Outside: Water

Running Monday morning, before sunrise, after a day of much-needed rain, the fog was so thick I could feel individual droplets hitting my face. Two hours later, biking behind my kids on their way to school, it was still there—heavy all around us, changing everything we saw and didn’t see, cool flecks of it wetting our skin. I don’t know why I like that feeling so much, but I do. And I like when the clouds descend to earth and the light changes and the world looks completely different.

There is nothing like the feeling of water—the coolest good thing sliding down your throat when you are thirsty; the blessing you get when you decide wet is wet and stop running to get out of the rain and let it soak you instead, turning your face upward for more; the way a lake wraps around you when you finally relax and let yourself float in it.

It is almost too big a word to write about, water. It conjures up so many other words: washing, cleansing, thirst, deluge, baptism, holy, pure, flood, waves, ocean, lake, river, stream, rivulet, drink, pour, fill, flow, float, bathe, drown, sprinkle. I’ve approached many times and quit, because there seemed no way to encompass it all.

But I can try to get at it in tiny droplets. Or maybe even a lake at a time. Maybe it’s possible to approach the meaning of water like a poem—let it wash over you, let the parts you understand soak in, and hope that next time you come to it more will make its way in. Because you certainly can’t carry it away in your hands.

 

 

I love what a lake does with light. Regardless of the circumstances, it always reflects. Calm, choppy, undulating—whatever state the water is in, it reflects what is above. Always, it shines back the light and color it receives, sometimes solid and clear, sometimes broken into a million diamonds so bright they hurt your eyes. But always, the water is giving back some form of what it is shown.

All the time, though, that it is reflecting, a lake is hiding something else. And how can you not love knowing there’s a secret world underneath? You can get glimpses of it from above, depending on how far the light penetrates. You can visit for a while, depending on how long you can hold your breath or what tools you have to mimic a creature that doesn’t need oxygen the way you do. But that world is not yours, and I don’t believe that all the study in the world would allow a person to know it, entirely. The fact that it is there, regardless of whether or not human eyes ever see it—does it make you wonder?

And what the lake is hiding, it nourishes. Light soaks through that surface reflection, or cuts through it in shafts, and there is life there: swimming, waving, floating, teeming.

Do you ever wish you could work that seamlessly—reflecting and harboring and nourishing what was given to you? It would not matter if you were perfectly still or violently wind-whipped. You would inhabit your space, live out your purpose without faltering. Somehow always at rest.


More in this series:    Fern, Moth, Birch, Turtle Hunting



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Outside: Fern

“Ferns in general may be thought of as largely being specialists in marginal habitats, often succeeding in places where various environmental factors limit the success of flowering plants.”

—“Fern,” Wikipedia

Tell me about things that thrive in the shade. Things that were made not for bright light, but for cool, dappled places. That take scarcity and turn it into a profusion of green lace.

Tell me about the things that thrive off what seems like not enough. The things that take too-cold, too-dry, too-dark, and blanket them with improbable beauty.

Tell me about tender things that surprise you with their strength.

Here—I will tell you a story, too:

My grandmother, the one I never knew, was a mother and a musician and a teacher and an artist. A queenly woman. She died of pneumonia during a flu outbreak when she was only in her forties, after a lifetime of struggling with severe allergies and asthma. I have always thought of her as strong in heart, weak in body. It recently struck me, though, that a woman who survived her birth only because the neighbor lady sucked the fluid from her lungs to get her breathing, who most likely survived two bouts of tuberculosis, who struggled to breathe off and on all her life, with very little of the medical intervention available now—that woman must have been incredibly strong, period. And from everything I know about her, she lived abundantly.

Does it make sense when I tell you that I feel her legacy as keenly as that of the grandmother I knew most of my life, who lived to be 97? Neither one has seen the end of her influence.

Tell me about those things—and those people—made just for their specific time and place—the ones who blanket their world the way ferns blanket the forest floor, delicate and strong, graceful and bountiful, soaking up every last bit of light.


More in this series:     Moth, Birch, Turtle Hunting




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Outside: Moth

I wasn’t ready to commit to this being a series at first, but there you have it, that’s what it is. Technically, this is number 3.

I have nothing against butterflies. They are completely magical. Delicate, colorful—how can you not be glad to have seen one?

Part of their magic, I think, is that they seem to be always moving. You can follow one a long way, trying to see it up close, but just when you think it will land it is off again, elusive as a thought.

I’ve had a different experience with moths. Not the nervous ones that throw themselves at porch lights. The other ones—the ones you find in daylight, at rest. The ones that surprise you because you always think of moths as frantic and dusty and colorless, but this one is so big, so beautiful, so still.

There is something special about a creature that allows itself to be seen. Holding a luna moth is a different experience, altogether, than chasing a butterfly. You move and breathe differently, your whole concept of fragile changes.

