I'm not much of a Biblical person, not because of animosity toward the Bible or the faith, but because of unfamiliarity. As a kid I only rarely attended Sunday school, and when I did I invariably got lost in any reference to a particular book of the Bible. Later I learned to understand and appreciate Christianity, but never really the Bible per se, especially the Old Testament. Anyway, the above words popped into my mind the other day, as I was rooting through long-sealed cardboard boxes in our basement, seeking a ceremonial Chinese tea set given to us as either a wedding or first anniversary present. It was alleged placed, along with other paraphernalia and clutter of our lives, in one of those boxes moved from one city to another, many many moons ago. I never found the tea set. But I found lots of my past in there. Specifically, old certificates of accomplishment during law school, my law school diploma, my appointment as a federal judicial law clerk, my admission to a couple state bar associations and to practice in federal court, and photographs of me and of some of the judges I worked for. All carefully framed (except for the appointment, which was simply folded up and creased and yellowed) and all carefully packed away. And not much missed, obviously. It seemed a shame to consign them back to darkness, so I mounted them on the wall immediately behind my basement writing desk. I sometimes glance at them, and sometimes, rarely, remember something from those days. At least two of those judges have passed away, probably all three. And all of that stuff, so important to me at one time, is of only passing relevance to my present life. And once I have gone, will be of only less relevance to my survivors. Then of no value at all. I know that for a fact. I know, for example, that I once had a framed certificate of my paternal grandfather's, an honorary appointment to the (obviously) mythical "Nebraska Navy." It was an honorific for his participation in a gubernatorial campaign. That's all I know about it, now that my father has passed on, that and the fact that I cannot find it anywhere, which shows how little it really mattered to me. Sorry, Dad. But back to that Biblical reference. I went to my Bartlett's Famous Quotations, and looked it up. It's in Psalms, and reads: "As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone. And the place thereof shall know it no more." Psalm 103, 15:16 Which is totally appropriate. All that stuff once mattered much, now matters little, and will soon be nothing but flotsam and jetsam of a life once lived, the photos probably donated to St. Vincent de Paul for the frames, and perhaps someone somewhere sometime will see one of the photos and wonder who the heck that person is. And no one will know.
I have a secret addiction. I cannot pass by a jumble of river rocks -- those small stones gathered together and sold for landscaping purposes -- without glancing down at them and, at the risk of seeming odd to any passerby, picking up one or two that momentarily pique my interest. And I've found some intriguing ones: a small agate (not of commercial value), some fossiliferous limestone (seashells and the like that have accumulated and become incorporated into stone), a piece of conglomerate (mostly sandstone with some pebbles and fragments of shells incorporated into it, debris left in some ancient riverbed that had current enough to move the "larger" rocks around on the sandy bottom), not to mention things like shale and glistening granite, and so on. One thing I like about them is that they tell stories about the world that was, so many, many, years back. If one takes the time to read them. My latest find is a piece of what seems mostly quartz, half dull gray, half dull white, but at one end there's a small quartz crystal -- its glistening is what caught my eye -- and, barely visible to the naked eye, that crystal is surrounded by tiny sinuous reddish lines, their details visible only under a magnifying glass. That's another thing I like about these rocks, the way that careful examination reveals hidden beauty. And I think it's not only a matter of hidden beauty, it's also a matter of familiar beauty. The world around us is filled with things that have something to say, if we only take the time to savor them. Not only river rocks, but rivers themselves, and hillsides and meadows and mountains, sunshine and storms, a faint summer breeze or a harsh winter wind, wormholes in decaying stumps and fabulous patterns in frost and ice, the sparkle of the sun on still lake. Imagine if the sun somehow rose only once a year, how we would look forward to that event and watch for the growing rosy shine on the clouds. And the same goes for the people around us. It's so easy to look through and past them. In the aggregate we're just a jumble of river rocks. But each of us is an agate, a diamond, a history. A miracle waiting to be seen.
