Beltane Emergence Moon
Tom Crane’s photograph of the Woollys on retreat at Villa Maria last weekend.
Category Archives: Woolly Mammoths
Last Morning in Frontenac
Frontenac 5/16/2014 10:40 pm
At 5:30 pm we drove in to Red Wing for dinner at the St. James Hotel. This is a red brick fronted boutique hotel that sits just across the way from the Red Wing depot where the Amtrak still stops. It was easy to imagine passengers disembarking in an earlier time, bustling across the way to book a room for a night or two before continuing the trip, perhaps to St. Paul.
The Red Wing corporate offices are on the same side of Highway 61, but separated by a short street that ends just before the river. Glass fronted windows filled with boots, chain-saws, saw-horses, outdoor gear give the headquarters a quasi-retail store feel. A Red Wing store is across the highway.
The activity screen on the elevator door showed the Red Wing Philosophers Club met at 8:00 am on Saturday while this evening dining in were a regional Porsche club, several Masons and the Woolly Mammoths.
The dinner table conversation went from memory palaces to men’s lives. After the waitress cleared the dishes away and before desert, I noticed that all 8 of us were leaning forward, elbows on the table, listening to each other. The body language told of long-established intimacy.
We returned and heard Charlie Haislet’s wonderful 32 Ways of Looking at a Mammoth, discussed memorable walks and sat with each other in the darkness for a bit before heading off to bed. Tomorrow we head down to Wabasha to the Eagle Center and to eat lunch at Slims(?), the Wabasha cafe where scenes from Grumpy Old Men were filmed. Sounds about right.
Frontenac 5/17/2014 5:15pm
Hmmm. Up at the break of 7:57 am, just in time for breakfast. After a time in the noisy refectory, there were over 70 people eating, the noise level defeated the hearing capacity of most of us Woollies. We retired to Brescia, our own room, and spent an hour or so discussing a Tom Crane question, What about legacy?
We seemed to decide, after kicking the concept around for awhile, that legacy is not intentional and depends on reception, that its content (the received legacy) may differ from person to person and is something over which we have little to no control. Even the grossest attempts at legacy, like naming buildings and bridges, for example, eventually wither away decayed by time. Legacy is, too, something that may be accidental, in the way that children pick up learnings from their parents often very different from the one a parent imagines.
Following this conversation we loaded up Tom’s white Lexus bus and Charlie’s blue Volkswagen for a sojourn first to Slippery’s, the cafe where Grumpy Old Men had several scenes. The Mississippi, about 8 feet high, flowed fast and wide, brushing the top of a cement railing along an outside porch at Slippery’s. The porch had green sandbags as decor. In 2001 the Mississippi filled the room in which we ate lunch to a depth of 5 and a half feet. From a culinary perspective you can miss Slippery’s.
We went on to the National Eagle Center. The star attractions for me were the eagles themselves. They have injured eagles there who serve as ambassadors to the larger eagle world. We met Angel. She was a beauty with a head white with feathers, a keen eye which watched, watched, watched and a yellow beak ending in a cruel tip. She was, the keepers said, dominant, and always wanted the prominent spot in the display. That’s in front of the wide expanse of clear glass. From there she can exercise dominion over her territory which extends across the river and up as far as she can see. If other eagles enter her territory, she gives a high pitched cckkk, cckkkk, cckkkk.
She’s been around humans since the age of 14 weeks and has, the keeper said, preened a person, moving their hair with her beak and occasionally nudging others. The etiquette of such matters these days is that that is a bad thing since this is a wild animal and should be able to display her wild behaviors without human conditioning. That’s nonsense. This is an animal, wild or something in between, that can choose its mode of relating to others in its environments.
