When I walk, I think. I see things, I hear things, I muse about things, I wonder about things, I write things. In fact, I’m always writing, telling an inward story, a narrative, that sometimes emerges onto a computer screen or on paper.
The sight of so many withered leaves this morning recalled to my mind one of the first verses I ever memorized: Isaiah 64:6. “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” What a poetic image! A withered leaf hanging on a branch gets swept away by the wind, the same way our iniquities sweep us away. I think I memorized that verse to remind me of the universality of sin, and the futility of righteous deeds in accomplishing salvation for anyone. The only way to be cleaned up is in Christ. Filthy garments and withered leaves create quite a vivid picture in the mind, don’t they?
So, some fairly lofty thoughts going on there for a while as I walked in my heaviest winter coat with a scarf and warm hat to protect against the bitter cold. I often find winter walks more exhilarating than summer walks. I took a few photos of the things that caught my eye: church bells, a circle of Christmas bulbs that came up with the cold weather, the road ahead.
On my favorite part of the walk, a protected path that meanders by the cemetery, the regular sound of traffic was replaced by dull tappings of woodpeckers, a sharp conversation between two blue jays, a cheerful chickadee, a distant chain saw and the steady sound of my own footsteps. And I think to myself, what a wonderful God.
Thanks for joining me.
I’ll probably run a chain saw through this post in the morning.
One of the cheeriest parts of the Christmas season is all the Christmas lights and decorations that go up outside. The darkness of our days lengthens, but the dark nights are made lovely with a grand variety of colorful light displays. We used to walk around our neighborhood on these cold, dark nights with our children and rate the different displays. The rating system was from 1 to 10. The light display at our house received a 1 and all the other houses received scores that were relative to that. I wish I had a photo of the display we had for years and years, so you could see why ours was only rated a 1. Basically we used to put lights only on our balcony – some that went around the sides and top, and on the railing we had the kinds of lights that trail down like icicles. Our kids used to call it “The Gaping Maw.” My husband has bumped up our display since then and now drapes lights around most of the bushes in front of our house, as well as giving the balcony a better look.
So why do we all do this at Christmas time? Because it’s pretty? Nope. Because it makes us happy? Nope. Because we need to keep up with what the neighbors are doing? Definitely nope.
“The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; Those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them.”
“…that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”
Every single house with its Christmas lights ablaze is proclaiming the gospel of Christ, the One who made light, the One who is light, the One who saves us out of the darkness of our sin into His marvelous light. All our Christmas lights at night are a loud hallelujah to Jesus.
I’ll probably delete this in the morning with a hallelujah!
I’m a big fan of whimsical poetry, both reading it and writing it. It doesn’t add much to the literature landscape, but it can bring a smile. Here’s one I wrote for my granddaughter.
The Leopard Did God make the leopard first, Or did He make the cat? One is big and spotted, The other small and fat.
Don’t go near the leopard, He’ll hurt you with his claws. But the cat will purr in your lap And knead you with her paws.
No, it’s not Turkey Day. I really must be firm on that issue. As Christians, of course, we don’t set aside just one day a year to thank God for our many blessings; we do it every day, sometimes every hour.
Now thank we all our God With heart and hands and voices, Who wondrous things hath done, In whom his world rejoices; Who from our mothers’ arms, Hath blessed us on our way With countless gifts of love, And still is ours today.
But it’s still a beautiful thing to have one day a year when our whole nation (supposedly) gives thanks to God, feasting on the visible fruits of His blessing, enjoying the fellowship of family and friends.
My family when I was growing up didn’t have many solid Thanksgiving traditions, other than cleaning the house to a fare-thee-well and having all the traditional victuals. Oh, and I remember every year we had to get the good silver out and get the tarnish off of it with some sort of paste. It was actually kind of satisfying work. We usually sang a Thanksgiving hymn as a form of grace.
Come, ye thankful people come, Raise the song of harvest home; All is safely gathering in, Ere the winter storms begin; God, our maker, doth provide For our wants to be supplied; Come to God’s own temple, come, Raise the song of harvest home.
What were your traditions?
(I probably could have done a little bit of cropping on that photo before posting it – included the original in a letter I recently sent to someone.)
