Leafing

May 7, 2018May 7, 2018 ~ Beth ~ 3 Comments

In the golden light just before sunset, the baby leaves and buds are like haloed clouds resting across the branch tops. A little closer, and they are like green and gold lace and perfectly strung strings of peridot amidst the twigs and stalwart browns of the forest.Up close, there is a tiny world of intricate unfolding beauty to discover.

Meanwhile, I can hear nothing but spring peepers and the occasional haunting call of newly-returned loons on a nearby lake. After an intensely busy week, the wonder of it all quiets my soul, drawing me into worship, gently smoothing away the tensions and distractions.

The truth is, sometimes we just need a few minutes to be still and meditate on His wonderful works to fully restore our souls.

“On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.” (Psalm 145:5)

Harbinger

April 29, 2018May 1, 2018 ~ Beth ~ Leave a comment

I thought it was high time a robin put in an appearance, both in my yard and on this blog, but they took their sweet time this year. I was hearing all sorts of sightings reported by friends and family, and I was seriously beginning to wonder if these little harbingers* of springtime were even going to show me their faces this year. And if they didn’t, would it even really be spring? I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that robins are about as quintessential to the advent of spring as pussy willows.

But, one bright morning this week, I heard a new yet familiar bird call through the window, and spotted a pair of handsomely erect rust-breasted worm-hunters running and hopping across the yard. I melted a dark spot in the frosty grass sitting perfectly still until one (skeptically) got close enough for this shot. So, just in case you needed reassurance, I thought I’d pass the news on to you that all is well, after all. Spring really is here.

*Harbinger: “A person or thing that announces or signals the approach of another.”

“How beautiful…are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” (Isaiah 52:7)

A Simple Recipe for Spring

April 22, 2018 ~ Beth ~ 2 Comments

Step 1: Bathe everything in a very generous amount of warm sunshine. IMG_8060-01 Step 2: Wait for an awful lot of all this to melt. Allow it to soak in thoroughly.Step 3: Enjoy the results, springing up from the sun-soaked, well-watered, nitrogen-infused happy earth.

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
            And do not return there without watering the earth
            And making it bear and sprout,
            And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater;

So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth;
            It will not return to Me empty,
            Without accomplishing what I desire,
            And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”

(Isaiah 55:10-11)

The Sound of Returning

April 15, 2018 ~ Beth ~ 1 Comment

Every time I drive over the bridge there are more of them there than the last time.

The returning has begun.

In the car, though, you miss the sound of it. On a blog, you do, too. There’s just nothing that replaces the physical act of standing on the bridge, leaning into a square wooden beam, and immersing yourself in a few minutes of that wondrous cacophony of honking, quacking and trumpeting. It’s the music of spring migration, and it’s enough to infuse any year-round resident who has weathered yet one more season of long nights and sub-zero temps with hope.

I heard them chattering in the church foyer last week, too, as the winter birds gathered round, tired faces relaxing into welcoming smiles for these forerunners of the much-anticipated annual migration. The sound of the returning was never so obvious, however, or so beautiful, than it was in the swelling fullness of the opening hymn.

Welcome back, snowbirds. It’s good to hear all your happy voices again.

“Even the stork in the sky knows her seasons; and the turtledove and the swift and the thrush observe the time of their migration.” (Jeremiah 8:7)

“For, lo, the winter is past…the time of the singing of birds is come.” (Song of Solomon 2:11-12)

Cattail Glory

April 6, 2018April 6, 2018 ~ Beth ~ 2 Comments

In this season between seasons, when it’s not really winter but doesn’t really seem like spring either, the changes occurring in the natural world are sometimes very subtle. Yet, I have learned, they are there. Nothing is really sitting still. Everything is silently, gradually, almost imperceptibly, readying itself for when it’s time to burst forth into newness of life. It does require my camera and I to look harder on these days when a walk still requires me to wear the old winter hat and mittens, but the discoveries we do make of coming spring are only that much more triumphant.

Today I take note: The last of the cattails that have been neat little brown cylindrical sausages on sticks all winter are finally, after months of wear by wind and snow, disintegrating into downy halos of seed. They are dying, giving up of the very last of themselves. Soon the bare stalks will turn soft as well, bowing to the swamp below them nevermore to rise again.