Back in the ol' hometown and I decided that rather than staying in and paying for a hotel -- and rather than accepting invites to crash at friend's houses or sleeping on mom's couch -- I'd take my tent and sleeping bag and camp in a city park. It's a nice tent and a nice park, though my little tent is dwarfed by rows of RVs. But the night was quiet and calm, no rain and no noise. But it's hard to make the compromise between hotel and home. The tent's too small to do anything other than sleep, and there's no place to stash and unload a suitcase. So I'm more or less living out of my car, fetching stuff when I need it, stashing stuff when I don't. There's a bathroom but only a cold-water shower that sells time, e.g. so many minutes of water for each quarter. So I'll shower at mom's. No internet there, of course, so this is being posted from Starbucks, fueled by a mocha, on a decent laptop that I own. , What comes to mind is simply how hard it would be to be really homeless and on a very tight or nonexistent income. My "sufferings" are all self-induced. I could afford a decent hotel and I have the money for Starbucks and restaurants and gas -- and in a couple days I'll be home to my house in semi-suburbia. I'll be glad to be home, and will quickly forget how it felt to be temporarily without a solid safe structure. Tonight, after making a few visits to friends in their nice American homes, I will head back to my small tent (bought from REI and not stitched together from old canvas and cardboard) and crawl into my clean and warm sleeping bag on an air mattress and cot rather than old newspapers) and will be grateful that it's all but impossible for me to comprehend how hard it would be to be at rock bottom with little hope for any decent future. And I hope I never will. NB -- another way it helps to be among the privileged. I went to a nice greasy spoon for a good old American breakfast, but when I went to pay I learned the place did not accept credit cards. I had no cash or checks, and didn't want to incur a fee from an ATM. The cashier called out the owner, who after pretending to be pissed off, told me to forget about it and said he would write it off. I was pleasantly stunned and appreciative. It was only while writing this entry that it was another example of the rich getting richer -- if I'd been without cash and without credit cards, e.g. broke, I suspect he would have called the cops. Even though I could afford to pay I got a free meal..
I thought of those words -- the second half of the title to John Lennon's Norwegian Wood -- this morning as my lovebird as flitting around the kitchen while I cleaned his cage. In putting the cage back, I recalled how before she left home my daughter used to insist that I rotate the bird's toys lest he get bored (sound advice according to the bird books, I later learned). So I went down to the basement to dig out the box of bird paraphernalia, visions of my daughter in her younger years dancing in my head. Made me a bit sad to think she's left home, I recalled telling my wife that in many ways those would be the best years of our lives, when the kids still thought of us as their world. The bird box was on a shelf in one corner and as I pulled it down I glanced over to see a couple dust-covered bicycle helmets, left over from when she and her brother were small. Seeing her old purple helmet, a vision of her as that little one burst into my world, and I couldn't help it. I was so overwhelmed with the realization that my little girl is truly and forever gone, gone into an independent young woman, and never really coming home again. And I couldn't help it. I cried, real tears, and trembled. And sobbed at the forever finality of it. That bird had flown, and my role now is to stand back and watch her fly. And I miss her so much.
But it's doing all right. A ceramic frog attached to the bottom of a ceramic mug. A gift from my father many years ago, packed away in a box during a move, and unseen until recently. I've begun using it again, and it brings back a lot of memories. I'd half forgotten his sense of humor, his appreciation of the absurd, and had totally forgotten how much I miss it. And him. Delving back further into those memories, I recall that when I was in grade school he was always "threatening" to put fried grasshoppers in my lunchbox. And one time he did. A flat green can filled with black fried grasshoppers. They caused quite a commotion in the lunchroom. I took half a bite of one and nearly threw up; Bill Christopherson, a strapping farm kid, ate two of them sandwiched between two potato chips. Then the teacher took them away. He loved the Rocky and Bullwinkle show for its sly humor, and proudly wore the "Wassamatta U" sweatshirt bought him, though he would never buy such a thing for himself. He was a good man, and like most kids (I hope) I took him for granted, didn't listen too much to his memories, and knew almost nothing of his inner hopes and no doubt frustrated dreams. As usually happens, during my teen years and early 20s I moved away from him, physically and personally. Fortunately we mended bridges well before he passed away. He was a good man, and tonight I'll raise a toast to him with my ceramic frog.