Happy Thanksgiving, my friends!
I’ll probably be too busying stuffing a turkey to delete this in the morning.
Me: It’s almost time to leave to go swimming. Also me: I’m in the middle of a project. Maybe I’ll go a little later.
Me (a little later): You should swim laps today. Also me: I could always take a walk if I don’t go.
Me: It’s cold and rainy. You probably won’t go for a walk. Also me: I’m still recovering from a cold. I shouldn’t go lap swimming.
Me: The cold you had is in the rear-view mirror at this point. Also me: I just don’t feel like going swimming. What does it matter if I skip today? It’s not like I’ll never go again.
Me: If you leave soon, you’ll still have time to swim laps before it closes. Also me: Sigh. Okay. You’re right.
So, I went lap swimming. Me won the argument against Also Me, which was a sanctifying experience and of course, I’m glad I went. It’s not always that hard, but it was today.
As I was leaving the pool after finishing, the lifeguard sitting way across the other side of the pool waved at me. I waved back. She said something cheerful that sounded like it could have been “have a great day,” but there was music playing and I still had one of my ears plugged with silicon so I couldn’t really hear her. I said, “You too!” and hoped it was a fitting response.
Me: I’ll probably delete this in the morning. Also Me: What if I don’t feel like deleting it?
At last, the penultimate hike of our Hiking Club Adventures! We camped at Savanna Portage State Park in anticipation of doing the 5.3 mile hike in the morning. The park was surprisingly crowded with other campers and we realized that it’s been a while since we were camping on a weekend. Two young couples were camping right next to our site and they had a dog. I had a gloomy premonition of these young ‘uns making a lot of noise late into the night, followed by the dog’s incessant barking. Wrong on all counts, I’m glad to say. Remind me of this the next time you hear me uttering a gloomy premonition. Nip it, nip it, nip it!!
We had quite a bit of rain overnight and the forecast for the day was more of the same, so we decided to wear our rain gear for the hike and I left my big camera behind. With the length of the hike, using both hiking poles seemed prudent; Kris decided to use the extra pole. We took off from our tent site around 9:15 a.m., 61 degrees and overcast, which is actually nice hiking weather.
The early part of the hike took us up the Continental Divide Trail (the pamphlet described it this way: “…as it rises and falls for over two miles.” I was just a titch concerned about that.) Further up and further in! The trail was wide and mostly grassy, lots easier to walk on than the hike we’d just done at Bear Head State Park.
With all that uphill exertion, we both got hot pretty quickly. Kris shucked his raincoat early on, but I waited until later just in case my bare arms might be a magnet for any mosquitos still remaining.
When we got near the top of the Continental Divide Trail, we stopped off at Wolf Lake Overlook for a breather and to read the signs. We learned that Savanna Portage is so named because it is at this juncture that Lake Superior and the Mississippi River watersheds come closest together and there was a 6-mile canoe portage that went from one to the other. First the portage was used by Native Americans and later on by European settlers, fur traders, voyageurs, etc. Thinking about a 6-mile portage carrying canoes and gear made me exceedingly thankful to be hiking without carrying anything.
The Hiking Club hike is essentially a triangle of three trails with a sharp left turn from the top of the Continental Divide Trail onto the Old Schoolhouse Trail. We were getting a little giddy with the thought that we only have one more hike after this. Kris began singing, adapting the words to an old sea shanty:
One more hike, my Johnny, one more hike Oh rock and roll me over, one more hike.
Why don’t we have hiking shanties? The definition of a shanty is thus: “A song with a boisterous chorus, sung by sailors while heaving at the capstan or windlass or hoisting up heavy weights, to enable them to pull or heave together in time with the song.” I guess that answers that question, but begs another one: what should we call hiking songs? Trekkies? Huffy Puffies? Walkies?
The sun came out briefly along the Old Schoolhouse Trail. You know what song goes with that, don’t you? “Here comes the sun….here comes the sun…and I say, ‘it’s all right.’” A nod to the Beatles for that. A whole generation of us can’t help singing it when the sun comes out after a dreary absence – it’s practically Pavlovian at this point.