While I agree we shouldn’t manipulate these animals into doing tricks for us, developing a relationship with them seems totally natural to me. Ask any keeper of animals, and I asked the ones here with the large leather gloves on their non-dominant hands, if the eagles are individuals and the immediate answer is, yes. Mark Odegard and Elizabeth discovered this with chickens during their time in California and Bill Schmidt still remembers the personalities of dairy cattle from his farming days. Within the domain of their individuality, how they react to another species is their province, not ours.
On the way back we stopped at a geology marker to satisfy my curiosity about how Lake Pepin came into existence. It seems the Chippewa River, which empties into the Mississippi, has a steeper gradient than the Mississippi and, as a narrower stream, ran faster. This caused it to carry rocks and stones and sand into the slower Mississippi at a high rate of speed. Somewhere back in geologic time the Mississippi ran through a 22 mile long gorge which narrowed at the southern terminus of Lake Pepin. The sand and rock deposited in the big river by the Chippewa flowed down stream, blocked the gorge and dammed the Mississippi backing it up into the wider and slower version of itself we know as Lake Pepin. The base of the old gorge is now 150 feet below the river bed, presumably the size of the original dam.
Frontenac 5/17/2014 10:43 pm
I took a long, late nap and got up in time for dinner. The first meal we had here, Thursday night, was chicken done to perfection. The evening meal tonight was pork and tough though the steam table had plenty of vegetables, especially beets, which have become one of my favorite foods. Again the dining room din grew as more and more people came in and our old ears were not able to adjust. So, we retired again to Brescia where we watched a wonderful short film, The Voorman Problem. Tom Crane brought it, purchased from I-tunes. It’s a study in solipsism with a delightful and unexpected twist at the end. 12 minutes long.
After the movie we gathered at a barn to the north of the retreat center. There was an iron fire ring, a wood pile and a plastic bin with newspaper, kindling and matches. I built a fire that we sat around for over 2 hours, talking, watching the stars and listening to coyotes. The coyotes howled, but there was, too, yips as coyote pups tried out their voices, imitating adults. A loon’s cry blended at one point with an owl.
We took leave of Charlie Haislet over the fire because he plans to leave early tomorrow.
This is our last night here. Tomorrow brunch is at 10:00 am, then we leave for home.
Frontenac 5/18/2014 6:56 am
Sunlight streams in the window of my second floor room on the last morning of our retreat. I slept well here. The window fills the room with morning sun, much more than our south facing bedroom gets in Andover. So, I’m up.
I’ve missed regular, easy access to the internet since I’ve had to carry the laptop to another spot to connect. This has meant following up on information from the group has been much harder, like the old days before instant research librarian. Some of the questions simply fade out. I suppose this would be the place for some nostalgia about our less connected past when a natural winnowing would occur between curiosity and the ability to satisfy it, but you won’t find that from me. Sine qua non criteria for our new home in Colorado, access to broadband.
A couple of observations about moving. First, I’ve been grounded in our interactions here, the mutuality borne of long acquaintance has kept me in the now. That’s been excellent. At the same time there is a certain bittersweet quality to this retreat, realizing that this is probably the next to last retreat when I will attend with a full year’s worth of meetings in the immediate past. That signals a distinct and profound change, one made even more palpable by a reasonable discussion about bringing in new people since the regular, Minnesota core group will shrink by one more when Kate and I move.
There is a sense, a strongly felt sense, that my relationship with the Woollies has changed already. To return to the circus tent metaphor I’ve used before, I can feel the stakes loosening in the earth of our long time together and bit of slack beginning to appear in the rope. It will be a long period yet before I strike the big top on my Minnesota Woolliness, but it is in the future, my presence no longer anticipated to continue until the big Roustabout comes.
Well, gotta strip my bed and repack my stuff. Get some coffee and post this. The retreat continues for a while yet.
#26 (or so)
Beltane Emergence Moon
Tomorrow through Sunday the Woolly Mammoths will tramp through the village of Frontenac. Our 26th retreat happens at Villa Maria Retreat Center. The theme, as I’ve noted before is, What is your walk? This is vague. Yes, but it allows a good bit of filling in with whatever makes sense to the individual.
