Imbolc and the Snow Moon
Monday gratefuls: Shadow. Eating. Marilyn and Irv. Eleanor and Tara. Snow on its way. March of the big weather. Ritalin. A bit more energy. Mary’s truffles. Yum. My son. Murdoch. Seoah. Teaching Shadow. Ancient Brothers on freedom and communal responsibility. Mountain Jews. Shadow immersion. Study. Reading.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sit, Down, Touch
Week Kavannah: Patience. Savlanut. When I rush, slow down. When I want to speak, wait. When my inner agonizer arises, calm him, move on.
One brief shining: In the far away and long ago my buddy Dave and I settled into his red VW Beetle for a drive from Muncie to Detroit, headed to Canada, Toronto, to pick up information about emigrating from the Toronto anti-draft folks; got stopped because of our long hair, so we turned around, went back into Detroit and bought white shirts, stocking caps for our hair, crossed the bridge again, and were admitted for our Canadian vacation. Ta dah.
Thought of a through line I’ve never mentioned here. Reading and Minnesota, Shadow Mountain. As a young boy, I read so much. Certain things impacted me. A lot. Always wanted to see Peru after the Silver Llama. Like many boys, I imagined myself as James Bond. Sherlock Holmes. Robinson Crusoe. Fighting in the War of the Worlds. Building robots with positronic brains beholden to the Three Laws of Robotics.
Jack London though. He changed my life. I read Call of the Wild. I admired Buck. Yes. The description of the Canadian wilderness. Buck’s journey into his wild nature. Pine Trees. Lakes. Wolves. Wolverines. Cold winters. Surviving in the north.
Central Indiana. Flat. Paved. Industrial and where it wasn’t industrial carved up into mile square sections of farm land. Small towns every 5 or ten miles in all directions. The opposite of the wilderness where Buck finds his true identity.
When I married Judy Merritt, her home state of Wisconsin triggered my long dormant desire to leave a place where, as I saw it, there was no there there, all domesticated by human artifice. We moved to Appleton, Wisconsin to be near her family. Imagine my disappointment when I found a city and region filled with paper mills and dairy factories. Nope.
Judy and I decided to split and an odd chain of circumstance led me to seminary in Minnesota. At least there were lots of Lakes. Once I found my way up north the Boreal Woods and the Glacial Lakes matched my fantasy. Minnesota became home. For forty years.
Kate and I moved to Colorado to be in the grandkids lives, but we never considered living in Denver. Had to be the Mountains. For both of us. Our Andover life had prepared us for life with Wild Neighbors, Lodgepoles and Aspens, Mountain Streams and trails, by holding us close to Mother Earth.
In that sense, and it’s a far from trivial one, Jack London and Call of the Wild changed the trajectory of my life by igniting a desire to live in cold lands, where Wilderness and humans could cohabit.