I watched the sunset from our balcony last night. The cicadas were making their bittersweet call, the wind was ruffling the tree tops with an affectionate hand, and the temperature held just the slightest hint of the coming cool of the night. It was too windy to have the water fountain going, but I could see the water below and all the reflections in it. I think I even saw a frog swimming happily around in the fountain – at least I hope it was happy. I was listening to the perfect playlist on Spotify: Chill Acoustic Instrumentals (highly recommend for this sort of sitting-outside-watching-the-sunset kind of activity). I’d been reading a page or two of Emily Dickinson poems and had the propitious experience of actually understanding several of them. I think my mind was fueled and charged by the music and atmosphere.
Somewhere down the street, a soccer game was starting and the national anthem began blaring through the loudspeakers. I paused my playlist and sang along. It doesn’t get much more Americana than that.
Our city council recently approved the building of several large apartment buildings across the street, where we now have the pleasure of looking out on a nice stand of trees. It is not a change that I welcome. I thought about how often we’ve seen the sun setting over those trees over the years – countless times. I will miss that lovely scene. The sun, of course, will still be setting – even the city council can do nothing about that. It will be the same sun, but a different sunset. And life will go on. It’s a good opportunity for me to get things in their proper perspective. “God’s in His heaven – all’s right with the world.”
Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple Leaping like Leopards to the Sky Then at the feet of the old Horizon Laying her spotted Face to die Stooping as low as the Otter’s Window Touching the Roof and tinting the Barn Kissing her Bonnet to the Meadow And the Juggler of the Day is gone. Emily Dickinson
I’ll probably delete this when the Juggler of the Day has come back.
I decided to call my book “A Year at Providence Place,” and have finished the first page. Off to a good start – hope I can keep it up!
We’ve used the name “Providence” for our homes since back in 1994, so an explanation is in order. We had twins in 1993, which made our 2-bedroom house rather squeezy, having doubled the number of children in it. We put the house up for sale that year with the realtor who’d sold it to us and waited. And waited. And waited. We prayed, our friends prayed. In 6 months time only one person even looked at the house, and this was not during a time of a particularly depressed housing market. Meanwhile, we’d been looking at houses to buy and found several that we would love to have bought, but didn’t feel comfortable making a contingency offer with the almost complete lack of interest in our current house. We took the house off the market.
Early in 1994 we found out about a house out in the country that was for sale by owner. It was a large 4-bedroom farmhouse only a mile from where Kris worked and was on 3 acres with a machine shed, numerous fruit trees of various kinds, grape vines, etc. An elderly lady was selling the house because it was getting to be too much for her to take care of. This house hadn’t even hit the market yet and she had people lining up to buy it. We made an appointment with the owner, Virginia, to look at the house and brought the four boys with us. The house was lovely, though outdated on the inside (avocado green counters in the kitchen with orange/green carpeting in the same!). However, all the wood framing and doors were solid oak – native timber! – and the living room had a small stained glass window in it. We prayed that we might be able to buy this house, but had a several hurdles to overcome: 1. We had to compete with other buyers already 2. We hadn’t even put our own house up for sale yet 3. We had a strong policy of not buying a house before selling our current one and with the competition, we’d not be able to make a contingency offer.
We talked to our pastor, a very savvy man in the real estate market, and one whose spiritual wisdom we trusted. “We shouldn’t buy this house before selling our current house, right?” we asked him. We knew the answer already. It’s just a bad idea all around and especially with the history we’d had with trying to sell the house. “I recommend that you make an offer immediately,” was his surprising answer. Well! Okay then! We hired a different realtor right away and made another appointment to meet with Virginia. We sat at her table and told her we’d like to buy her house and made an offer. She smiled broadly and told us that although she had lots of interest in the house, she liked the idea of a big family living there and the amount we offered her was exactly what she had hoped to sell it for. She said yes. We were exhilarated! And yet…what have we done? We got our 2-bedroom house on the market in record time and it sold in two weeks to cash buyers, so there would be no delay waiting for loan papers, etc. It was an amazing providence from God, who is able to give exceeding abundantly beyond what we can ask or think. Looking back, we could see that His timing was perfect and His answers to our earlier prayers to sell the house were perfect as well. He knew when this house would hit the market. We moved into the house and dubbed it “Providence.” We started homeschooling the same year and called our school “Providence Academy.”