We plan to take some hikes. Perhaps do the labyrinth. We may discuss our walk. Or we may not. On Friday night the herd will wander into Red Wing for dining at the St. James Hotel.
The last time we were at Villa Maria it was a very cold January weekend, a weekend that had a lunar eclipse. Many of us went outside on the retreat center’s grounds, found an open area and watched as the blood moon developed.
We used to structure our retreats with great care, making sure that each of us had plenty of time to present and get feedback. Over the last few years the structure has tended to fall away in favor of a more relaxed time together.
Not tavering, not at all, just westing
Beltane Emergence Moon
In moving myself toward the way of this retreat, I have consulted a two-volume work I bought a year ago and have not used with any intent, the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. It was difficult to learn how to use it, at least for me, and it took me a good while to get my bearings, but I finally found a section that had some rich associations with What is your walk?
A listing under the more general category of travel contains words related to travel in a specific direction.
Here is a complete listing of words, in historical order, that have meant or mean travel in a specific direction in English: begang OE. lode OE-1400. way OE. one’s way c 1205. trade c1375-1564. course c1380. trace 1400-1768. raik c1400-1425. race c1400-c1480. track 1570. voye 1578. tract 1616-1865. career 1642-1651. gate 1735. line of march 1835.
Under this listing then comes other phrases or words with a direct relation to travel in a specific direction. Where there is more than one word, they are listed in historical order, though I chose not to put in dates. (too fussy)
1. aim
2. compass course
3. easting, northing, westing, southing. (naut.)
4. counter-course
5. collision course
6. stepping
7. round, beat, route
8. rithryne (OE) straight/right
9. zigzagerry, tack, zig-zagging, darning
10. compass, circuit, circumference, compassing, ymbangt (OE), circuiteer
11. ascent, slope, breasting.
12. descent
13. deviation from straight course: aeflast (OE), ymbswaepe (OE), turn, wrying, circumference, extravagancy, extravagation, outstepping, deviation, detour, left. digression.
14. straying/going astray: gedwolfaer (OE), stray, vagation, out-way going, gate will, will gate, straying, tavering, estraying, wandering. strayer, stray, straggler, strayling. missing. disorientation. bewildering. estray.
(Albert Bierstadt – Estes Park, Colorado, Whyte’s Lake)
Walk
Beltane Emergence Moon
In preparation for What is your walk? A few items, resources for thinking.
Chaucer’s great work is a tale told by pilgrims, as is Pilgrim’s Progress. In Dante, Virgil and Dante walk first through the inferno, then the purgatorio, then paradiso. The Way of a Pilgrim is a classic of Russian Orthodox spirituality which focuses on a wandering starets who developed the Jesus prayer.
O.E.D. walk
as v.
1. Walk. o.e. to roll, to toss. (obs.) m.e. to journey, move about on foot.
2. to go from place to place, to journey, to wander, to go (one’s way)
6. chiefly in religious use, after bible examples: to conduct oneself, to behave (ill or well, wisely or unwisely). sometimes with reference to path or way.
as n.
1. an act or spell of walking or going on foot from place to place
b. travel, wandering (obs)
6. relig. lang. manner of behavior, conduct of life
walk (v.) 
“travel on foot,” c.1200, a merger of two verbs, 1. Old English wealcan “to toss, roll, move round” (past tense weolc, past participle wealcen), and 2. wealcian “to roll up, curl,” from Proto-Germanic *welk- (cognates: Old Norse valka “to drag about,” Danish valke “to full” (cloth), Middle Dutch walken “to knead, press, full” (cloth), Old High German walchan “to knead,” German walken “to full”), perhaps ultimately from PIE root *wel- (3) “to turn, roll” (see volvox).
