March doesn’t seem so mad this morning as it prepares to leave.  The thick ice that covered every surface for days has melted.  The tops of the trees were the last to shed their coating.  As we returned from Cleveland a few days ago, we knew exactly when we reentered the ice-zone:  the setting sun amplified the glisten-topped black stalks of trees.  At home ice continued clinging to all the dried vegetation and coating the chicken-wire fence surrounding the garden.  Five days after the Ice Storm of 2011, during cold but sunny days the treetops still sparkled.  On the final frosty morning, little ice crystals caught the sunlight making for a star-studded field.  

I’m as eager as the next guy for spring but this finale to winter could not have been lovelier.   The hearty switch grass that bowed so low under ice has risen again.  Its toothpick thin stalks stand tall and straight.  The compass plant can’t get up but joins the thatch on the ground while its roots are already preparing to produce this year’s giant stalk with it turning yellow head.  I’ll miss March! 

        If my driveway pilgrimage is like other spiritual quests, March resembles the “slough of despond.” Like Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress, I’m discouraged; I can’t rise above the misery of the harsh weather and pervading deadness all around. Walking or just peering from my upstairs window at the flattened earth with its aging snow piles under sky of sullen grey, I share the lifeless aura of nature. “Rejoice in the day,” I tell myself, but my longing for a renewed Earth overwhelms me. Earlier on in the season, deep in a Midwest winter, I have no such angst—things are supposed to be that way. But in pre-spring (as my Dad once said, “We’re rational animals—but not very”), I  let nature’s gloom creep inside my psyche. I dare speculate that “This is my Father’s World,” with its cheery line “he shines in all that’s fair,” wasn’t written in March in Michigan.
(written in 2008 in All Nature Sings: March, page 61)
 

Before the beauties of winter give way to spring’s slow unfolding, I want to sing their praises.  Twice this February we have witnessed snowfalls in which the snow fell lightly on every surface available.  Light but sticky, clinging to the upside of branches, dried grass and flowers, fences, wires, signs and roof contours.  Nothing was left untouched—unaccented.  The drooping rung of a fence line, the cracked tree lying on the ground, the pens of livestock and the outlines of last year’s gardens demanded my attention on the ride to town.  How much I miss when houses and stands of trees have no such highlighting and they meld into sameness.  With their snowy capes I see the usual as extraordinary.

On my early morning walk with the dog, I notice how close the woods have become.  A visual artist would know that white accents bring objects into sharper focus giving the illusion that they are closer than they are.  But my art is with words.  How do I explain this phenomenon in my memoir class for mature writers?  Detail, detail, detail.  Every shred of detail paints a picture for the reader; without it the scene is unremarkable, something easily overlooked.  Sometimes I say, “Color your story so that it comes alive.”  I go so far as to urge--put cloths on your characters, even if you don’t remember what they wore that day.  Just like the woods I pass each morning, full of indistinct tree trunks and branches, until the snow reminds me of all their curves and contours--nouns and verbs and their modifiers can reveal so much more than a general category of things or motions.

Right now the landscape is pretty still. The delicate white pines that I see from my window sway in a light breeze.  A few stalks of last year’s grasses poke through the covering of snow.  Most of those snowy accents have disappeared but the memory of the things they helped me see, remains.  That will hold me until those first spring beauties and jack-in-the-pulpit push up in the woods, the fattening buds change the size of branches and the soil brings forth colorful, moving grasses and flowers, all vying for my attention.   

Simplify, the gurus tell us—return to nature. Well, here we are in the middle of more nature than one could ever take in, but that doesn’t make life simple. I can, for example, simplify my lifestyle but not what I take into my mind. The two simplicity robbers that won’t leave me alone are true marks of modernism—the TV and the Internet. Both bring wonders never before imagined but also carry the problems of the world right into my quiet study: the deadly war in Iraq; the upcoming election and its hoopla, and troubling situations on the streets and in the villages of Kenya. For the first time in my life, my sleep is disturbed some nights because the problems of the world or the distress among my own circle of caring press upon me. In the middle of the night I find myself wide awake—not with wonder but with a vague, undefined fear.
  
As an antidote Fritz and I latch onto things of beauty wherever we find them. Yesterday we watched a pair of beavers or muskrats playing by the edge of the ice, which is again forming from the tail side of the lake. Usually the beaver’s activity is barely visible; a large, v-shaped troubling of the water is a clear sign of his presence, but we rarely see more than the tip of his nose creating the wake. Our binoculars are always handy, but getting a good view has proven elusive. The beavers today were definitely up to something. Fritz dragged out his tripod and most powerful lens but still couldn’t capture their activities. The next day these guys were back on the ice edge that by now had filled more of the open water.
  
