Twelve Months

February 8, 2021

We haven’t reached the one-year mark for CoViD lockdown yet, but it could be said that my own virus saga started last February. At the beginning of that month, I came down with one of the worst chest colds I’ve ever had. I lost my senses of smell and taste (as I do every time I get sick) as well as my voice and a good deal of my hearing. I spent the next few days staring straight ahead on the couch, waiting for the fever to break.

Was it the Dreaded Virus? I won’t know until I take the antibody test. But it was certainly an opening act for the strangeness that followed. Things have changed so fast since then that I’ve barely been able to catch my (figurative) breath. So I hope you’ll humor me when I say that it has officially been one year.

Not only that, it has been one crazy year. Disregarding the changes in my personal life, these last twelve months have completely shifted my baseline concept of normal. Seeing myself in a mask feels normal now. Sitting indoors with a large group listening to someone sing, something I did hundreds of times in the first 26 years of my life, does not. I’m not sure if “going back to normal” would even feel normal anymore.

I should note that a lot hasn’t changed. For example, I still don’t get outside as much as I should during the winter (the daily walks ground to a halt once the temperature became lower than my shoe size). I guarantee you that this time last year, I was the same way — illness or no illness. It seems that things can be both normal and not normal at once.

But the difference is this: last year, I thought I had a whole summer of attending concerts and working in tourism and volunteering ahead of me. I could spare a few nights indoors during the coldest part of the year; in fact, I relished the alone time. I can’t make the same prediction for this summer. It feels like I’ve just lived through a whole year of winter , and I’d gladly give up some of that alone time for time spent in my various communities.

I am waiting for spring.

En Marchant

January 23, 2021

I’ve had a lot to reflect on lately, and find I need to be as active physically as I am mentally. My daily walks give me time to think and have the effect of wearing my worries away. Because of this need, my walks have continued apace despite the Wisconsin winter pressing in on all sides.

I walk the same path every day, south to north, before angling back southwest towards home. I cross the same intersections in the same way, as if following a scent trail. The snow is soft enough and my boots unique enough that I can make out the steps I took a day or two before. By the time I return home, I’m ready for the next thing — be it a work meeting or a nap.  And no matter how cold and treacherous the walk, my apartment is always just the right temperature when I step back inside.

With a daily route come daily traditions.  I know which parts of the trail have been plowed (not many) and which are still covered; I have a good idea of where I’ll encounter other walkers. At a section of the trail patrolled by a large, fearsome dog, I’ve learned to look ahead for canine shapes and re-route myself accordingly.

As I complete the first half of my loop, I always think back to past walks.  When you visit the same place almost every day for ten months, during a global pandemic to boot, that place tends to build up memories.  But there’s always a change as I leave the riverbank to start the last leg of my journey. Heading west into the setting sun, I inevitably start to think about what lies ahead.  The memories are still there, but it’s as if I left my emotions by the water and am emerging into a new day.

I can’t say I’ve learned much about my town from these walks (except how many cars just drive into the city park and then leave for some reason).  I have discovered plenty of phenomena related to snow, like the fact that heel prints are the first areas to melt on a well-trodden path.  But mostly I’ve learned about myself and my figurative path.  There’s enough novelty on each walk to keep me interested, but enough stays the same so that I’m comfortable thinking deeply.

I hope you can all get outside safely and find your path. Just be careful on the ice.

Great Expectations?

(If by chance you’re reading this blog for the first time after following the link in Voice of the River Valley, welcome! This is about all there is to it.)

January 10, 2021

A few days ago, I was trying to describe my thoughts about the first week of 2021.  Without thinking, I said that “it isn’t what I expected” — which, in truth, isn’t true at all.  I didn’t have specific expectations for the new year. I figured it would be as full of surprises (both good and awful) as 2020, 2019, and so forth.  When you study natural resources, you learn that the change in calendar year is irrelevant to every species except ours.

I do have plans for 2021, but I don’t expect them to come to fruition in the exact way I hoped.  We all find some of our plans shifting or being replaced as the year progresses.  This fact doesn’t change when we flip to a new page in the calendar.

I don’t mean that we shouldn’t be bothered when our plans change.  It’s a shame, especially when other humans who should know better are responsible.  In certain cases, we should even be outraged.

Nevertheless, my goal for this new year is to not see it as a year at all.  In the hours, days, and weeks to come, I hope to take things one step at a time.  If I can make myself and others feel better in the moment, it will guard me against the feeling that 2021 has been “all good” or “all bad”. In other words, I won’t try to achieve my goals by following a plan to the letter but by seeing what I can do today to make them happen.

Of course, that could change.

Pause and Reflect

December 22, 2020

The other day, in a fit of boredom (okay, let’s be honest: procrastination), I made a mental list of the things I wished I could be doing at that moment.  In no particular order, they were: 1) sit in a coffee shop and people-watch; 2) get a big group of volunteers together to collect prairie seed; and 3) attend a concert, play, or lecture out of town.

Bummer.