The shift in sense is perhaps from a colloquial use of the Old English word or via the sense of “to full cloth” (by treading on it), though this sense does not appear until after the change in meaning. In 13c. it is used of snakes and the passage of time, and in 15c. of wheeled carts. “Rarely is there so specific a word as NE walk, clearly distinguished from both go and run” [Buck]. Meaning “to go away” is recorded from mid-15c. Transitive meaning “to exercise a dog (or horse)” is from late 15c.; meaning “to escort (someone) in a walk” is from 1620s. Meaning “move (a heavy object) by turning and shoving it in a manner suggesting walking” is by 1890. To walk it off, of an injury, etc., is from 1741. Related: Walked; walking.walk (n.) c.1200, “a tossing, rolling;” mid-13c., “an act of walking, a going on foot;” late 14c., “a stroll,” also “a path, a walkway;” from walk (v.). The meaning “broad path in a garden” is from 1530s. Meaning “particular manner of walking” is from 1650s. Meaning “manner of action, way of living” is from 1580s; hence walk of life (1733). Meaning “range or sphere of activity” is from 1759. Sports sense of “base on balls” is recorded from 1905; to win in a walk (1854) is from horse racing (see walk-over). As a type of sponsored group trek as a fund-raising event, by 1971 (walk-a-thon is from 1963)
Charge It
Beltane Emergence Moon
This post is for friend Tom Crane who bought a Chevy Volt a couple of years ago and, in engineer fashion, has been keeping data about it ever since. Here’s a link to an NYT article today: Owners Who Are Happy When the Engine Doesn’t Start. This article itself references three blogs: Volt Stats, Volt Fan Site, and CarKnow. This last one is for those who want to hack their rides.
The era of the all-electric car is not yet upon us, but the consumer fleet will move that way as responses to climate change push us further into electricity as the dominant energy source for more and more things.
Kudos to all of those who are willing to pioneer these changes. May they breed others.
Leeks In The Ground, Fresh Oil in the Truck
Beltane Emergence Moon
I planted leeks this morning and will plant the onions soon. The leeks went in with a 
sprinkling of Jubilate (microbial inoculant) and a drenching with transplant water, made from OND and water. OND is a fish emulsion. After closing up the 8″ trenches, I put all the planting paraphernalia back in the honey house, then hopped in the Rav4.
Over to Carlson Toyota for its 35,000 mile oil change and service. While waiting, the Lenovo laptop connected with Perseus and I went over my Latin for Friday’s session with Greg. In the work for him we’re back when Jupiter told his azure brother, Neptune, to let loose the reins that hold back the rivers. Let them flood the earth. The waters cover the fields, the cattle, the human beings and their homes and temples.
On the way to Carlson I had a thought about mentors. I’ve often said that I’ve neglected mentors and have probably suffered because of it. It occurred to me that that’s not exactly true. I have a circle of mentors in the Woolly Mammoths.
How We Walk
Beltane Emergence Moon
It has always been so, I imagine. That those closest to us teach us life’s important lessons. Over the last couple of years my longtime and good friends in the Woolly Mammoths have taught me many things. This sort of teaching is much closer to apprenticeship than classroom lecture. That is, the lessons are taught by example rather than declamation. When we learn by example, we integrate the lesson into our journey; we learn as it affects us, rather than focusing on getting it right.
Two lessons stand out though there have been many from each Woolly. The first, accepting the death of a spouse has come from Woolly Bill Schmidt whose wife, Regina, died in September of 2012. The grace in his acceptance of her death, his willingness to give voice to his grief and his sense of loss while remaining upright and present to all around him teaches one elegant way to walk the ancientrail occasioned by our mortality. It is not in mimicking him that we will learn his lesson but, in heeding the deeper lesson, that is, to be present to grief in a way that is authentically our own.