By the time we’d taken the final left turn onto the Anderson Road Trail, it was just starting to rain lightly. It was so humid that the rain felt good. We spent most of our time on that trail talking about making all of these hiking blog posts into a book. I don’t have any illusions about anybody wanting to actually publish these in book form, but there are some websites that are designed to help you make your own one-and-done book from blog posts. I’ll be looking into that. Here’s a working title for the book: “A Wimp’s Guide to Hiking Minnesota’s State Parks.” Thoughts? Suggestions?
The autumn colors made for some beautiful avenues along the way, and there were some orderly stands of tall pines that stood as an army of sentinels along the last part of the trail. I like to think that they were saluting us for finishing the hike.
One more hike, my Johnny…
Knee Score: 6 or 7 out of 10. The hiking poles were very helpful on this hike.
Jesus told Paul that he was sending him to the Gentiles “to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God…”
Darkness to light Blindness to sight Damascus Road Kicking the goads From death to life An end to strife. Therefore be brave The gospel saves.
Isn’t that charming? This is one of the gifts my husband gave me for my birthday, so that each day I can read a poem and enjoy some beautiful artwork. Here’s today’s offering:
Pine Tree Tops In the blue night frost haze, the sky glows with the moon pine tree tops bend snow-blue, fade into sky, frost, starlight. The creak of boots. Rabbit tracks, deer tracks, what do we know. Gary Snyder
What do we know, indeed? I’m going to enjoy this book so much.
When my children were learning parts of speech, I created a fun game called Silly Sentences that was fairly popular for a time. Then it fell into obscurity, like so many things do, and sat in a plastic bin in our storeroom for the last 20 years.
In an effort to prune through our stuff, I came across the game bin and decided it was time to open it up and get rid of things. There were a lot of homemade games in that bin that I’d forgotten about – games that the kids made when we were all enthusiastic about the idea. It was fun looking through them all. The kids probably don’t want to see those again, but I set them aside for them anyway.
But now that I’m looking at Silly Sentences, I’m not sure if I can throw it away after all. You always started with a noun and as you went along the board, you collected the other parts of speech. When you came to one of the “Silly Sentence” markers, you had to put a sentence together with what you had. There were also options to add in a rhyme or a simile if you already had a verb. Then you’d start all over again with a new noun. You might end up with more than one of each card for your sentence.
So, randomly picking the top cards from each set, I’ll give an example: Noun: teddy bear Verb: Fly Adjective: Weird Adverb: Slowly
The weird teddy bear flew slowly over the field.
The weird teddy bear flew While the wind slowly blew
The weird teddy bear flew as slowly as a drifting feather.
This just might be too fun to throw away. I wonder if my husband would consider playing it with me?
This weird teddy blog will slowly fly away in the morning.
(Notes from our trip way back in September.) We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at our campsite at Bear Head Lake State Park before starting out on the 3-mile hike. We had set up camp the night before and were trying to decide whether or not to set up the screen tent when we heard thunder in the distance. Debate over. On our last trip we had discovered that our new screen tent didn’t keep out the rain, so Kris had concocted a system using plastic sheets and large binder clips to make the tent more or less rain proof. It was gratifying to be able to try it out right away, since the rain came down during supper time and we had no other place to cook our food and eat it other than in that tent. ‘Twas a thing of beauty. When we went to bed later, the rain had stopped and we heard the cries of wolves and loons in the distance, the eerie music of the wilderness.
We got on the trail mid-morning, starting out by the trail center in cool 63-degree weather. Right out of the starting gate, Kris referenced Lord of the Rings when he noticed a plant that was dead other than one blossom. “Just like in Minas Tirith,” he commented, referring to the White Tree of Gondor. Bravo! In our case, the plant was dying, whereas in LOTR, the blossom was evidence of the new growth due to the return of the king. We, too, will have a Return of the King. When He comes, He will make all things new. What a lovely thought to start the hike with! We came to the first map and were amused to see a slug traversing along it. Kris suggested that perhaps it represented a giant slug which was making its way over the landscape. This makes a fine premise for a campy monster movie, doesn’t it? “The Giant Slug of Bear Head Lake State Park.” That’s rather an unwieldy title – one of you should come up with something better.