It has been a trying year for me — and that’s saying something.  Any depression or isolation I suffered this summer and fall were just a preview of what hit me about a week ago.  It’s a dark time in more ways than one, although the solstice has passed now and Christmas is on its way.

This is not to complain.  The events of this year weren’t all bad by any stretch.  I celebrated some pretty big personal victories, which were all the more meaningful in not-so-victorious times.  Still, there isn’t a single aspect of my life that wasn’t altered in some way in 2020.  My blog serves as a record of some of those changes.

But as the speaker at a solstice celebration said over Zoom this week, we need to “frame” the things that are missing in our lives in terms of what we do have.  I think this is sound advice (despite having once heard a communications professor assert that “framing is dead”). And the longer I think about what I have, the less and less the above paragraphs seem to actually describe my life. I recommend you start your own list as we head into true winter.

Depression and isolation certainly contributed to a lack of focus for me this fall. At one point, I accidentally used my stovetop coffee maker without any water in it and destroyed the thing. I was mortified, and put a tally mark in the column of bad things about 2020, but I now have multiple replacements sent by a kind friend. I also have a park by the river where I can walk any time I choose, sometimes literally following in my own footsteps. You get the idea.

Who can say what I’ll have and not have in 2021? I look forward to finding out. With coffee in hand.

Deck Them Halls and Ho Ho Ho

[Merry Christmas to me! Driftless Grace now has a shiny new domain name, driftlessgrace.com.]

December 12, 2020

I moved to my apartment building in December of 2017. (If you’re a longtime reader of this blog and feeling confused, I’m now onto my second unit in the same building.) Those first weeks were magical. I loved the feeling of being somewhere totally new, where I had been hoping to put down roots. Grad school and my job as a TA hadn’t yet started, but the semester was so close that it didn’t make sense to go out and find a different job. I spent that month wearing a track in the snow to and from my local library. Because of these and other associations, snow in mid-December always improves my mood. Today was no different.

As I stepped out for a short walk around the neighborhood, the bracing air instantly reminded me of being in college “up north”. I used to dash across the space between my dorm and the campus store to buy dinner, flinching from the cold but secretly enjoying every second of it.

And then there’s Christmas — of course. The neighbors snowblowing next to their inflatable Santas were in a jovial mood, and I suspect they were thinking of Christmas. I know I was. Having grown up here in the Midwest, I never feel ready for the holiday unless snow has fallen and stuck. Today not only satisfied that requirement, but the sight of snow banished my November megrims (a 2020 word) almost completely. Plus it was a treat to see all the decorated houses in their varying degrees of subtlety.

This place has provided my window on the world for three years now, except for when I lived with Mom in the months after we lost Dad. Little did I know that our family’s tragedy was only Act I of a time of immense changes for myself and the world. As I neared the end of my walk, I still couldn’t quite explain what I was feeling. Then I realized: this snow is the first thing in… well, forever that happened the way it was supposed to happen. The way we all hope it happens. Or at least the way it happened when I was a kid, which is plenty for me.

Higher Calling

November 21, 2020

In case you don’t think 2020 has been a bizarre year, I call your attention to Exhibit A: last week, my mom’s cat turned down food for the first time in his 10-year life.

My fawning over Ash the cat, to continue a theme from my last post, is one of those ties to the outside world that keep me sane and make hard times more bearable. More than ever, I’m grateful that I live just a few miles away from Mom and my adopted feline brother. It would be difficult if I were unable to visit and tune into their lives when the going got lonely. (I can’t speak for Ash on this point.)

Although I’m lucky in some regards, I still pine for the days of hanging out with an unregulated number of people in a coffee shop for an unlimited time. At least I know that everyone else is in the same boat. Creativity will be the name of the game as we work to maintain our relationships this winter. I don’t mean seeing how many people we can fit in a Zoom meeting; I already attend meetings at work and have a thing or two to say about it (so do others, apparently). I mean real, emergent creativity. And good timing.

As I set out for another solo walk this afternoon, my phone rang with a call from a friend I haven’t seen in ages. I’m not a “phone person”, but very little time had passed before I was chatting away. When we both felt ready, we hung up. Knowing there had been a real person and friend on the other end of the line made me confident that something is waiting on the other end of this tough year.

Another Another Summer

November 9, 2020

The rattling of dry leaves on the sidewalk outside my window signals a change in the weather. This unusual (to put it mildly) warm spell has come to an end. The conditions now moving in are still tolerable but more November-appropriate. All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray, as they say.

I hate to think what the past week’s weather means for our changing climate, but it did wonders for my mood. Those who know me well know I don’t hold back about my dislike of November. I’m not a patient person, and I hate waiting that extra month for winter to descend. I’ve often wished we could move straight from the showers of colorful leaves into snowflakes and Christmas lights.

November is traditionally the time when I write things like this : “These past few days I have been thinking that there is nothing to be had[.]” Then, unsure what exactly to do about it, I take a nap.