But we all know that somewhere, in other bare nooks in the swamp, baby cattails will spring forth from the downy fluff these tired old stalks are releasing to the wind. There would be no continuance of life if they held onto the gift they possessed; it is only in the letting go that life will go on. They release the old, looking forward unto the new and better things to come—and in the late afternoon sunshine, it’s as though they’re crowned with glory.

“But this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth to those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. .” (Philippians 3:13-14, KJV)

Muddy

March 20, 2018March 20, 2018 ~ Beth ~ 1 Comment

It’s the current miry state of the driveway.

I prefer it in the mornings like this, when it’s iced over and covered in interesting geometric designs. Not only is it more photogenic, but my walking shoes prefer the feel of crunching to oozing and the state of being dry to damp.

My children, however, like it best after it’s sat in the sunshine for a while, all delightfully wet and squishy. This would be why mud boots are an essential part of their spring wardrobes. Not that I am so naive as to believe that mud boots will actually keep small children enjoying a mud puddle dry or clean—but I derive some comfort from the fact that at least their feet are.The rest? Nothing a good washing machine and bathtub can’t fix. And that’s a good reminder to praise God for this even more remarkable truth:

“I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols…“ (Ezekiel 36:25)

“I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.“ (Psalm 40:1-2)

Pussy Willow IV

March 10, 2018April 6, 2018 ~ Beth ~ 1 Comment

With all these thirty-ish degree days we’ve been having lately it was bound to happen, just like it does every spring. And yet it still took me by surprise, when I glanced up from picking my cautious way across an icy patch on the driveway, to see this happy sign of spring in the ditch. The bursting forth of these furry little buds is so predictable, yet they always manage to catch me unawares and are always, suddenly, the most wonderful thing ever.

You’d think that after thirty-some years, I’d get used to it. But I never have, and I like it that way, so I probably never will. I love the surprise awakening of wonder in myself, and I love that each one is a soft pearly gray little reminder of an ancient promise, a thousand repeated little bursts of assurance all across the willowed edges of the wetlands.

“While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” (Genesis 8:22)

(Since I get so excited about them every year, I have to take pictures of them every year, so if you missed them, check out pussy willows from other years here: 2015, 2016, and 2017.)

What Does the Eagle Say?

March 6, 2018March 6, 2018 ~ Beth ~ 3 Comments

With the warming of the air, the signs of spring begin. The return of this old friend to his favorite post in the old oak tree overlooking the lake is officially the first. I heard him one afternoon, reinstating his dominance over favorite hunting grounds for all the world to hear. He peered at me with his sharp yellow eye through the branches, skeptical of my attempts to find an angle that didn’t make it look like he was holding a stick in his beak (as you can see I was unsuccessful, so let’s just pretend he was grabbing it to add to his nest).

And then, peering up at his grand figure in the branches up there against the blue, I thought of how to describe the call I heard, and came up short. How, exactly, do you describe the call of an eagle? I thought someone more learned in the field of ornithology (the study of birds) than me would have a good answer—but I must say that I was disappointed.

My sources basically couldn’t agree on how to categorize the call of a bald eagle, other than that it was too musical to be called a screech, but not musical enough to be called a song. Some call it a combination of high pitched “whistling” and “piping” (Irish penny whistle, anyone?). Some call it “chattering”, as though it were a squirrel. Still others liken it to “chirping”, oddly bringing the largest bird of prey down to the level of a songbird at the bird feeder. Others go so low as to call it “squeaking”, as though it were a mouse, or, worst yet, “squealing”, which brings to mind a very unhappy pig. I thought of “trilling”, but even that conjures more images of tree frogs and raccoons in my mind than those of soaring eagles. “Twittering”, perhaps? But somehow that just reminds me of a cross old owl scowling at a lot of happily love-sick songbirds in “Bambi”, not a bird who bears the weight of being a national symbol on his shoulders. Come on, now! Is it too much to ask for a word that accurately describes the sound, but still manages to embody the dignity of such a majestic bird?

(To be clear, this is the call I’m talking about, not the peal call of alarm which really is more like screeching.)

