January’s drop-down menu leaves everything to the imagination: splotch the ice, splice the light, remake the spirit…
Just get on with it, doing what you have to do with the gray palette that lies to hand. The sun’s coming soon.
A future, then, of warmth and runoff, and old faces surprised to see us. A cache of love, I’d call it, opened up, vernal, refreshed. ~Sidney Burris “Runoff”
photo of hair ice taken by Laura Reifel
When the calendar finally reaches this last day of January, resplendent in its grayest pallor, I have realize there are six weeks of winter yet ahead.
This past month, nature offered many options on the drop-down menu. Take your pick: soupy foggy mornings, drizzly mid-days, crisp northeast winds with sub-zero wind chill, unexpected snow dumps with icy rain, balmy southerlies with flooding, too many soggy soppy puddly evenings.
Every once in awhile there was a special on the menu: icy spikes on grass blades, frozen droplets on birch branches, hair ice on wood, crystallized weeds like jewelry in the sun, a pink flannel blanket sunrise, an ocean-of-orange sunset.
I realize January’s gray palette is merely preparation for what comes next. There is Love cached away, and as spring is slowly revealed, it will not let me go.
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I have grown tired of the moon, tired of its look of astonish- ment, the blue ice of its gaze, its arrivals and departures, of the way it gathers lovers and loners under its invisible wings, failing to distinguish between them.
I have grown tired of so much that used to entrance me, tired of watching cloud shadows pass over sunlit grass, of seeing swans glide back and forth across the lake, of peering into the dark,hoping to find an image of a self as yet unborn.
Let plainness enter the eye, plainness like the table on which nothing is set, like a table that is not yet even a table. ~Mark Strand “Nocturne of the Poet Who Loved the Moon” from Almost Invisible
I’m only 24 hours into a week-long winter northeaster blow with sub-zero windchills. Already I want to hang up my Carhartts and retire my Muck Boots and toss my work gloves for a warmer easier life somewhere else.
This is just plain hard being a farmer. I feel like I’m losing my bona fides as a tough-as-nails rural person.
Nothing that entrances me about living on a farm in temperate weather is remotely attractive now. Windstorms like this mean I worry our power will go out, the generator won’t work, the water will freeze up and we’ll fall and break bones … and, and, and…
So many fourth dimensional worries, whining, and weariness to spare.
What I seem to forget is that the generations of tough people I descend from made it through far worse than this. They didn’t do it as a hobby, like us; it was their livelihood. Trees were felled and sawed to become tables and furniture and fences and roofs and walls of houses and barns. Animals gave milk and meat and fields yielded grain and hay and gardens and orchards grew enough to store for winter food.
A few days of winter misery is a small price to pay for that kind of sustainability.
Let the plainness of the past inspire the plain hard work needed today and over the next few days.
It is worth doing it without complaining because it is the plain hard work needed. It always has been.
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Outside the house the wind is howling and the trees are creaking horribly. This is an old story with its old beginning, as I lay me down to sleep. But when I wake up, sunlight has taken over the room. You have already made the coffee and the radio brings us music from a confident age. In the paper bad news is set in distant places. Whatever was bound to happen in my story did not happen. But I know there are rules that cannot be broken. Perhaps a name was changed. A small mistake. Perhaps a woman I do not know is facing the day with the heavy heart that, by all rights, should have been mine. ~Lisel Mueller “In November” from Alive Together
It does not escape me~ (I awake every day knowing this) a disastrous earthquake happened somewhere else, a war ravages families on both sides of a border, a windstorm leveled a town, a drunk driver devastated two families, a fire left a house in ashes, a mother nearly died giving birth, a flood ravaged a village, a grim diagnosis darkened someone’s remaining days.
No mistake has been made, yet I awake knowing this part of my story has yet to visit me – I hear of so much suffering, knowing the heavy heart that could have been mine still beats, still breaks, still aches, still believes in grace, mercy, and miracles.