This kind of thinking stems from time spent alone. Indeed, the vast majority of my past and recent writings are about something I did on my own. Around the time I started walking and journaling in earnest, my dad (my usual hiking companion) was laid up with a broken foot. I got used to walking alone after that; I don’t remember finding it odd. Only now do I realize that I was the only eighteen-year-old hiking the trails around town — and one of the only hikers who didn’t have a friend, spouse, or canine companion along for the trip.

By the time I entered college, I was walking practically everywhere. (Not having a car helps with that.) Those solo walks are enshrined in my journals, and they represent most of my memories of that era. I’m reliving those days now as I continue my pandemic project of typing up old journals. But it was a quick peek at a later entry that netted me this reminder:

“It’s all about the people!… I am caught up in the lives and dynamics of the people around me, no matter how hard I try to stay inside and alone… Maybe someday I’ll get that drilled into my head.

“These past few days I have been thinking that there is nothing to be had, and I feel I am about to be proved wrong once again.”

Leaving October

October 23, 2020

I’m convinced that the recent spike of CoViD cases in Wisconsin is due to the onrush of cold weather. People are scrambling to hold family gatherings, attend athletic events, and visit that restaurant one last time before we all dig in for the winter. For my part, the weekly trips to my “office” outside a local coffee shop have come to an abrupt end. It’s a crying shame, but I had a good run.

The hills surrounding my town are looking a little rusty now that we’re past the peak of fall color. I’m pleased at how long this fall has lasted, reminding me of my four years “up north”. The window in which the weather matches the colors, however, is rapidly closing. It truly is time to move indoors (and lay the garden to rest).

Still, there are a few days each fall when I get the uncanny sense that I’ve stepped into a time machine. Something about the wind, the moisture in the air, and the occasional robin makes it seem more like March or early April than October. Last night’s rain, which caused the river to flood like it does every spring, has added to the feeling. I like the idea, however foolish, that this change in weather could mean a fresh start to the year.

Yet spring it is not. Winter isn’t quite here, either — we still have the dreaded November to plod through. But if a fresh start is on the way, it will have to involve mostly indoor activities. Writing is one of these. Music is another. This season could be a very “productive” one for me. (I’m crossing my fingers so that you know I’m not making any promises.)

Whatever this turning inward might bring for everyone, I hope the net result is calm and renewal. I hope that when we emerge in the — actual, legitimate — springtime, we’ll be ready to face whatever new challenge gets thrown our way.

“And surely as you breathe the gentle air of peace, this land shall shelter in the light.” – The Tannahill Weavers

From the Archives, Part II

October 13, 2020

Between work, socially distant coffee meet-ups, and what I hope is a healthy amount of staring out the window at fall foliage, I’ve started a personal project.  I’m slowly typing up the journals that I’ve kept on and off since the spring of my senior year of high school.  My hope is that revisiting my writings — journaling was the only writing I did back then — will reveal some common threads and get me started down the path to writing a book with a personal theme.

Though I haven’t gotten far, a few interesting things have come to light.  I should mention that I started journaling as a way of recording what I saw and thought on a series of walks around my hometown.  Later, I did the same in my college town.  (Taking regular walks was a graded assignment at my environmental liberal arts college.)

Some of the revelations are amusing.  I can’t even begin to picture what a “flat rise” might be, and seemingly every path I disliked was recorded as being “muddy and overgrown”.  Early on, when I made a list of things to bring with me on my walks and hikes, item number six was “[m]oney in case of ice cream truck”.  Clearly I had my priorities straight.

There are glimpses of my interest in natural resources management, which started about a year before I took up journaling.  Once I had learned to identify the invasive bush honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica), I let loose with the following rant: “ I have seen more honeysuckle this past week than I’d ever care to see in my life.  It’s along every highway and on the slope of every hill.  I’d hate to be the DNR worker in charge of removing that… oh wait, there isn’t any.”  Interestingly, I also had politics on the brain the day I fell in love with prairie.  I was frustrated with the state of things and decided to walk farther than usual, ending up on the Cross Plains Segment of the Ice Age Trail.

In another entry, I attempted to locate the edge of town.  I walked up a broad street in the town’s northeast corner, in a subdivision I still thought of as new even though it had been around ten years or more.  By the time the road dead-ended, I’d already realized that the town didn’t really have a defined edge.  Farm fields, country homes, and other human constructions stretched across the landscape.

One question I’ve had to ask is whether all my observations were sincere, or whether I was trying to mimic the “nature writing” style I’d recently discovered.  I think the former is true.  My walking and my writing were, and still are, inspired by the beauty of the place where I grew up .  While it was sometimes hard to motivate myself to walk, I always ended up wanting to stay out longer and drink in the landscape:

“[M]ine is a beautiful town, and I feel the need to get to know it… to be in the place where I grew up but in a more natural part of it, and to know that my own feet had carried me there.”

“It felt good… to be walking without any clue where I was going — no, it felt great!”

“Other people are driving — I am walking.  My feet carried me somewhere, and except for my breathing I left no carbon ‘footprint’.  This gives me a sense of joy and power and wonder.  Woo-hoo!”

Woo-hoo indeed.