Today my husband’s camera captured the red ball of the sun coming up over the horizon. That light show unfolds quickly, but because of the beaver’s antics, the camera was poised and ready to capture it. And so we have a few moments of peace and grand simplicity before hearing the insistent call of our devices to look beyond nature into the wider world. We have returned to nature but are still not free from life’s complexity.  (written in 2008, from February, All Nature Sings: A Spiritual Journey of Place)

Home always looks good after being away, even though the body wants to rebel against frigid January temps and the need for bulky, warm clothes.  Sunshine, amazing experiences and new sights are logged along with the 24+hours it took to return from Africa.  I’ll admit that I welcomed hot showers from an overhead source, my own bed and pillow (!), complete bathroom niceties and accessible food in my own refrig—even though I rarely thought about them while away.  Driving my car over mostly smooth roads (no spring thaw yet) with predictable road-rules is always a pleasure after entrusting my life to good drivers, albeit on scary roads.  Kampala, Uganda is the worst with more people, bota-bota taxis (motor bikes), and cars cramming the roads than you’d think possible.  I’ll miss our gracious hosts in remote villages, the curious and clamoring children, the local cuisine and waking up to unique birdcalls.

Yesterday at church the contrast was stark.  The furnace boiler in our old church building gave up just before the service began so we were reminded to keep our coats on and sit close together.  Last week we were seated on wood benches in a thatched roofed church with open space above the walls and some small openings for ventilation.  In 90-degree heat we were amazingly cool as we watch eager adults in a literacy class followed by a drama about the importance of being able to read. 

I thank God not only for chances to leave for far away places but also the special joy of returning. 

For some, leaving cold, gray Michigan in January sounds like a great idea.  Today the soft snow that greeted me on the morning walk has turned blustery.  Those tracks in the fresh snow Jake and I left have blown over as if we had never been there.   In the past week we have gone from very cold temps over the frozen prairie with its beaten down grasses to rain that raised them up to light snow accenting each stalk and denuded flower stem.  If we time our early outings just right, we get to watch the sun rise bravely and brightly over the trees.  Same walk, same place, same weather challenges—but new every morning.  So, I’ll miss this place as we travel to the other side of the world, where heat is the challenge and the unexpected is waiting.  Jake will get to romp with his cousin-dog, Buckeye, while we follow other paths.  But we trust that the road will lead, twisting and turning, through other beauty but then back to this place we call home.

January reminds me of mortality. A new year-of-days stretches out as it has in my life for almost seventy years. At the dawn of the year, as I put away the Christmas ornaments, an undefined hope seems to glow. I hang up a new calendar with its bright images on twelve pages, each appropriate to the seasons in this part of the world. So many days ahead—surely this year I will use them wisely, make better decisions, and never put off for tomorrow what can be done today. But these days, like others before them, with all of their hope of change, seem to tumble by like dry weeds. Even as the year begins, I’m confronted by the futility of trying to catch them and hang on. 

Days are like grass or weeds—but they are also like snow. Outdoors, I see a new covering of the white stuff under sunshine, accentuating the brilliant effect. Dried grasses and flower stalks bend over under the weight, leaving bumps that in certain light remind me of waves on a blue lake. Snow covers much of winter’s dullness here on the prairie in the same way as it makes picture postcards of abandoned, crumbling farmhouses. The cover of snow is as deceptive as that calendar of pages; one unseasonably warm day melts beauty to slush and then to mud. Days pass, whether or not we want them to, and we know that all our days will eventually be used up. My walk through a year of days in this book helps me savor them, knowing full well that they are numbered.  (from All Nature Sings - January)

Oh, God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be now our guide while troubles last,
And our eternal home.

Every year we sang this hymn at the New Year’s Eve service at River Terrace Church (East Lansing, Mi) as a grand declaration of assurance at the crossroads from one year to the next.  The words creep, uninvited, into my mind whenever I reach a turn, an impass or an unexpected encounter in the road.  At one particularly troubling turn, I changed the original words, “be thou our guard,” to “be now our guide,” because I needed more than a shelter from troubles. I prayed for a way through.  And, of course I wanted a guide—now.
  At the end of 2010, I can look back over this year and those before it and recount all the times the Guide showed me the way.  I believe that naming times and places of God’s faithfulness reassures us that our guide will stay with us, come what may, along the open road of 2011.

I always lament the end of a month: its rush to be over, its unfinished business, its losses and gains—now history.  In contrast, tomorrow’s new page features hopeful squares waiting to be filled.  Winters return might bring the same sadness if it were not for my companions on the prairie.

Skeletons of plants, once in bloom, line the driveway and on into the expanse beyond. At first glance they meld into brownish sameness but there are as many variations of hue and girth and height as there are in people.  

   The spindly switch grass always catches my eye with its long sturdy spine, minute seeds and pale, gracefully arching foliage.  This amazing plant often stands upright even through winter’s snow.  The big bluestem still towers but its characteristic crows feet are more like tufts, without their dangling seeds.  In their old age they seem to have lost some height. Most of the thousands of feathery seeds have flown from the little bluestem but the stalks take on an almost maroon glow.  In the summer I could hardly find Canadian rye but now that all green is gone, I see the heavy seed heads bending beautifully.  The Indian grass stalks have also lost their seeds but continue to look regal, especially when the early morning light gives them a bronze hue.

   Most wildflowers are only little button heads denuded of their seeds but the milkweed pods retain their skeletal remains.  I love the way the brittle tear-shaped pods twist on the stem, making artistic arrangements.  

   I don’t know what goes on within the dying stalks or what’s happening to their long roots below the ground past the frost line.  Do they have capillary systems like trees? How do they store the nutrients needed to grow again? But after ten years in this place, I know this much: the flowers and the tall grasses are really only hibernating within their seeds—ready to grow again when warmth, moisture and sun usher them back in spring.