As of now, my creative well seems to have run dry. The best I can do is dig through half-finished stories and see about finishing them, or at least dressing the up differently. I hope it's a temporary thing, but, like most writers I know or know of, there is always the underlying fear that the pump will never again be primed. So I decided to write here, in hopes of doing some priming. Trick myself into writing, as it is; sorry if that seems self-indulgent, and I will take no offense if you stop reading here. Still here? Okay, let's go. Sometimes I feel I have reached the point at which I "know" too much. That is, I've seen enough of the universe unfurl that I understand what that Biblical prophet (whose name I forget) said, perhaps Ezekiel, that "all is vanity." That is, that nothing material really matters. Writing essays seems pointless; even if I do manage to get a fresh spin or take on something, so what? If it's fiction, what again is the point? Who was it that said, "anyone who writes for anything other than money is a fool." Well, what is there other than money, except perhaps the distraction of writing itself? Which, of course, may well be the point. A theological writer name of Michael Novak once wrote a book called The Experience of Nothingness, which loudly called out to my angst-riddled post-adolescent self; in it, he observed that there was something odd in having existentialists and nihilists writing books, that is, in committing the time and effort necessary to write them. If nothing matters, why do anything? Of course nothing matters. It's the starting point for everything. When I get off my butt and back to work (actually I mean on my butt and back to writing) things will flow, so long as I don't try to sketch them out ahead of time. I know of nothing more absorbing than to have fallen into the rabbithole of writing, nothing more rewarding than the feel of a fine-tuned and -turned phrase. I was going to end this with a pithy quotation I found recently, but I can't find it and will paraphrase: "For the man hunched over his motorcycle, trying to fix something, nothing matters but that. He has no time or need to worry over the so-called bigger picture" I'm also reminded of friend who loves bicycling, who pointed out that one reason he likes multi-day bike trips is that he go the entire day thinking of nothing but the road beneath and ahead of him. Okay, as Paul Harvey used to end his radio broadcasts, "my time is up, thank you for yours." And thanks for stopping by.
My mother is dying. Not of any particular affliction, but, as she will be the first to tell you, of old age. She's 97 years old, curled up by back issues, knees shot, only one kidney, wispy white hair, eyes that reflect light in brightness, wrinkled skin, and a smile that is both sweet and pensive. She's blessed -- or perhaps cursed -- with a genetic tendency toward long life. Her dad died at 95, her brothers lived into their 80s, and so on; they all kept a full head of hair all their lives; I appear to be of that line, since my hair is as full as ever, at 71. But mom is dying now. On her birthday a few weeks past she suddenly slipped into panic-filled confusion, and went to the ER, and from there back home, then back to ER the next week, and is now waiting an opening for assisted living, the part of life she always proudly avoided. But that's where she'll have to be now. She can't be on her own anymore, and soon, I'm sure, can't be anywhere. And she's good with that. I drove down to see her and we had some gentle and warming conversations. Memories of old days, talk of her grandkids and great-grandkids. At one point she looked at me and said, as though remembering something important, "you were my first-born." That's a chronological fact, but I think she meant more than that. We both found ourselves looking back at those first three years of my life, when she was everything to me, and I was everything new to her about being a parent. The vague memories that rose up in me brought me to tears and to gratitude. And being able to see her again like that was a gift I will never forget. After three days I had to leave, and I doubt I will be seeing her again, except at the very end or very near it, since it's obvious the light is fading. But she's at peace about it and, because of that, so I am I. She had me dig out a shoebox full of pictures out a cabinet and take it with me, so it didn't get lost in the shuffle of closing out her apartment. It's a mix of things, most from the 70s and 80s, a few much older. The house I was born in, and so on. Many of the photos are from the ten or so years she and my dad spent on a rural farmstead after he retired, a place I loved and wish now I had had the money then to buy and keep in the family. And there's dad and my aunts and uncles, and the barn cats and mom and dad's dogs. All that I expected and am glad to have found again. I didn't expect the way my own earlier life welled up from those photos, the dog my first wife and I had, my oldest daughter in her youngest days, photos I hadn't seen in years; all of a time I had largely walled away in my heart. I'd forgotten, I'm sad to say, the power that a first-born can pull from one's heart. It's so easy to lose that magic in the everyday life that follows, and I so glad, so blessed, that I have been able to re-discover that now, before I'm at the edge; when I have time to remember and make good use of that magic. I'll miss her greatly, but I'll always treasure having had the life with her, and the chance to re-discover the magic. And I have my own first-born to treasure.