So, based on that sound recording, how would you vote to finish this sentence? The eagle __________. (Whistled, piped, chattered, chirped, squeaked, squealed, trilled, twittered, or you fill in the blank with something I haven’t thought of.) Chickens cluck, geese honk, crows caw, swans trumpet, owls hoot—but what do eagles do? Do you think it can be boiled down to a single descriptive word—or not?

I’m somewhat tempted to side with the writer of Proverbs on this point. Describing the voice of the eagle in one word is a mystery that I might have to be content dismissing as “too wonderful for me” and, apparently, the English language. Though, to be perfectly fair and in context, in this case I think this writer was more in awe of the mystery of flight than flummoxed by a fruitless late night Google search for an apparently nonexistent perfect word.

“Three things are too wonderful for me; four I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky…” (Proverbs 30:18-19)

All These Things

June 7, 2017June 7, 2017 ~ Beth ~ 1 Comment

This is the story of a search for morel mushrooms. Twice I went looking…Twice I returned empty-handed.But, in process of closely examining large stretches of forest floor in vain, I did make a lot of other wonderful discoveries. Once, I sat quietly staring into a stand of fiddleheads so long, a grouse thought I’d left and started drumming his log within ten feet of me. For just a minute, I thought my heart was palpitating—until I realized that he was really just that close. Then he exploded suddenly off into the woods when I tried to shift to a spot with a better view, which is, incidentally, when my heart rate did increase.I nearly stepped on the elaborate den of some creature (I’d like to imagine it a fox den, but it more likely belongs to far less charming skunks), and happened upon a wolf track, perfectly dried and preserved in last week’s mud. IMG_0886-01 I chanced upon a place where jack-in-the-pulpits preached in a woodland meadow to spears of blue flag leaves……and another where the wild plums were wreathed in clouds of frilly white.I didn’t find what I was looking for—but I did find so much more.

The search for the elusive edible delicacies of the forest will continue. One day, I’ll find what I’m actually looking for—and we’ll fry them up in butter and eat them—but even after that it will continue, because then they’ll be gone and we’ll want more. It’s one of those kind of searches, never ending, always new, always exciting. The desire is insatiable. If you don’t like morel mushrooms, I’m sorry that you won’t be able to identify with this, but if you do, you know what I mean.

And along the way, the search is always guaranteed to be fruitful.

Because, see, regardless of whether I came home with mushrooms or not, I did come home with my head and camera full of spring’s splendor flung glorious across the forest. (Such riches!) And I did find information to help me with future searches. (Now I know where they’re not, sigh.)

It reminded me, in a happy, unexpected sort of way, of another ongoing search I’ve been challenged to, one in which I continually search for one thing of great value and end up with so much more along the way.

“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33)

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Twins

May 21, 2017May 21, 2017 ~ Beth ~ 1 Comment

It was almost as good as Yellowstone National Park when a bear is sighted along the road.

The cars were lining up. The phone cameras were clicking. People were leaning out their windows, smiling big. Nobody was out of their vehicles snapping closeups while foolishly ignoring the unpredictability of wildlife (aka a protective mama doe), but I won’t deny that I considered it. (But did you see the look in her eyes up there? That was pretty much enough to keep my hand off the car door handle and be satisfied with just rolling the window down.)

And these two tiny fawns, so new they were still wobbly, stood at the edge of the highway bracing their ungainly long legs and staring at their audience in wonder. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the first time they had ever seen cars or humans, let alone been on an outing.

Awww!

Mama hovered nervously in the woods nearby, snorting, stamping worriedly. They bleated back like tiny lambs as if to say, “Whatchya so worried about, Mom? See? These people like us.”

And it was true. Cause, well, you know, for all the tulips I’ve ever suffered the loss of to other members of their species (it happened again this year, ahem!), how can you not be utterly charmed by a newborn baby fawn—especially when there are two of them staring at you with their big, innocent dark eyes at the same time?

Who cares about tulips, anyway.

“Do you observe the calving of the deer? Can you count the months they fulfill, or do you know the time they give birth? They kneel down, they bring forth their young, they get rid of their labor pains. Their offspring become strong, they grow up in the open field; they leave and do not return to them.” (Job 39:1-4)