I’ll probably delete this in the morning.
A Haiku Condemnation of Potato Beetles
Potato beetle.
You scumbag, you excrescence.
(Does that seem too harsh?)
Thus ends Haiku Week at Lynniebeemuseoday.
I will probably
Delete this in the morning,
While writing haiku.
Beach Haiku
If the stones could sing,
The beaches would fill our ears
With their hymns of praise.
I’ll make this post a skipping stone in the morning.
Mood Haiku
Morning dripping rain
Dripping into all my moods.
Thank God for sunshine!
I’ll be Off! to delete this in the morning.
A Bug Haiku
What’s the use of bugs?
The good Lord made them, so they
Must please Him somehow.
This post will be bugging out of here in the morning.
Color Full Haiku
God speaks words of color
Onto Spring’s empty canvas:
“Let there be flowers.”
This post will automatically delete itself in the morning.
I look at this photo of our granddaughter and the phrase, “halcyon days of youth” comes to mind. I don’t think people use the word “halcyon” anymore, do they? I plan to make up for that to the extent that by the time you finish this post, you’ll not only know what it means, but you’ll be sick of reading it. You’re welcome.
Halcyon: denoting a period of time in the past that was idyllically happy and peaceful.
It’s easy to romanticize the days gone by and think of them as halcyon. I don’t suppose the day I took this photo, little Miss Lucy was having such an idyllically, happy and peaceful day. In fact, she’d had a croupy cough for about a week when I took that photo and any halcyon moments were interrupted by a hacking, dry cough that made her face red. Then she’d just go on with what she was doing without much fuss. She probably won’t remember that day on the hillside running up to the top and rolling down in the sweet grass. She won’t, but I will. And no matter what else that day meant, it was day free of cares and worries, as all days are when you’re that young. And if that’s not halcyon, what is? Ah, youth.
I’m going to say it just one more and then delete this in the morning: halcyon.
I started the Lazy Artist Initiative to get me motivated to do more watercolor painting. As people have commented on these posts, I’ve promised to send them small watercolor paintings in the mail (although wisely, I’ve never promised any particular time frame – I’m reserving the right to exercise procrastination).
For my friend Lori, I began to plan to do a travel-related watercolor, since she and her husband travel a fair amount. In fact, why don’t I do something related to Italy, was my next brainstorm – she’s been there a few times. I started looking up and saving photos on the internet that I could try to paint and then…
EUREKA! I remembered that I’d done a series of watercolor paintings a couple years ago while going through a Watercolor Italy instruction book. So instead of doing a new watercolor, I merely showed her the set of paintings I’d done back then and had her pick one.
I know what you’re thinking – this didn’t really do anything to solve the Lazy Artist problem. But I submit to you that actual work was involved in the original painting, the internet research, the FaceTime call with Lori and scanning the painting into my computer. So I think I can call it a day without shame. Now I need to pop it in the mail.
I’ll probably swim down the lazy river in the morning, blog post in hand.
I saw a photo in the newspaper yesterday of a woman I’d just met the day before in the locker room at the community pool. She’d gotten her photo taken for having logged in 100 miles of lap swimming. This seemed like an unbelievably impressive feat. At the rate I’ve been swimming (about .35 of a mile 3 times per week), it would take me 95 weeks to accomplish.
When I got to the locker room after my laps today, I spoke with another of the women I’ve met there, Irina. When I told her of my interest in the 100-mile club, she took me under her wing. “Just follow me when you’re all dressed and I’ll show you where you keep a log of your miles.” Already I was thinking it was time to bump up to 18 laps (0.5 mile) right away. Talk about motivated!
Then Irina told me about a club she’d decided to start herself. She tried to interest the Parks and Rec director in the idea that they could sponsor, but he declined and told her just to do it herself, so she did. She thought it would be fun to use the combined miles of people in the club to “swim” the length of the entire Mississippi River! She made up a map with mile markers along the way. She invited me to join and I was dubious at first, thinking that each of us had to swim the entire length of the MR by ourselves. Once I realized that we were combining our miles, I told her “Count me in!!” When you get to 100 miles, the Parks and Rec department gives you a t-shirt, so Irina has taken the initiative of giving out a t-shirt of her own making (she embroiders it with her sewing machine) to those who join her elite club. Or maybe you just get it when the combined group makes it to New Orleans – not sure.
Irina, it turns out, swims 1 mile+ each time she goes and has logged in an incredible 500 MILES so far! (I don’t know how long that’s taken her.) I’m pretty sure she’s older than I am. The other member of the club, Becky, was the one who just logged in 100 miles. Consider me both motivated and awed at the same time. I’ve never in my wildest dreams considered trying to swim a mile each time I go – it takes Irina 1 hour and 15 minutes. For now, I’ll be happy to get to 1/2 mile, but just thinking about how much faster we can make our way down the Mississippi River has me thinking of challenging myself to a higher goal.