Lately, in my meditation practice, as I settle in to sit, I've had a mental image of standing at the edge of a pool, then plunging into a sea of unknown dimension. The nearest edge is familiar, the feel of my breathing, the softening tensions in my crossed legs, the settling of breath. But I also have the sensation of being on the edge of something big, and deep, and unknown, and it's sometimes a challenge to really let go and trust. Who knows what lurks in the deep dark beyond my controlling waking mind, what risks I take when moving from my waking self, crossing the abyss, returning to my waking self on the other side? Today, as I sat, an anecdote by Bill Bryson rose up in my mind. It comes, I think, from his book about visiting Australia, In a Sunburnt Country. I'm working from memory here, but I think I have the general gist. Bryson talks of a young couple who were inadvertently left behind at the close of a scuba expedition. By the time the crew of the ship realized their mistake and turned back, the couple was nowhere to be found, and, in fact, they were never seen again. Speculation is that when they surfaced they found themselves alone at sea, near the diving buoy, with no ship in sight. But they saw a nearby derrick of some sort, and opted to swim toward it, hoping to at least be able to climb out of the water while waiting for the ship to return. What they did not know was that to get to the derrick they had to swim across a deep, shark-infested, channel, and, presumably, those sharks found the overhead shadows of isolated swimmers first intriguing, then irresistible, and ultimately delectable. A fairly stark image of dangers from the deep, almost enough to scare one out of meditation, back to the comfortable security of the shore of everyday awareness. Until I realized. . . . Until I realized that there is really no shore onto which I could climb, only a flimsy web of interconnected thoughts attached to nothing substantial. Until I realized that while the deepest deep is unknown and may well contain dangers, it is really all there is, and my movement toward those depths, however tentative, is inevitable, and really nothing more than my movement toward myself; that no matter how much I long for the security of the beach, it isn't really there. And I found that strangely comforting as I sank back into stillness, until my session ended and I rose again into the light of the everyday.
Came across this poem by a Tibetan Buddhist monk, and it triggered some reflections on my family tree research: People of my father’s and forefathers’ generations have continuously striven their entire lives, but all failed. Had I exerted myself like them, I would also have no success. Therefore isn’t it joyful to use this life to practice the profound sublime Dharma? . . . I've traced my father's and his forefather's generations on their journeys from Scotland, England, Ireland, and likely Wales. I've followed one side from the Debatable Lands to the Virginia colony, up to Kentucky (Tick Creek), and to Ohio to Indiana to Iowa to Kansas, sowing crops and Presbyterian churches along the way, leaving at more than one eponymous cemetery. And I've followed the other side from northern England and Ireland through the New Jersey colony, to Ohio, to Iowa, mostly farming, but also blacksmithing, innkeeping, and even chicken-plucking, while spending time in Quaker meeting houses and Methodist and Congregational churches. I literally know where a lot of the bodies are buried. In the case of my own father, I find it intriguing that having been born amid his mother's extended family in western Iowa, he grew up across the river in Nebraska and seemed to never really look back east. At least we never met any of those cousins or great uncles or aunts, all our stories were Nebraska-based; and he took his own family west across the state, until we migrated back again to eastern Nebraska. Yet after he retired he and my mother bought a farmstead about 20 miles from the Iowa community where he was born, and that's where he died, ten years later. In fact, the last time I saw him was as he lay in the hospital in the same city where he was born 78 years earlier. I have this image of him being greeted by the spirits or ghosts or souls (whatever term you choose) of all the Iowa relatives of his youth, his mother, his cousins, aunts and uncles (including Burt, the chicken-plucker) and maybe being welcomed into the spirit of those Quaker meeting houses that, to the best of my knowledge, he never set foot in. As though he came home without knowing it, certainly without consciously choosing it. But perhaps I digress. The question I ask myself is what it was all about, the lives of those earlier generations, struggling sometimes to thrive, sometimes to simply survive. The ones who did well, the ones who were ne-er-do-wells, those who died young, those who died old, those who raised families, those who died childless, all of them have ended up, far as I know, in the same place in this world: back to the earth from which their essence emerged countless eons back. Their farms, their houses, their possessions are all gone, as are their hopes, dreams, accomplishments, fears, failures, and successes. Perhaps, as the poet suggested, it is of as much value to spend time in meditation and experiencing the present moment as it was, or would be, to toil in the soil or forge horseshoes, or pluck chickens. ** As I finish this I realize how muchI presume they didn't ponder these questions as well, whether in Presbyterian churches or Quaker meetings or even behind the plow. Or plucking chickens. I hope that when the time comes for me to cross over that they will meet me with forgiveness and understanding.