The second is the homecoming of Frank Broderick. Frank has been in tremendous pain from spinal degeneration for the last couple of years. To deal with it a back operation, his second, was the only solution. But, Frank has a bad heart. Frank had to choose between a 
life of constant pain (He’s 81.) or an operation with some risk of death. As Frank does, he weighed his options seriously, getting a second opinion at the Mayo Clinic. Satisfied with the level of risk, he decided to go ahead.
He came home yesterday after a grueling 10 days of rehab and faced with several weeks of rehab still ahead. Again, the Frank lesson is not in how to deal with pain or a bad back, though he did both of those well, but how to bring personal courage and intelligent decision making to the often complex health matters we will all deal with as we age.
Both of these men have granted me access to their lives and to the way they live them. When the student was ready, his teachers appeared.
Red Stag, Woolly Mammoths, Wild Boar’s Teeth
Beltane Emergence Moon
Woollies gathered at the Red Stag tonight. Tania was our waitress. She had three molars of a wild boar and a small Minnesota map in metal around her neck.
Tom, Stefan, Warren, Bill, Scott and myself. This was the first gathering since I wrote here about the move and there was conversation, affirmation, questions. The consensus seems to focus on adventure. I agree.
Warren reports that their move to the other house, 4 doors down, is almost complete though his big organ remains to be moved. He’s excited about putting the other house up for sale. Stefan is back from L.A. after spending time with Taylor, the ambitious young artist. He has a strong financial backer, seems to have his feet on the floor and a lot of motivation to succeed. Music is a tough racket and music in Hollywood defines one end of the tough spectrum.
Tom’s micro-wave, four fingers over the black cast, got our attention. He says if all goes well, and it seems to be, the cast will come off this week and he’ll get a removable brace. It stays on for two months, but can be removed for the shower, hand washing. He’s very pleased at that possibility.
Scott’s son and his partner have offered Scott an adventure trip which they will pay for. He’s trying to decide where to go and got ideas around the table. Mankato was the first one. Then, if he wanted to juice it up, North Mankato.
The retreat starts next week Thursday. We’re all looking forward to the time together.
The Circus Is Leaving Town
Beltane Emergence Moon
A slow moving mountain. Or, a slow move to the mountains. Sitting here contemplating my study, its hundreds of books and file folders, computer equipment, desks, chairs. I feel overwhelmed at the thought of pruning, organizing, decluttering for selling the house and actually moving. That’s one reason we’re giving ourselves two years or so to move.
Two years might encompass the remaining lifespan of Vega and Rigel. We really don’t know since they’re hybrids, but we suspect 7-8 years and 2016 is 7 years plus. That’s a factor though not a determining one. Hell, who knows, it could encompass our lifespan, too, though I don’t imagine it will.
Talk about liminal space. Between now and then we are no longer fully here and definitely not fully there. I imagine a huge circus tent with many ropes and stakes and poles. Each stake must be pulled. Each rope removed. The poles must be taken down and the canvas rolled up. The canvas is our life in Minnesota and its attendant material possessions.
The stakes are friends, the MIA and the Walker, the Sierra Club Northstar Chapter, the background relationships developed over years of work in the church and in politics and in neighborhoods. The ropes are the emotional ties that bind us to places, to our years lived here, to our sense of ourselves as Minnesotans. The poles are those key relationships like the Woolly Mammoths, Anne, the docents, the folks Kate and I have worked with in multiple capacities: our vet, our doctors, our financial consultants.
All this must, in some way, be stored and the canvas packed. All these things will change once we reach our new destination. Our life will no longer be a Minnesota based life, but a Colorado based one. The friends will remain, of course, as will all the institutions and professionals, the places and their attached memories, but we will have stretched the ease and physical distance with many beyond the breaking point. It will not, of course, be possible to know which ones will suffer the most until time has passed. But all will suffer some, most will suffer a lot.
Feeling overwhelmed, of course, comes from imagining that the tent and its supports must be packed and moved for a train leaving tomorrow. That’s not the case. We have time and will use it well. It’s just that, well, right now, it’s a lot.