As soon as I got home, I went back through my calendar to estimate how many miles I’ve logged in so far and it came to 8.25. It’s a start!
You didn’t think I’d actually show you a photo of me wearing the suit, did you?
Just keep swimming, just keep swimming – no time to delete this in the morning.
Our plan after hiking at Scenic State Park was to go to Hill Annex Mine State Park before driving on to McCarthy Beach SP, the site of our next hike. Hill Annex Mine SP is located in teeny tiny Calumet. There wouldn’t be a hike at this state recreation area, but we had originally thought we’d walk around and maybe see if there was a tour. It seemed we arrived too soon – it hadn’t opened for the season yet and the entrance was blocked off. My husband isn’t easily deterred and thought there must be another entrance, but after some circling around we never found one. Onward!
A park named McCarthy Beach tells you two or three things: someone named McCarthy had some association with it, and by golly, there’s gonna be a beach there. Maybe even a beach on McCarthy Lake? Two out of three ain’t bad. The park land was previously owned by John McCarthy, and according to the pamphlet, you can “spend hours at the park’s sugar sand beach.” I’ve never heard of a sugar sand beach – have you? I’m quite impressed by the marketing department at MBSP. But the two main lakes are named “Side Lake” and “Sturgeon Lake” and there wasn’t a McCarthy Lake to be seen anywhere.
We found our campsite and got set up. It was a hot afternoon and although technically we had time to do the hike the same day, we both wanted to wait until the morning when it would be cooler. A lot cooler, actually – it was to get down to 43 degrees in the night. A cool night sounded good to both of us after the heat of the day. The frogs started in at sunset to croon us to sleep with their strange music. I was wakeful for several hours, so I spent some time pondering whether or not there were two tribes of frogs singing very different tunes, or if the same tribe was just musically diverse. The loons chimed in deep in the night, but due to diffidence or perhaps the weather, they kept their part short, just enough to leave you longing for more.
When we started the 3-mile hike about 9:00 in the morning, it was delightfully cool, about 48 degrees. Things that require exertion are always easier without heat and humidity – that’s how it is in my world, anyway. We had to drive over to the hiking trailhead and looking at the trail map, we decided to take the Big Hole Trail Loop first so we could be walking near Pickerel Lake near the end of the hike. Alas, not long after starting up the trail, we fell into the Big Hole and were never seen again. Ha ha! We did kind of wonder if we’d see a big hole, but if there was one, it had filled with water and become Pickerel Lake. Stranger things have happened.
We began full of vigor, bolstered by the cool breezes and fewer of the Insects Which Shall Not Be Named. Right from the start, we could tell that we’d be doing a fair amount of uphill work. I was wearing my trusty knee huggers, as usual, but even their performance was strained by the challenge of the up and down nature of the trail. Three consecutive days of hiking after the relatively inactive winter season was putting us both through our paces, although it must be said that my beloved hiking companion was getting to the tops of those inclines much faster than I was. I overheard my hips and knees arguing about which of them was aching worse, but I ignored them.
As usual, photos were taken.
It was getting late in the morning for dew, but I spotted some leaves still bearing sparkling drops of it. We had just read Psalm 133 together, so the words came to mind:
Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious oil upon the head, coming down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard, coming down upon the edge of his robes. It is like the dew of Hermon coming down upon the mountains of Zion; for there the LORD commanded the blessing – life forever.
Dew, a picture of unity and blessing, right there at my feet. Do you suppose the makers of Mountain Dew knew the biblical allusion? I assign one of you to do some research and get back to me on that.
Speaking of things at our feet, we noticed some wrinkled mushrooms along the trail and hadn’t seen anything like them before. I admired their marvelous rusty color and wondered if they were wrinkled due to age or began their illustrious lives that way.
Right after we passed them, I noticed a birch tree had hung her clean laundry out on the line. It makes the journey interesting to see things that way.
At the end of the Big Hole Loop Trail, we saw the downward approach with Pickerel Lake in the distance – Ooh! Ahh! Kris reflected on the many memories he has of portaging with a canoe on his back and the happy moment of seeing the next lake ahead.
The walk along the lake was lovely; the cool breezes we had lost up on the loop returned to us there. Kris pointed out a beaver dam and along the trail we saw evidences of where the beavers had gnawed at the trunks of trees to get materials for their house.
I spotted a couple loons cavorting out on the lake and took some photos.