Working on my family tree, I am sometimes amazed by how many tantalizing gaps show up. That doesn't surprise me when working with far-distant lines, when records were scarce. But sometimes lacunae appear far closer to present day. For example, my father's mother's line is fairly clearly defined in census and Ancestry records back in the latter half of the 19th Century, from Clermont County Ohio to central Iowa. Things seem pretty clear, children popping up every few years, parents and grandparents passing on, and so on. But even that relatively recent past can get a bit odd. For example, there's a girl, Clara, born in 1880 and gone from the family census as of the 1885 state census. Child mortality was high back then, so that's not unusual of itself; my grandmother was born in 1884 or so, so she would not have known Clara and may not have ever heard about her. But it's interesting that a Clara Smith born the same date as the one in our family would have died in 1885 some 40 miles north of their hometown. Other data suggests it's the same Clara, but why would she have died that far away, at the age of 5? Forty miles was a major expedition back then, and there's no indication of family up there. A family trip gone bad? Not likely that story will ever be told now. Then there's a tantalizing bit from my uncle's memoirs in which he mentions that his mother -- my maternal grandmother -- talked of an older, unnamed brother who died at the age of 8. All the brothers listed in her recollections lived to ripe ages, but I find one loosely-connected family tree that suggests a Charles was born in 1876 to my maternal grandmother's family, but Charles never appears in any family state or federal census report until the 1900 federal census, when he springs forth, full-grown as it were, in my grandmother's family, at the age of 23 (obviously not dead at 8), single and working as a livery driver. So where was he in all those other state and federal censuses? And even more interesting, a 5-year-old grand-daughter named Tassie appears in that federal census. It's tempting to guess and presume she is his daughter from a failed or widowed marriage, but no way of knowing. Especially because Charles and Tassie seem to disappear after that. I look around me, at all the detitrus and debris of my life, and tend to presume that my existence, and that of my near and dear (and I suppose far and annoying) family will be an open book, and that any descendants trying to reconstruct days past will have a fairly easy time of it. But that, I think, is pure hubris and vanity. They may be able to draw up a basic map, reasonably reliable, but there will always be gaps and guesses. Because nothing is clear forever. And in the end only nothing is clear.
I seem to recall an axiom from my road biking days that you must be careful to focus on where you want to go (e.g. follow the road), rather to focus on where you don't want to go (e.g. off the edge of the pavement), because your mind will take you in the direction of your attention. Today I got tired of driving my old car with the damaged driver-side mirror, so I went online to see how hard it would be to fix it. I came across a You Tube video with my exact car and a promise that it only takes a few minutes to replace it. After watching it, it occurred to me I could do one better -- I could take off the damaged mirror, glue it, and put it back, saving $40 or so dollars. So I followed the diss-assembly instructions carefully. Or, rather, tried to. At one point the narrator pointed out the three nuts to remove and in doing so noted that one must be careful in doing so, because it's possible to drop one down into the door panel and that doing so "will needlessly complicate your life." I immediately wished he hadn't said that. Because as I unscrewed the first nut, ever so carefully keeping my fingers on it, keeping in mind his admonition, it slipped past my fingers and down into the door. As I knew it would as soon as I resolved not to let it happen. Because I let my mind lead. Silly me.