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Maybe night is about to come calling, but right now the sun is still high in the sky. It’s half-past October, the woods are on fire, blue skies stretch all the way to heaven. Of course, we know that winter is coming, its thin winding sheets and its hard narrow bed. But right now, the season’s fermented to fullness, so slip into something light, like your skeleton; while these old bones are still working, my darling, let’s dance. ~Barbara Crooker, “Reel” from The Book of Kells
I’ve never been much of a dancer other than the square dancing we were taught in grade school. I could do-si-do with the best of them.
Our church used to hold an annual square dance in November along with a harvest dinner. We gathered in a school gymnasium, where my husband and I learned to Virginia Reel up and back and be sore the next day. Those were the days…
Instead, our trees dance and reel this time of year, creating a scandal by getting more naked with each passing day and breeze. They sway and bow and join limbs. Their bare bones grasp one another in preparation for their cold and narrow winter bed, wrapped in the shroud that will give way, yet again to the green leaves of spring, only a few months away.
Pick a partner and away you go!
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You are not surprised at the force of the storm— you have seen it growing. The trees flee. Now you must go out into your heart as onto a vast plain. Now the immense loneliness begins.
The days go numb, the wind sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.
Through the empty branches the sky remains. It is what you have. Be earth now, and evensong. Be the ground lying under that sky. Be modest now, like a thing ripened until it is real, so that he who began it all can feel you when he reaches for you. ~Rainer Maria Rilke from “Onto a Vast Plain”
I feel autumn rain Trying to explain something I do not want to know. ~Richard Wright “Haiku”
I know what this heavy autumn rainfall is trying to tell me –
Be buffed smooth by the winds, and lose your sharp edges Be restored after too many hot weeks of drought and dust Be humbled walking through mud and slosh and slick soppiness Be grateful for this newly opened landscape as trees shed leaves Be aware that sadness has its place this time of year, seeking solace Be balm to ones who are lonely and hunger for encouragement Be ready to remain still, listen, and content with what comes each day.
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When I visited as a boy, too young for chores, a pair of maples flared before the farmhouse. My grandfather made me a swing, dangling rope from stout branches. I hurtled between them high as I could, pumping out half the day while my mind daydreamed the joy of no school, no camp, no blocks of other children fighting childhood’s wars. With the old people I listened to radio news of Japanese in Nanking, Madrid on fire, Hitler’s brownshirts heiling. The hurricane of 1938 ripped down the older maple.
When I was twelve and could work the fields, my grandfather and I, with Riley the horse, took four days to clear the acres of hay from the fields on both sides of the house. With a scythe I trimmed the uncut grass around boulders and trees, by stone walls, and raked every blade to one of Riley’s piles. My grandfather pitched hay onto the wagon where I climbed to load it, fitting it tight. We left the fields behind as neat as lawns. When I moved back to the house at forty, a neighbor’s machine took alfalfa down in an afternoon. Next morning, engines with huge claws grappled round green bales onto trucks, leaving loose hay scattered and grass standing at the field’s margin.
A solitary maple still rises. Seventy years after my grandfather hung the swing, maple branches snap from the old tree. I tear out dead limbs for next year’s sake, fearing the wind and ice storms of winter, fearing broken trees, cities, and hipbones. ~Donald Hall “Maples” from The Back Chamber.
Photo of Aaron Janicki haying with his Oberlander team in Skagit County courtesy of Tayler RaeBenjamin Janicki of Sedro Woolley raking hay with his team of Oberlanders
I sit with braided fingers and closed eyes in a span of late sunlight. The spokes are closing.
It is fall: warm milk of light, though from an aging breast. I do not mean to pray. The posture for thanks or supplication is the same as for weariness or relief. But I am glad for the luck of light. Surely it is godly, that it makes all things begin, and appear, and become actual to each other.
