikes are at state parks quite a distance away, so we’ll be doing a bit of camping on each trip. When we got to Camden, we decided to check out the campsites and get set up before embarking on the actual hike. Camden boasts of two separate campgrounds, the upper and lower. The park ranger explained to us that the upper campground sites were a little more private and there was a tiny bit of cell coverage there. The lower campground sites were well situated next to the river (where Kris had been hoping to do some trout fishing), but there was no cell coverage whatsoever. After cruising through both campgrounds and weighing the benefits and disadvantages of each, we settled on a homey site at the upper campground. By the time we had our tent and the screen tent set up, our stomachs were talking to us about the need for food, so we answered the call and had lunch. Even though it was 80 degrees out, it was shady in the screen tent with lovely breezes wafting through – pretty much ideal. It seemed likely that our hike would be quite pleasant. What a cock-eyed optimist I was!
The Hiking Club trail started out by the beach. We discovered that the swimming area was created by controlling the flow of water from the river on both sides, thus swelling into a beautiful little pool in the middle. Next time we’ll bring our swimsuits.
For those of you who have knee issues like I do, you’ll be interested to know that I left the hiking poles in the car for this hike, having purchased knee squeezers (can’t remember the name of them – basically pressure socks for the knees). I’ll give a review of their performance at the end.
The first part of the trail was a woodsy path that meandered alongside Indian Creek.. Other than the heavy humidity, it was a nice shady path.. The music of water running always makes for a light-hearted ramble. We hadn’t started the hike until 3:20 p.m., so we knew we weren’t hiking at the best part of the day, but it was a relatively short hike. I got my camera out and started photographing the usual suspects.
Before long, the trail took us out of the woods and out onto a prairie, very typical of state parks in this area. The map showed us that this part of the trail would be 1.3 miles and I noted that the shape of it looked like a horse head. That’s all I needed to rename it “Horsehead Trail.”
We were out in the sun now on a wide well-mown grass path which curved around and wound up and down. I tried not to think about my own discomfort in the heat. I wondered how all this hiking would have gone when I was in my 20’s. I’d like to think I was in better shape – certainly my knees were – but the reality is that I’ve never been a very sporty or athletic person. If I ever publish all my posts about our hikes, it will have to be titled “A Wimp’s Guide to Minnesota’s State Park Hiking Club Trails.” Catchy, no? Let me know what your blurb will say if I ask you to contribute one for the dust jacket.
Continuing to take photos here and there, I also entertained myself with thoughts about setting a D&D campaign in the state parks. To back up on that thought, I have written on my blog about grieving over the loss of my sister’s D&D journal, written in the person of her character, Druella the elf. My brother-in-law went above and beyond and found another copy deep in the bowels of his basement, so it is now in my grubby little hands. I’ve started reading it and so far all the action is in places where you go from one room to another finding things and encountering danger. The state parks would make a wonderful environment for a D&D! “The characters enter Camden State Park and navigate their way to the start of the trail. They are immediately attacked by a horde of whiny insects that seem innocuous until it becomes clear that they are bloodsuckers.” By the way, this wasn’t true in the case of our experience at the park – just taking artistic license to create some drama. The musical theme could be a hymn that we know entitled “I Walk In Danger All The Way” and there could be symbolism of spiritual battle throughout the game. You heard it here first.
As it was, I began longing for those wonderful breezes of before, apparently on vacation. I imagined them sipping iced tea in our screen tent, laughing and having an all-around great time while we slogged our way through the prairie heat. Eventually we had rounded the horse’s nose, traversed its ears and were making our way down the mane. I had been hearing blue jays and looked in vain for one – such beautiful birds with their calls that sound like a pump handle going up and down. It’s the definitive sound of the woods for me. One of their number took pity on me and dropped a feather where I could see it near the end of the trail.
We finished the 2.4 mile hike at 4:30.
The pool looked awfully inviting, but we weren’t equipped for a swim, so we went back to the car to do the next best thing: cool off by the artificial breezes of the AC in our car. I did some research later and found out that Willis Carrier invented air conditioning in 1902. Has he been properly lauded for this?
Thank God for Willis Carrier Who made our lives much merrier. He packaged cold air in a box – Better than gold in old Fort Knox. Next time you turn on your AC Thank God for brilliant Willis C.
As we drove back to our campsite, we had the pleasure of seeing a deer by the side of the road. It must have been a youngling, for instead of running away, it stared at us and let me take a photo before melting into the woods.
Knee score: 5 out of 10. Short hike but with some hilly parts equivalent to 10 flights of stairs (so says my phone and I believe it).
Knee Squeezer performance: excellent! What a difference it made to wear these! Perhaps I should call them Knee Huggers, which has a much more benevolent ring to it.
This post will probably melt into the woods in the morning.
I recently came across the oil painting I did as a wedding gift for my sister and her husband back in the day. It wasn’t as awful as I remembered, so there’s that. But it’s definitely up there with Weird Gifts. I think it’s safe to say that I was marching to the beat of my own drum. Since I mentioned it on a previous blog post, I thought it only fair to share it with you. (See The Puffin Post)
The best part is the way the peacock is dancing through the tall grasses, perhaps a wedding dance. His feathers are out, so you’ve gotta figure there’s at least peacock romance in the air.
My first and last oil painting, circa 1979.
I’m deleting this after doing the peacock dance in the tall grasses in the morning.
Three years ago, my husband and I got a sundome tent. It has a screen at the top instead of the usual tent covering. It comes with a fly to put over the whole tent to keep out rain, etc. The first time we used it was on our way out to our daughter’s wedding that year in May. That first night was brutal – the temperature got down to about 34 degrees and suddenly the whole concept of a tent with a screen at the top seemed foolish. Of course we used the fly, but that didn’t help much. We’ve used the tent about a half dozen times since then, but have never fully taken advantage of the dome…until our last camping trip. Gather around the campfire and I’ll tell you about the trains, the cicadas, the frogs and the stars.