Got up and out for my early Monday yoga class, got there to find it had been cancelled due to family emergency for the teacher. Went back home to do some stuff, issue was whether to go back to work out, or even to attend a spin class. Or to pack up the laptop and go to the coffee shop for black coffee and a scone, and do some writing. Not an easy decision. When I retired nearly 4 years back, I made the conscious decision to join the Y and to spend my time exercising rather than bloating myself with scones (my formulation of the issue at the time). Since then I've been to the Y three or 4 times a week, spin classes until the pandemic hit, then yoga once it re-opened, since the spin classes were cancelled. And this morning? Here I am, looking out the window of my favorite coffee shop, just finished my scone, staring out at the parking lot, watching folks come and go from the nearby library. Coffee's good, I've got my earphones on with soothing background music cancelling the ambient chatter. The sky is a mix of bright blue and soft white clouds, the temps just below freezing. This is a good place to be, physically and psychologically. Still, I wrestle with the nagging from my worrisome self, that perhaps this is the beginning of a new trend, and perhaps a setback in my journey toward wholesomely healthy golden years. That's what makes choosing so hard for me sometimes, always arguing with myself, with the result that I don't get the benefit of either choice. My final answer here? In my spiritual and psychological meanderings, I've been drawn more and more to the concept of radical acceptance, of "being here now." Rather than living in light of shoulds, I choose instead to live in light of what I am. Today I am someone who craved coffee and scones. That's me at the moment. if I deny that in light of a "should" I would be denying who I am. I need not pretend to be someone else. If that makes sense. Reminded for some reason of T.S. Eliot, “Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.” I might as well fully enjoy this decision. The revision will be along soon enough. Cheers.
"But in the rising sun You can feel your life begin Universe at play inside your DNA You're a billion years old today." --George Harrison This line occurred to me as I was raking leaves in our front yard. The primary culprit is a large red maple, whose multitudinous leaves are a sort of purple from spring to autumn, then fade to a pale brown, and fall to earth in copious amounts as winter approaches. I say "culprit" mostly in jest, because most days in most autumns I find joy and relaxation in raking leaves, or sometimes, a burst of macho enthusiasm if I get out my leaf blower and herd them into a large pile. Either way I am reminded of the metaphor they provide of life and death. I can observe them coming to life each spring, watch as they reach their peak, and gather their dried remains once life has left them. Or has it? Should the line be drawn at the point at which the leaves connect to the tree? Or is it the tree who is living, growing and shedding the leaves in season? Or is it the DNA that comprises the tree, which directs the way that collection of cells grows and takes shape? Or is it the earth that nourishes the tree, and finds expression sometimes in vast and beautiful forests, or in single landscaped trees, or even in the scraggly little "junk" trees that show up in almost every vacant lot or abandoned barn? And then there's the life of the forest, large trees dominating, then dying, and their massive trunks falling to earth, where they decompose into softening brown heaps with their toadstool toppings and many mushrooms, all moving toward becoming the soil that, if left alone, nourishes and becomes more trees. including the smaller trees that, by nature or by chance, never tower above, but instead scrabble to find light in the places left open by their larger cousins, all of them ultimately becoming soil again, regardless of size or years of existence. And of course I'm out there raking leaves around rocks that border the tree, those rocks being the cooled manifestation of long-ago (in human terms) volcanic or deep-earth heat and pressure, atoms and elements cooked and molded into mountains which wear into stones which sometimes fall into rivers where they are tumbled until their sharp edges round off. And then there's the earth as a planet in the solar system that floats (if that's right word for drifting in the emptiness of space) at the edge of the Milky Way, and then the galaxies turning in the immeasurable immensity of the known universe. And then there's me, standing in the autumnal sun, raking leaves and wondering at the passing of another season, and almost shivering in thoughts of the earthly and metaphysical winter to come, reminding myself that the me who feels the chill is but a particular manifestation of the cosmic dance around me.