Light that’s sucked into the eye, warming the brain with wires of color. Light that hatched life out of the cold egg of earth. ~May Swenson from “October”
portrait of Dan’s mom, Emma Gibson, praying, by granddaughter Sara Larsen
I know all too well that by this time in October, the light is changing, the colors have faded, and the chill sets in. I grasp for memories of Octobers past and bundle up the scenes I can preserve now, like harvesting hay to be tied up in bales and stored safely until the middle of winter.
Then, at the right time, when I’m most hungry for color and light, when I’m most worried about what lies in store for us in the future, I loosen the strings on the memories and let the images tumble out, feeding me like mother’s milk.
And grateful, I fill up rather than break into pieces…
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Had I not been awake I would have missed it, A wind that rose and whirled until the roof Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore
And got me up, the whole of me a-patter, Alive and ticking like an electric fence: Had I not been awake I would have missed it
It came and went too unexpectedly And almost it seemed dangerously, Hurtling like an animal at the house,
A courier blast that there and then Lapsed ordinary. But not ever Afterwards. And not now. ~Seamus Heaney “Had I Not Been Awake”
October is the month of the sudden warm wind-blow, usually arriving from the south, intent on scattering leaves and slamming doors on its way past to head north to Canada. Our wind chimes outside clang a cacophony rather than the usual gentle harmonic tones. The window shades become percussion instruments over our still-open windows. Anything not fastened down goes airborne.
The air blows in a rush from somewhere else, bringing new smells and sensations, surging with an electric energy even as it tries to pull power lines down to render us powerless.
Nothing feels ordinary in a windstorm; there is no easy sleep.
And just as suddenly, the autumn storm passes and is gone. The trees have been stripped, embarrassed at their sudden nakedness. Branches litter the yard and driveway like so many toothpicks. My illusion of comfort and control has been undone by such a show of force and power.
I face my own frailty in the wake of life’s storms. Had I not been awake, I might have missed that altogether.
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photo of Vancouver Island west coast by Nate Gibson
All night long do you know it? Do you care? Up and down the ocean beaches they are marching; All the lanesome peril of the winter nights they dare, Where the surf shoots, seething, landward in the bitter, biting air; And the fitful lights and shadows of the lanterns that they bear Make more wild the gloomy sky above them arching
Where the coast is bleak and cold; Where the rocks are high and bold, While the wind and snow and sleet are beating; Where the breakers rush and roar, There they watch for ships ashore, The cry for help with instant succor meeting.
All night long where the surges flood the dunes, Stern watch and ward they keep, strong eyes sweeping The offing, while the breakers are roaring savage runes, While the stormy winds are howling or wailing dismal tunes, While the rocks and sands are becoming broad lagoons, The life-saving watch these braves are keeping.
All night long while the timid landsmen sleep, Dreaming, snug and warm, on their downy pillows, The coast-guard, the surf-men down by the deep, Steadfastly, bravely, their watch heroic keep, Or into the sea—icy cold—they boldly leap, To rescue fellow-men from the billows.
Talk not of heroes whose trade it is to kill! Life savers! these are the god-like heroes still, Risking their lives for every life they save From the plunging wreck, or snatch from swirling wave.
O when your beds are warm, In nights of winter storm, When you are safe from wind and sea— Think of the surf-men brave: Their life watch by the wave, And cheer them by your grateful sympathy. ~Hannah Augusta Moore “The Life Savers”
Minnie Paterson and dog Yarrow (archive photo from Alberni Valley Museum)
Minnie Paterson rocked slowly in her rocking chair, nursing her infant son. She sat near the south window of the lighthouse living quarters, and studied the rain streaming down in rivulets. Wind gusts rattled the window. A lighthouse keeper’s home was constantly buffeted by wind bearing salty spray, nearly rendering the windows opaque with salt residue. This early December storm had picked up urgency throughout the night. Now with first light, Minnie looked out at driving rain blowing sideways, barely able to make out the rugged rocks below. The Pacific Ocean was anything but; the mist hung gray, melding horizon into sea, with flashes of white foam in crashing waves against the rocky cliffs of Cape Beale.