Meanwhile Kris had thoughtfully prepared a botany lesson for me. When I could take my eyes away from the loons, he showed me the difference between red pines and white pines, the red pine having needles in clusters of two, while the white pine needles had five per cluster. Pay attention, just in case there’s a quiz at the end of this post!
Leaving Pickerel Lake necessitated a long uphill slog and by this time, I had lost all of that initial vigor. I took it slowly, snapping a few more photos along the way. Kris got to the end before me and as I hobbled up those last few steps, he called out that he’d seen a red fox. Exciting! I missed it, but it was a fun sighting – it’s so rare that you see any actual wildlife on these hikes.
As we were driving away after finishing the hike, I looked at the pamphlet again and realized we’d never so much as seen, much less set foot on the “sugar sand beach.” It was too cold to swim anyway, but I’d have liked to have been able to boast of walking on sugar sand.
Knee Score: 8 out of 10 – should have used my trekking poles on this one.
If you can’t tell me the difference between the red pine needles and the white pine needles, I’ll just have to delete this in the morning.
Next hike: Red River SRA
Becoming a Christian also meant discovering a whole new genre in music, the contemporary Christian music scene. I had heard Amy Grant before my conversion, but other than that I really didn’t know much. Early on in the dietetic internship, my friend Tamie was playing an album of Amy Grant’s and I told her, “Oh, I like Amy Grant! I’d love to copy your album onto a tape.” At this point, she politely informed me that copying music was illegal. Oops – I’d always seen and read those little legal notices, but completely ignored them. I guess being a Christian meant living up to a different standard than the one to which I was accustomed.
Some people at our church wanted to go see a couple Christian musicians in concert up in Minneapolis. I’d never heard of either of them, but was enthused about going along, so I got tickets, too. The headline act was Leon Patillo and the opening singer was Michael Card. It turned out that everyone in our group came to see Michael Card, at that time not very well known, but a musician that I came to appreciate quite a bit. This was the first, but not the last time that I saw him in concert. My husband and I went to see him twice more, once at a large venue in Fort Wayne, and once in a teeny tiny church in a small town in Minnesota. His music was so steeped in the Scriptures that you could tell he was a man who studied and loved God’s word.
The Leon Patillo part of the concert was quite a bit stepped up in energy and amplification – it was loud and rowdy! I was intrigued by the sight of people lifting up their hands while singing along – what was this all about? I asked my friend Jodie later and she told me that for some people it was like reaching out to God in praise and worship. Hmmm…well, there are those places in the Bible that talk about the lifting up of our hands in prayer, so I could see that. And then came the altar call. By the time Leon Patillo was done talking to us, I was sure I hadn’t been very serious about my faith and needed to rededicate myself to the Lord. Altar calls were hard on naive introspective people like me. As I matured in my walk, I realized that I didn’t need to respond to those altar calls for rededication because there’d never be a time when I didn’t feel like I was falling short in some way. The Lord covers me and is sanctifying me – hallelujah! Philippians 1:6 brought a lot of comfort: “I am confident of this very thing: that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” All that aside, I enjoyed the concert so much that I bought one of Leon Patillo’s tapes afterward and played it a lot. “God did not send His son into the world to condemn the world…but that the world might be saved through Him.” Scripture set to catchy and bouncy music was okay by me.
In general, I really loved what I was hearing in contemporary Christian music. Someone gave me a tape of two early Phil Keaggy albums that I listened to over and over. “Oh, I can’t wait to see you Jesus, face to face. Nothing in this world can take Your place. All the pride of men laid low, and all his works of gold – Nothing can compare with what You are. Let everything else go.” I also had an album of Michael W. Smith’s that I played so much that my next-door neighbor in the internship learned it by hearing it through the wall between us. She told me she like it, so that was a relief. This is apparently a new form of evangelism – hassling your neighbors through loud music. Ha ha! I began learning some of the songs on my guitar and found such joy in singing songs of praise based on Scripture. What a change from the sometimes sad and depressing songs I used to sing, or songs that just focused on romantic relationships. When our dietetic internship class graduated, I sang the song “Friends” by Michael W. Smith as part of the ceremony. “Friends are friends forever, if the Lord’s the Lord of them. And a friend will not say never, ‘cause the welcome will not end. Though it’s hard to let you go, in the Father’s hands we know, that a lifetime’s not too long…to live as friends.”
Of course these songs and songwriters are not the apex of Christian expression in song – that place belongs to King David who wrote the psalms. And they certainly aren’t meant to be held up on the same level as Scripture (unless they literally are the Scriptures put to music). Of course, there are some Christians songs (and hymns!) that contain really awful theology, and I learned to spot those as I grew in my own knowledge of the Word. But the music that I listened back then was pretty solid; it played an important part in my early growth and edification as a Christian and holds a fond place in my heart to this day.