Our tent site was private and on the edge of a drop-off into a verdant valley, but surrounded by trees. We were sitting in the screen tent reading in the afternoon enjoying the light breeze and hearing the cicadas singing the songs of their people. In the midst of this we heard a train approaching – loud, gloriously loud! It filled all the trees with its noise and the sound was so close I would not have been surprised to see the train burst through the trees and come through our campsite, tracks or no. It went invisibly past us, although eventually I spied a break in the trees across the narrow valley where I could see the cars in that ghost train swiftly clacking by. It happened again early in the evening and I wondered why the sound of it filled me with such a thrill. When the sound died away, it was as if the whole forest had been holding its breath. After a pause, the cicadas, birds and squirrels renewed their woodland chorus, the wind was shushing through the leaves as if the train had never come through. But there – that’s my imagination talking.
We had a campfire that night and when the last of the firewood was burning down, we looked up and saw that the clouds had cleared away and the stars were out, visible in a way that you can’t often see in the city. We decided to sleep under the stars in our tent, leaving the fly off so we could look at the sky through the screened dome. There was a canopy of tree branches overhead, but I could still see the stars here and there. It was one of those “close to nature/close to God” moments. Two stars in particular twinkled down at me like friendly eyes. I lay awake as long as I could, reveling in the experience, enjoying God’s “playlist” for the evening as well – a steady rhythmic percussion of frogs and crickets, unbelievably in sync with each other. How do the cicadas, birds and squirrels know when to quit their parts and the frogs and crickets know when to begin theirs? It is a mystery known only to the heavenly Choir Director.
Twice in the night a train went by and both times I woke up joyful and thankful to hear it. The sleeping temperature was perfect. I can’t remember when I’ve had a more pleasant night sleeping in a tent.
SOLI DEO GLORIA
Oh, I’m not sure about deleting posts in the morning anymore – I’ll have to think about it while peering through the blog dome.
We had a beautiful sunrise last week and once again I ran out with my camera to catch it, only to find that the camera just didn’t see the colors the way I did. No doubt there are some knobs and settings that could align my vision and the camera’s, but I haven’t found them yet.
We were on our way to an early Bible study so I gathered up some sunrise cloud photos on the way.
I’m still reading through the gigantic tome of Emily Dickinson’s poems and have come across quite a few having to do with sunrises and sunsets, clearly a favorite theme (besides death and dying, that is). I wanted to share part of a poem with you, so you could see the sunrise like Emily does, without having to do anything about knobs and settings.
I’ll tell you how the Sun rose – A Ribbon at a time – The Steeples swam in Amethyst – The news, like Squirrels, ran – The Hills untied their Bonnets – The Bobolinks – begun – Then I said softly to myself – “That must have been the Sun”!
And that, my friends, must have been my Blog Post!
When I was learning how to use my first digital SLR camera, I remember reading somewhere that children and old people make the best natural subjects for photography. It’s true. We all start out being more or less photogenic.
And then somewhere along the line, a transformation occurs and this happens:
From there we live through decades in which our photos are pretty much touch and go, unless we are naturally beautiful or handsome models, and even those people probably have their bad days, right?
I got a new iPhone recently and was trying out the portrait mode, which I haven’t had before.
The results proved to me that I am entering into the second magical photogenic phase of life. There’s something interesting about wrinkles and age spots and gray hair and the gaze of someone who’s lived through many years.
Bring it on.
This post will probably be too photogenic to delete in the morning.
I just finished a puzzle depicting many book covers of the Nancy Drew mystery story series, prompting a continual sense of nostalgia as I worked on it. Back when my older sister was reading Nancy Drew books, I was reading Trixie Belden books, good old Trixie of the short, sandy curls, who called her mother “Moms,” (why with the ‘s’ on the end, I wondered) and whose younger brother Bobby always said he could keep a “secrud.” Trixie, and her friends Honey and Violet found mysteries all over the place and I became convinced that mysteries were waiting to be found in my world, too. It turns out they weren’t, but that’s probably good news.
I graduated to Nancy Drew in time and enjoyed reading stories of the girl sleuth with her friends, George (the tom-boy) and Bess. And of course, always lurking in the background was Ned Nickerson, Nancy’s handsome college friend. There was hint of romance there that was never really defined. I wonder if the modern Nancy Drew stories have made more of that relationship. By now, she’s probably living in sin with Ned. Nancy’s father, the lawyer Carson Drew, was amazingly tolerant of Nancy’s sleuthing activities. “Be careful,” he’d admonish as she went sailing off to tail suspicious characters. I used to think it would be comforting to have a Hannah Gruen in my corner, making apple pies and bustling around clucking disapprovingly when appropriate.
When my sister died, I inherited her collection of Nancy Drew stories, and I have a half-dozen or so of the Trixie Belden books. They’re not great literature, I’ll admit, but they provided this imaginative girl some very enjoyable moments in my reading chair.
Now for the question at hand. You must have known one was coming, right? What is the closest you’ve been to a real live mystery? Would it have made a good plot for Trixie Belden or Nancy Drew? Enquiring minds want to know! As for me, the only mysteries I’ve been near have been of my own imagination, seeing mysterious mountains where there were only plain Jane molehills. Again, probably good news.
I’ll probably delete this in the morning unless something nefarious happens to it and I have to channel Nancy Drew to find clues and track down the diabolical suspects.
Lynniebeemuseoday 