Whenever storms came, it seemed the Paterson family lived at the edge of civilization. Yet these storms were the reason she and Tom and their five children lived on the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island, in isolation at the southern edge of Barkley Sound. Tom’s job was to keep the foghorn blaring and the light glowing above the treacherous rocks, to guide sea vessels away from certain peril. The storms sometimes were too powerful even with the lighthouse as a beacon of warning. Nearly a year earlier, in January 1906, the ship Valencia had wrecked off the coast and only a few survivors had managed to make their way to shore, staggering up the rocky trail to the lighthouse where Minnie warmed them by the stove and fed them until rescuers could come.
Eleven months later, her husband came in the door in a rush from the upper room where he tended the light. Another ship, battered by the waves, its sails in tatters, was in distress just off the coast, threatening to run aground on the rocks and break apart.
Minnie went to the window again but could see nothing in the dark mist. Surely this could not be another Valencia disaster! Tom went to the telegraph in the corner of the room and tapped out the urgent message to the fishing village of Bamfield, five miles away inside Barkley Sound. He sat impatiently waiting for a reply, drumming his fingers on the desk. After ten minutes, he sent the message again with no response.
Clearly the telegraph lines were torn down in the storm. Fallen trees frequently pulled them down, leaving no option to summon rescuers. This ship would be doomed, just like the Valencia. There was no way the crew could come ashore in lifeboats without perishing on the rocks.
Seeing the helplessness Tom felt, Minnie knew immediately what she must do. He could not leave his post—it was a condition of his job. She would have to run the six miles for help, through the forest. She kissed Tom and five children goodbye, donned a cap and sweater, and as her swollen feet from recent pregnancy did not fit in her boots, she put on her husband’s slippers. She ran down the long stairway down the hill, taking their dog Yarrow as a precaution to help warn her of bears on the trails.
Minnie first had to cross through a tideland inlet with water waist deep. She quickly stripped from the waist down, held her skirt and slippers over her head and crossed through the icy water, her dog swimming alongside. Shivering on the other side, she quickly dressed, and started down the narrow winding forest trail, scrambling over large fallen trees blocking the way. She waded through deep mud, and crossed rocky beaches where wild waves drenched her. At times the tide was so high she crawled on her hands and knees through underbrush so as not to be swept away by the storm.
After four hours, she reached a home along the trail and with a friend, launched a rowboat to go on to Bamfield. The two women notified the anchored ship Quadra, which set out immediately for Cape Beale to rescue the stranded sailors. Within an hour, the Quadra had reached the Coloma which was taking on water fast, and drifting close to the rocks on shore.
Minnie walked the long way back home that night, clothing tattered, muscles cramping, exhausted and chilled. Her breasts overflowing, she gratefully fed her baby, unaware for days whether her efforts rescued the crew of the Coloma. When the locals learned of her heroism, they notified media sources in Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle. Minnie was hailed as a life saver, given gifts and honors, including the following citation from Seattle’s Union of Sailors of the Pacific: “…RESOLVED that we, the seamen of America, fully recognize her sterling worth as the highest type of womanhood, deeply appreciating her unselfish sacrifices in behalf of those ‘who go down to the sea in ships’ and assure her and hers of our undying gratitude.”
Tragically, her health compromised by her extreme exertion that night, she died five years later in 1911 of tuberculosis, forever a life saving heroine to remember.
original Cape Beale Lighthouse (archive from Alberni Valley Museum photo collection)Early 20th century photo of Cape Beale lighthouse and residence buildings (archive of Alberni Valley Museum)
This is a story Dan and I were told by locals during our stay in Bamfield on our honeymoon over forty years ago. On a bright September day, we walked the trail to visit the Cape Beale lighthouse, a most challenging and beautiful part of the world. The trail was so difficult, I was sure I was not fit enough to make it to the lighthouse and back, so how Minnie managed in a December storm, much of it in the dark with only a lantern for light, is beyond imagining. Her bravery captured me and I honor her sacrifice with this rendering of her remarkable storyof personal sacrifice.