I’ll probably rededicate this post in the morning.
If you want to start at the beginning of this series, here you go:
Adventures Part 1
Next up:
Adventures Part 11
After the hike at Schoolcraft SP, we made our way to Scenic State Park where we’d camp overnight and tackle the 2.9-mile hike in the morning.
With our cots, mattresses and sleeping bags, it’s quite a comfortable experience usually – home away from home.
We had a nice spot, not too far from the bathroom (very important consideration!), but right in the thick of Mosquito Metropolis. Have you ever seen the Star Trek movie “The Wrath of Khan?” This is relevant, trust me. There’s a point at which Khan is full of frustration about Captain Kirk and says, wrathfully, “He tasks me. He TASKS me!” Oh, those mosquitos – they TASK ME!
In spite of that we had a lovely meal of ribeye steak, sour cream and chive mashed potatoes, and green beans. Can God set a table in the wilderness? Why yes, He can.
As we drifted off to sleep that night, we were aware of the constant and rhythmic chorus of frogs, surprising loud, but nice music for sleeping. We both woke up in the night to hear the haunting songs of loons on the lake. It’s a stirring experience. Back in the day, I wrote a short poem about it:
When evening comes to call,
The wind begins to fall.
The tent gives an invitation,
The loons cry in elation.
We got started the next morning bright and not too early by 8:30 a.m. after breakfast. It was 64 degrees, cool enough, but with a clinging humidity. Thoughts of Lord of the Rings are never far from my husband as we do these hikes, evidenced by his getting us off to a festive start by chanting, “They’re taking the hobbits to Isengard, they’re taking the hobbits to Isengard!” I really love this man.
We were in the same conditions as yesterday in the sense that it was dangerous to stop too long to take photos, but as we went through a boggy area, Kris began identifying a few plants and flowers using Picture This, so I took some photos, too: purple alder and yellow marsh marigold.
I took a photo of my reflection in the water and thought about the Robert Louis Stevenson poem “Looking-Glass River,” one stanza of which reads:
We can see our colored faces
Floating on the shaken pool
Down in cool places,
Dim and very cool;
We started on the second leg of the trail, a largely uphill trek on a peninsula between the two lakes Coon and Sandwick.
Friends, let me be honest: I had a bad attitude about the humidity, the ascent, the difficult effort, my labored breathing and most of all, the mosquitos. “In everything give thanks, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus,” came to my mind and I felt convicted. I’ve often been inspired by Corrie Ten Boom’s story about when she and her sister were in a concentration camp during WWII. Their crowded building was overrun with lice, which she complained about (she didn’t say, “They TASK me!” but it was probably something very similar). Her sister Bessie, reminded her that they were to give thanks to God in everything, even the lice. Corrie had a hard time joining Bessie in this prayer, but soon they discovered that the guards avoided their barracks because of the lice, giving them the freedom to have Bible studies and sing God’s praises.
Can I be thankful for mosquitos? Why yes, I can. It takes some imagination, though. I began contemplating the idea that mosquitos are a reminder that the enemy wants our blood, our souls, our lives. He prowls about as a roaring lion, (whining mosquito) seeking whom to devour. But death where is thy sting? Little insect, where is thy sting? Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! Christ bore the suffering of the cross to redeem my soul – can I not bear up under the small suffering of mosquitos?
Feeling somewhat fortified in soul, though still weary in body, I turned my mind toward a favorite hymn, “This is My Father’s World.”
This is my Father’s world,
And to my list’ning ears
All nature sings, and round me rings
The music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world;
I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas –
His hand the wonders wrought.
It was time to get out of my head and look at the wonders around me. Thank you, Lord, for majestic cedar trees, for a corridor of towering red pines, for higher elevations where the mosquitos don’t go, for quiet lakes, for a kayak slicing through the water, for a wooden stairway in the wilderness, for legs that can still walk, for a heart that still beats, for lungs that still breathe, for my handsome and faithful hiking companion… Good theology is very cheering and encouraging.
We headed back from our place at the point of the peninsula and I took a few more photos. There’s a lot of posters and cute photos of animal babies, but I think plant babies are really neglected. I submit to you that flora babies are just as sweet and adorable as fauna babies. Maybe not as cuddly, though.
When we got back to the campsite, I sat in the car with the AC on for about 10 minutes. It was heavenly.
The name “Scenic State Park” sets up some expectations and I think for the most part, the park delivered.
Knee Score: 7 out of 10.
Can I delete this in the morning? Why, yes, I can! But maybe won’t.
Next hike: McCarthy Beach State Park
Lynniebeemuseoday 