Four years later we found out that we were going to be moving back to our home soil in Minnesota. We looked at houses in the town to which we’d be moving and found a wonderful, roomy house with a cheerful red door right across the street from a state park. We made a contingent offer, confident that our house in Indiana would sell speedily, and I took a whole roll of photos of the house we’d be moving into so we could show family and friends. We went back to Indiana, hired our former realtor and put the house up for sale. And waited. And waited. We prayed, our friends prayed. Our house which had been a hot property four years ago was just sitting there. Was our asking price too high? We had trusted our realtor on that. Three months went by and though we had reduced our asking price, our contingency offer expired. I still remember the day I took once last look at the photos of that beautiful house and then threw them away. This was evidently not the house that the Lord wanted for us, and we knew Him to be a perfect Realtor, so I surrendered, but definitely with a small sigh of regret. 🙂
Another couple of months went by and we finally had an offer on our house. We made plans to go back to Minnesota to look for another house and then found out that I was expecting baby #6. Feeling sick and exhausted all day, I backed out of the house-hunting trip. I still remember talking to my husband on the phone each night while he was there, discussing the houses he’d seen that day. One house rose above the rest as we talked – for sale by owners, nice neighborhood, 4 bedrooms, laundry room up by the bedrooms instead of in the basement, nice kitchen, lots of beautiful natural woodwork, even a workshop in the basement! Kris sat down at their table with them and made an offer. They said yes. This house had not been available when we’d been in town all those months ago. We moved in and realized that in many ways, this house was actually better for our family than the original house we’d wanted. But the icing on the cake came a few months later when we met the couple that bought that house up by the state park. They found out after they moved in that the roof had some structural issues that they had to pay $10,000 to repair. They were able to afford that, but it would have been a real hardship for us. The Lord had kindly spared us from a bad decision and provided a house that cost less and was so much better for us. Providence – amazing, bountiful, merciful providence.
So now you know!
I’ll probably pray about deleting this in the morning.
After the hike at Monson Lake State Park, we drove over to Sibley State Park to set up camp, planning to start the hike there early in the morning. We decided to do our state park sign photo ahead of time, just in case we forgot later.
Like Camden State Park, Sibley has two different campground areas and we took the one less traveled. Who wants to be surrounded by PEOPLE in a campground, for goodness sake? We found a lovely site that was like a hotel suite with two different “rooms,” one for the tent and one for the “kitchen.”
After supper, we sat by the glow of the campfire chatting quietly and enjoying the ambiance. Our tent was set up in a partial clearing so we could appreciate the stars through the sun-dome screen again. Ahh, this is the life!
Despite our best intentions, we didn’t get on the trail until 9:00 the next morning, having decided to take down the tent and get the car all packed up so we didn’t have to do it afterward. I had it in my mind that the hike was 4.7 miles (an error – it was “only” 4 miles), so I wanted to get a running start, so to speak. Right from the get-go, however, the air was cloyingly humid, though it was only 67 degrees at that point. There would be no brisk walking from me. We’d walked only 5 minutes when we realized neither of us could remember locking the car. Kris went back to check and I found a shady spot where I could putz around taking photos. To my dismay, the auto-focus feature wasn’t working on my camera. Oh no! I took a few shots but each time had to focus manually. Then I realized that I had been using a special effect the night before in order to photograph the night sky. Ha! That was a complete fail, but I’d forgotten to switch it back. If I’d been paying attention to the photos on my tiny little screen, I would have noticed that they looked colorless. When I looked at them later, I thought they were kind of cool, so here they are, along with one I took when I’d set things right.
The entire time Kris was gone, I was standing right by a very detailed map of our hiking route, but did I study it? Of course not – I was engrossed in my own little camera confusions. I hid around a corner and got a fun shot of Kris making his grand entrance when he got back. (For the curious among you, yes, the car was already locked.)
We stumped along on the wide grassy path and I said, “Hey, there’s a stop sign! I’ve never seen one of those on the Hiking Club trail before.” We mused about the necessity of having hikers come to a stop and concluded that it must be for snowmobiles during the winter. Then we came to a “Do Not Enter” sign. This can’t be right. And it wasn’t. Way back when I was frittering away the minutes while Kris was gone, we were supposed to have taken a left at the sign. Kris checked the Avenza map and we discovered we could just cut over to the Hiking Club trail from where we were. Phew!