modern Cape Beale lighthouse
You are not hidden There’s never been a moment You were forgotten You are not hopeless Though you have been broken Your innocence stolen I hear you whisper underneath your breath I hear your SOS, your SOS I will send out an army To find you in the middle of darkest night It’s true I will rescue you There is no distance That cannot be covered Over and over You’re not defenseless I’ll be your shelter I’ll be your armor I hear you whisper underneath your breath I will never stop marching To reach you in the middle of the hardest fight It’s true I will rescue you I hear the whisper underneath your breath I hear you whisper you have nothing left ~Lauren Daigle
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There is weather on the day you are born and weather on the day you die. There is the year of drought, and the year of floods, when everything rises and swells, the year when winter will not stop falling, and the year when summer lightning burns the prairie, makes it disappear. There are the weathervanes, dizzy on top of farmhouses, hurricanes curled like cats on a map of sky: there are cows under the trees outlined in flies. There is the weather that blows a stranger into town and the weather that changes suddenly: an argument, a sickness, a baby born too soon. Crops fail and a field becomes a study in hunger; storm clouds billow over the sea; tornadoes appear like the drunk trunks of elephants. People talking about weather are people who don’t know what to say and yet the weather is what happens to all of us: the blizzard that makes our neighborhoods strange, the flood that carries away our plans. We are getting ready for the weather, or cleaning up after the weather, or enduring the weather. We are drenched in rain or sweat: we are looking for an umbrella, a second mitten; we are gathering wood to build a fire. ~Faith Shearin “Weather” from Orpheus, Turning.
On the planet the winds are blowing: the polar easterlies, the westerlies, the northeast and southeast trades… Lick a finger, feel the now. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
I’m still discovering, right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God. ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from The Cost of Discipleship
Never before in the history of humanity have we had the ability to pull the weather forecast out of our pocket and know not only what to anticipate in the next 24 hours, but what is happening right now. Prior to phone apps, we scanned the skies, checked the barometer, monitored the thermometer, and put a licked finger up to test the wind direction. As obsolete as those measures seem now, I confess they still make sense to me.
It’s surreal if my phone says it is raining at “my location” and I can’t find a single cloud.
I want to know what is happening around me from my own observation, trust my own eyes, feel my own physical response to the heat, the cold, the dry, the wet. I want to know we’re all in this together, right now.
I want to live completely in this world, living now, finger held to the wind. Then, having the information I need, I throw myself completely into the arms of God.
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The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. John 3: 8
Question: What causes the wind? Why do I feel some way in wind?
Answer: Trees fan the wind as they sway. Bushes help. Your heart fills up. ~Annie Dillard from “Some Questions and Answers About Natural History from Tickets for a Prayer Wheel
Let the wind die down. Let the shed go black inside. Let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come. ~Jane Kenyon from “Let Evening Come”
We’re in the middle of an arctic outflow northeaster that is predicted to blow for several more days and bring snow. What felt like hints of spring have literally gone back underground – the peeper frogs’ song at night is gone, the shoots of snowdrops are frozen in place, delicate buds are in shock, daffodils that recently emerged are now held in suspense.
This is no gentle breeze nor is it a life threatening hurricane. Instead, it is a consistent bone-chilling reminder how vulnerable we are to forces far more powerful than our frail and temporary earthly bodies.
We are not in control, never have been. It helps to remember that.
So we sit tight indoors as much as possible, bundling up when we need to go out for farm chores, yet knowing eventually this bruising air will eventually go still. We ourselves are changed and humbled, with hearts full of the knowledge that God is within those unseen forces. Though we may be afraid of the buffeting sting of a strong chill wind, we pray for the inevitable calm and comfort to come.
And I have no doubt – God Himself will bring it.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is taken from 2 Corinthians 4: 18: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
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