And that, really, is what I want to leave you with today.


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Outside: Birch

It was Middle who pointed out that certain trees glitter.

“Like those, with the white trunks?” I asked, pointing to some birch trees on the side of the road. Yes, except the ones she was talking about were all white, the leaves too. We never quite figured out exactly which trees were her favorite on that trip, but the image is there in her head, working on her.

And, because this is the way my mind works, I started wondering which tree is my favorite.

I’ve always been fond of willows—their graceful shape, the way the branches reach out only to return to and touch the earth. The promised space within them, hidden and quiet and green. The small, delicate leaves.

I love maples for their color in the fall, and redbuds for their color in spring, as well as the way their trunks twist and spread. I love shagbark hickory because their bark is simply amazing.

But birch trees—is it only because they are in a way a namesake? Bjork—bjørk, actually—means birch.

It’s hard to say if I loved the tree first, for itself, or only after I learned I was connected to it by name. I sat watching a cluster of them one recent afternoon on a trip north. Tall and slender and swaying a little in the wind, leaves glittering like coins. And have you seen their bark in the winter? I fell in love with these trees in a new way when I discovered that against a backdrop of snow and brown-barked trees, birch bark is multi-colored. Subtle, but breathtaking when you come up close.

I can’t help but claim birch trees as my own. They are sort of my favorite by default. Maybe it doesn’t matter if I romanticize them a little, knowing their name is already mine. They make themselves easy to attach oneself to. And if—just in case—having the name means some of the characteristics might somehow magically rub off on me, I wouldn’t mind a bit.

What’s your favorite tree? And—maybe what I’d like to know even more—what does a name mean to you?

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Outside: Turtle Hunting

Youngest is desperately worried that she will not get what she wants most for her birthday. This is a hard thing, because I know that she will not. Her parents and grandparents all agree that this most-wanted thing is a little too expensive and a little too mature for her to be able to handle. While we plan for her to have it someday, we are also sure that now is not the right time.

The pain of that for an almost-six-year-old is not lost on me. Does it change that much as we get older?

*       *       *

Last week our family went to Family Camp, a place which is turning out to be one of those magical, outside-of-time-and-place places. There are activities for families together, and kids alone, and parents alone, and whatever combination of togetherness and separateness and adventure and quiet you can imagine.

One of the family activities we signed up for during the week was turtle hunting. Middle, though, was the only kid interested, and so we set out, Middle and her parents and the counselor assigned to our family for the week, to hunt for turtles.

I really had no idea what to expect.

Our counselor took us to a quiet spot on the lake with a dock and still, murky water and lily pads. Before I had even stepped onto the dock, Middle spotted a turtle in the water, and our counselor was plunging through once-quiet water in pursuit of it. There was lots of looking, much lunging after frogs, and finally the capture of one baby turtle complete with a leech on its shell. We admired frogs’ throats, and the way the turtle tried to swim when it was held up in the air. We were amazed at how the leech moved out of water, looking for something to attach itself to. Later on we made sap boats—dabbing pine sap on the ends of sticks and placing them in the water to be propelled across the surface.

*      *       *

It turns out I am not very good at spotting turtles, catching their heads peeking out of the water, silent as sticks. Even when somebody was pointing straight at one, I had trouble seeing it. Once, though, I spotted a frog, glinting emerald green in the water, only to realize that there was not just one frog, but 5, 6, 7—maybe 10 of them in the vicinity, all moving to safety once discovered.

I am not very good at spotting turtles, but it turns out I am quite adept at finding dragonfly wings. That particular afternoon, while Middle had an abundance of frogs to chase and our counselor plunged in and out of the lake after a phantom turtle (which most certainly had to be watching and toying with him,) my gift was dragonfly wings. I kept finding them, alone or in pairs, floating on the surface of the water like leaves, so delicate that everything around them seemed to grow still in their presence.

I wasn’t looking for them. I wouldn’t have known to look for them. But that afternoon they were plentiful, and I hope not to forget that sometimes when you are looking for turtles you find dragonfly wings floating on the water instead.

They are beautiful, and I never even knew I wanted to see them.

*      *      *

I do not know, really, how to accommodate longing—Youngest’s, or my own, or anybody else’s.

Sometimes you discover there are things out there you didn’t know you wanted until you laid eyes on them. How does a person ever learn how to balance wants against needs?

Sometimes the want turns out to be a need as well, but you aren’t ready for it. Sometimes the timing is off. Sometimes you were too busy longing for the wrong thing to understand what was most valuable.

Sometimes, though, you have the gift of a moment—the fact that you touched a dragonfly wing when you thought you were hunting for turtles—and everything shifts.

It makes me wonder how far something as delicate as a breath can carry you.


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