One of the main features of Sibley State Park is a high elevation point called “Mount Tom,” where the CCC built a tower in the 1930’s, but people had been coming to Mount Tom for centuries before that. It’s the highest point in Sibley State Park and one of the highest landmarks in the area. In fact, the whole point of establishing Sibley as a state park in 1919 was to protect Mount Tom and its environs. So naturally, we were going to be going to see Mount Tom, although it would mean a slight detour from the trail. However, the words “slight detour” didn’t dampen my spirits nearly as much as the words “high elevation.” That can only mean one thing – a lot of walking up hill. I had my knee huggers on and hoped for the best.
Around 9:30 I heard the first cicada – what late risers they are, I thought. Didn’t hear another one for an hour, so I think that the first one was sounding reveille and the rest of the group just ignored him. These are the kinds of things I think about on the trail when I’m trying not to think about how hot, humid and uncomfortable I’m feeling. We finally made our way up to Mt. Tom, somewhat of a relief since surely things would go downhill from here. While up on the tower, I decided to do an avant-garde way of taking a panorama of the view – one shot through each open doorway. I was patting myself on the back for the sheer cleverness of the idea, but then when I put them together in post-production later, I laughed out loud. It just looks stupid. Oh well…
And now, a little quiz to break up the post. How did Mt. Tom get its name? A. It’s named after a guy named Tom. B. It’s an acrostic meaning Tall Old Mountain. C. It’s a shortened version of an Indian word meaning “Look-out Point.” D. Nobody knows
You will perhaps be as disappointed as I was to learn that the answer is D.
As you can imagine, there’s a lot of graffiti on a wooden structure like the Mt. Tom tower. These things interest me, so I looked at a few of them while Kris was enjoying the beautiful vista (of which I’d already taken note). It was mostly names, with occasional sentiments of love – some were scratched in and many were casually scrawled with permanent pen. But then I found one that had taken a significant investment of time. I don’t know who ARCZ is, but I tip my hat to him/her. Long after all the permanent pens markings and light scratch marks are gone, the mark of ARCZ will still be there.
We sat down for a light snack in the Mt. Tom parking lot and then set off to finish the job…er, hike. The downhill trek proved to be more or less uphill and then downhill, followed by more of the same, many times over. On one particularly steep downhill path, they had some sort of erosion-preventing plastic embedded in the dirt, which we’d never seen before.
We began seeing signs saying that Lake Andrew was ahead, which was very hopeful, since Lake Andrew is near the end of the hike. In fact, when we were in the park office I had seen a poster saying “Andrew is calling!” which I thought was bizarre until I noticed the little word “Lake” over the word Andrew. Oh! I was definitely hearing the sweet call of Lake Andrew and could hardly wait to answer the call. The first body of water we approached however, was a dismal pond. I had seen the glint of water from a distance and was all geared up to see my friend Andrew. However, if this was Lake Andrew, it had fallen on very hard times and could be more accurately named “Pond Scum Andrew.”
We continued our up and down progress, occasionally passing more signs telling us that Lake Andrew was up ahead, but I felt a little bit like Inigo from the Princess Bride who finally snaps at Vizzini, “You keep using that word ‘inconceivable.’ I do not think it means what you think it means.” You keep using that word “ahead…!” In my mind, I began writing an epic book called “The Myth of Lake Andrew.”
In spite of my pessimism, Lake Andrew did finally appear before us. And now, dear reader, I’m going to give you a hot tip so you can avoid wandering around trying to find the next part of the trail like we did. The posted trail maps are all identified by letters and the one at the intersection with Lake Andrew is “M.” Directly across the road (yes, there’s an actual road there) from “M” is a nicely paved bike path. Downward from the bike path through clumps of brush, is the lake shore, where you will see what looks like a little sandy path along the shore. This is NOT, in fact, the Hiking Club trail, and neither is the bike path. Listen carefully: you will cross the road at “M” over to the bike path, walk a few steps to the right on that path, maybe 15-20 paces. Then you will turn around and notice an almost hidden approach to a narrow trail (unmarked, mind you) going up and off to the right. Very tricksy! You’re welcome.
By this time I just wanted to be done. I really wish that I had the capacity to ignore the humidity, my pounding heart, and all my physical aches and pains and just focus on the beauty of the world around me. However, these long and difficult hikes often become spiritually significant to me, as I mentally review exhortations in the Scriptures to persevere under trial. No matter how tired, no matter how discouraged, there was no thought of giving up (not that I had the option). There were more ups and downs in the final mile of trail – in fact, I can recall very few level parts of the entire trail at Sibley – and when we finally got close to the parking lot where the car was, we took our “end-of-hike” photo in the shade of a tree and then I stopped moving and let Kris get the car. I think that if camera makers can come up with a red-eye filter, they ought to be able to come up with a red-face filter, too. But since they haven’t, you get to see all that exertion written plainly on my face.