I thought of Dave Mallett's lyrics yesterday (from "Garden Song") as I limped around, my torn meniscus apparently aggravated by my sitting in the lotus position as I meditated, so my knee hurts today. I noticed it twinging near the end of my morning sit, but I thought I could tough it out. Apparently a mistake. My existence in adverse juxtaposition. Just when I thought the yoga and sitting were working together and I felt almost like a yogi. Today I feel like Yogi Berra must have felt after a long day of catching for Whitey Ford or Don Larsen. (Old man analogy, I know). And I feel a tad disappointed. Brought down to earth, so to speak. Reminded that just because I want to be something, really want to be, doesn't mean I can get there without effort, or ever. Life, I'm learning, not for the first time, is a process of aspiring tempered by reality. I'm made of dreams and bone. Mind and matter. Gnosis and knees. Trying to be who I am without settling for less. Until I reach the point at which I stop trying because I finally am. . . .
Not far from the metropolis in which I live sits a large tract of land, thankfully preserved from development. At its center is a marsh and associated wetlands, with a wooded area at one end, and an oak savannah at the other end. The oak savannah rises up in a rather steep hill, which is known as "Frederick's Hill," apparently after an early white settler in the region. The wife and I climbed up the hill early the other morning and watched a beautiful sunrise; the sky was clear, the air cool and filled with faint sounds of birds stirring and calling in the marsh below. Morning breezes rustled the oak leaves around us, and gently pushed the waves of grasses and wildflowers. In the distance sunlight flickered on a large lake. I found it easy to picture the site, and the whole region, as it must have looked a couple hundred years ago, before the landscape was transformed by industrious settlers following in the footsteps of fur traders and other travelers. At the base of Frederick's Hill is a shallow indentation, out of which water bubbles at the rate of something like a million gallons a day. The place is known, not surprising, as "Frederick Springs." It's fascinating to watch the water bubble up and push the sand around, ripples dancing on the surface, weaving shadows across the sandy bottom. Apparently the site was well-known to the indigenous people of the region, the Ho-Chunks, who used to water their animals there. They also considered it a sacred site. No doubt they looked out on verdant hills and woodlands, and presumed it would always be as it was. Because it was a sacred site, they also buried their dead nearby, specifically in mounds atop and on the slopes of Frederick's Hill. The mounds on the slopes long ago disappeared under prairie plows, but the ones on top remain, several of them, apparently holding maybe 100 or so people in total. In that early morning sun I think I felt a bit of what those ancient Ho-Chunk felt, magic in the moving air, a gentle and pervading calm. I'm glad that it remains. I'm also sad for those Ho-Chunk, so ruthlessly pushed aside by "civilization," as the European settlers moved in. It also makes me feel a bit guilty, as a descendant of those later intruders. One line of my family were Quakers, who left England and New England to avoid persecution, and who advocated, and largely lived, in peace. The Quakers are known for their "fair dealing" with the indigenous peoples, making relatively honest treaties and treating the indigenous ones with respect. And I think my Quaker predecessors meant it. But still . . . . Their journals and histories all speak of the beautiful land they moved into and settled, and developed into rustic communities. All good. But that migration/immigration was all premised on the idea that this land was out there for the taking, God's bounty as it were, opportunities to be seized by the willing and the industrious. All premised on the largely unspoken presumption that the land was empty and unowned, unused. All premised on pushing those annoying "Indians" out of the way. Which was accomplished largely without conflict or major bloodshed, save for the brief Black Hawk War, a one-sided conflict that settled things forever in favor of the Europeans. And for all that time, and all these years, Frederick's Spring bubbled and burbled, and the spirits of the Ho-Chunk dead looked down on the springs, while traces of what had been still stood, through hundreds of seasons, reminders that nothing is certain, nothing is given without cost, and nothing lasts forever, regardless of momentary appearances. That's what I saw from Frederick's Hill at sunrise.