The path had started out wide and grassy, but it wasn’t long before the trail had become narrow and strewn with tree roots and small boulders. It was very tricky walking and I had to keep my eyes on the trail at my feet to keep from tripping. That was pretty typical of most of the trail, other than a short-ish stint on a paved road. We were walking along Bear Head Lake, but only caught glimpses of it through the trees. Eventually we came to a spot where we could take a side path of unknown length down to the lake, and great was Kris’s shock when I suggested we take it. Having seen “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” years ago, he must have wondered if there were alien pods in our basement. I’m usually very resistant to taking one more step than necessary on these hikes. I’m ashamed to admit that to you all, but it’s true. My desire to get a good photo of the lake was at war with my wimpy spirit. The photographer won that particular war. (It must be said that later on when we’d already seen the password, we came to a fork in the road where one path would have cut off a great deal of the hiking club trail. I remarked wistfully that it would be nice to take it and Kris said, “Now there’s the woman I know and love!”)
I spotted a small dead animal on the trail. We thought it was probably a mole or a vole, maybe even a shrew. One wonders what the odds are of two animals that look alike having names that rhyme. It’s almost begging for a poem, isn’t it?
Mole or vole? Vole or Mole? Both go underground through a hole. Both are small and brown and furry Both can ruin your yard in a hurry
Here’s the way to tell them apart It’s very simple; you won’t need a chart. Just find a dead one and do an inspection For all the things that I’m going to mention
The vole, you see, looks like a mouse. Its nest is below, but above ground its house. It has long orange teeth for eating plants This devout vegetarian won’t even eat ants.
The mole stays down under and tunnels its route, Seems eyeless and earless but has a long snout Its feet are like paddles, its claws are long It doesn’t think eating insects is wrong.
Mole or vole? Vole or Mole? You can’t just see if it digs a hole Look at its feet, its teeth and its snout That oughtta help you figure it out.
This time of year, you see a lot of things that are dying. Autumn leaves have a particularly glorious way of shuffling off this mortal coil, but most of the time, death in the plant world looks dark, decayed and distorted. Death isn’t supposed to be beautiful; it is the final enemy, after all. I found myself musing about being at my Mom’s death bed recently. The body she left behind certainly didn’t reflect the lovely young woman she’d been in the prime of her life. But love made the sight beautiful to me, nonetheless, a radiant autumn leaf.
As if somehow in tune with my thoughts, Kris mentioned that he’d been contemplating how a hike in September caused him to think about being in the September of his life. He began working through the calendar year on this theme. “March is the time of birth, April is a time of growth, May is the flowering of youth…” I contributed that June was the season of marrying and July was the time of our lives when we are bearing fruit. Kris picked up from there, “…and August is when the fruit is mature and ready for harvest, when our children are grown and gone and we retire from our jobs.” From there we come to September, getting older but still having energy and being active. October continues the harvest theme, perhaps with grandchildren, while November is when the snowy white hairs come, along with winter storms of aging. December takes us through those final stages of life when we look back on our legacy and January represents Death. (Seriously, doesn’t January in Minnesota often feel a little like death?) The astute among you will notice that February got dropped off this interesting tableau, but ne’er fear, we noticed that too and decided that February was that phase of life when growth happens in unseen places, getting ready for birth. See? We worked it out.
Keeping ourselves occupied in this way, we kept on walking, coming to a bench overlooking Norberg Lake, as good a place as any to take a breather and gulp down some water. It still wasn’t a hot day, but the air was laden with moisture and all the exertion had produced lots of sweat. Kris spotted what he called “a bunch of flitty birds,” up high among the tree branches so I spent some time trying to find them with my camera lens and capture them. Bah humbug. I found a woodpecker and another small brown bird that were more accommodating.
After this, it was all about pushing through to the end for me. I left Kris behind and the Lord filled my sails with a second wind that powered me back to the car. It took us about an hour and a half to complete the hike. We ended up right by the trail center, a nice air-conditioned place to rest our weary bones and have a Clif bar.
“Are you going to finish that Clif bar?”
Knee score: a solid 6 out of 10, and that was with the Hiking Pole of Power that I used this time. Equivalent of 5 flights of stairs for those of you know like to know these things.
Lynniebeemuseoday 