The hike took us 2 and 1/2 hours and the temperature was 78 degrees when we finished. As we were leaving the park, we took one more photo at the state park sign since the light was more favorable than the evening before. I think this photo tells the whole story, doesn’t it? Sibley is a beautiful park with lovely trails and a variety of interesting sights, but oh, it was hard on me!
Knee Score: a full 10 out of 10 (with the detour to Mt. Tom and other errors, it was 4.5 miles). I don’t give out a score of 10 lightly – I’ve only awarded it 3 times now. My phone says that we walked the equivalent of 39 flights of stairs.
I’m publishing this on a Sunday just in case I don’t have time to publish it or delete it tomorrow. Off on another hike!
Monson Lake State Park has much to commend it, not the least of which is that the hiking club trail is only 1 mile long. It’s a smallish park boasting of two lakes: West Sunberg and of course, Monson. We had come from a distance, so we didn’t get started on the hike until almost 3:00 p.m. on this sunny day. Although it was 81 degrees, the breeze made everything just right and it looked like we’d be well shaded along the way. We set forth with a song in our hearts and a spring in our steps.
I started taking photos right away. It gets challenging to find new things to photograph, but if I don’t limit myself to that standard, I happily trod along capturing what catches my eye.
We weren’t the only ones singing…ha ha! This is for Julie, who mentioned that song in a recent comment.
It wasn’t long before I realized I was seeing a lot of spider webs. Maybe they’ve always been there on every hike, but once I started to hone in on them, it seemed that they were ubiquitous.
We even noticed delicate web threads across the path, as if they were set there as invisible sentries to detect our presence as we walked through them.
I thought about good old Bilbo and his taunt to the spiders in Mirkwood Forest. “Old fat spider spinning in a tree! Old fat spider can’t see me! Attercop! Attercop! Won’t you stop, stop your spinning and look for me?” Well, if there were large menacing spiders lurking in the woods at Monson Lake State Park, we never saw them and they left us alone. As opposed to the Upper Sioux Agency State Park, the frogs here were heard, but not seen, and definitely not underfoot, the way it should be.
We walked close to the two lakes at different parts of the trail. A fair amount of brush separated us from the shore, however, and occasionally we could tell that we startled some waterfowl as we could hear them flapping wings and moving in the water to distance themselves from us. Kris caught a glimpse and said they were ducks. The trail description noted that we’d be likely to see pelicans and sure enough, we did – way, way, way across the lake where they were no more than elegant looking tiny white shapes. Disappointing, but we can’t expect the pelican community to flock over to us for a photo op.
Camera-shy pelicans
There were no maps on the trail and several forks in the path, so once again, we were glad to have the trail on the Avenza Map app that Kris uses. We weren’t in any hurry and took several side detours, feeling the luxury of time on our side. The entire hike was in shady, sun-dappled areas, which made it very pleasant indeed.
Short hike, short post! On a side note, my husband has been making a batch of beer while I’ve been working on this, so the whole process has been infused with that marvelous smell of hops. I really wish I could enjoy the taste of beer – I sure enjoy the smell of it being made.
Knee Score: 1 out of 10. Easy peasy, flat terrain.
I might not delete this post in the morning unless the smell of hops has dissipated.
Many years ago I got a copy of Edith Holden’s book “The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady.” It’s absolutely charming. She started it in 1906 as a nature diary with her notes and beautiful drawings and it goes through an entire year month by month. I immediately wanted to do something like it, but shelved the whole idea – there really wasn’t time in. my life for that kind of endeavor.
I pretty much forgot the book was on my shelf until it came to my attention again recently. Here I am – retired and busy, but with lots more time for these types of things. Why wait until January? So I’m starting it now. I’m not sure how it will end up, but I’m excited to give it a try. It will definitely have my own “stamp” on it. I’ll post a few photos now and then as I go.
So what should I name it? “The City Diary of an American Lady.” Um…I haven’t come up with anything else, but maybe some of you will have better suggestions. Submit them to our office.
I’ll probably be working on this project in the morning, so I’m not sure I’ll get around to deleting this post. You can do it if you have time.
Lynniebeemuseoday 