There it lay, weathered and broken, a once sturdy branch of a burr oak that seemed to be reaching out, inviting me back into a world of consciousness and mental peacefulness that seemed to have slipped away … a dreary feeling that has held me captive since early November.

As the oak reached outwardly, I raised my camera to record the moment. Sometimes you have to do these things. When nature calls one must lend an ear. Open an eye. Especially a mind. To paraphrase the late naturalist John Muir, “The oaks are calling and I must listen.”

This singular oak was in the savanna of the Bonanza Education Center some 11 miles due west of Listening Stones Farm, and as my habit, I was once again meandering through this northern portion of Big Stone Lake State Park seeking, well, mental peace.

Back in November I was frequently searching the many wetlands for calm waters. Yes, photographic metaphors. Just like the oak limb. That quest began the day following the results of the election. For about two weeks my files were stuffed with images of just that … calm waters. A stagnant metaphor, it turns out. When frigid airs froze the wetlands, it seemed for awhile I was lost. As temperatures plummeted way below the comfort level, I entered that mental cocoon.

My recent feeling of detachment from nature is solidly evident in my photography files. And with my writing. Oh, I’ve tried. With imagery and words, though little has come of it. This isn’t like me. It isn’t who I am. And I have not been comfortable on who or what it seems I have become. A man shriveling into a darkness of mind; one who for perhaps the first time in his life has chosen to hide from resilience. This is not what I’m comfortable being, at this age, a bent shell of an old man.

Then I found myself driving through Bonanza on a February afternoon. For an unexplainable reason I had stopped the pickup to just sat quietly. My was window lowered as I breathed in the cold air while seeking a certain calmness. Since I was parked on the road between the woods and a woody ravine, perhaps I was seeking that calmness I feel when forest bathing. When I opened my eyes those limbs of the oak were reaching toward me.

Ever since I was introduced to the savanna several years ago, Bonanza has been a harbor for my soul. In decent weather this is where I come to silently meditate and breathe, often easing down to rest my back against the solid trunk of an oak tree, or to even lay beneath an umbrella of staghorn sumac. Countless times I’ve merely sat on a plank bridge crossing over a spring fed rivulet coursing through one of the dozens of ravines found in the park … ravines common to the Big Stone Moraine all along the eastern border of Big Stone Lake.

If my meditation is deep enough even the boats of fishermen on the adjacent lake are duffed into nothingness, often lost in the wind. A scolding wren, though, can break through, as can the peeping chatter of warblers and silken cedar waxwings from high above in the canopy.

Granted, Bonanza isn’t to be confused with a wilderness. While it is fairly uncommon to meet others on the few trails that curve through the undulating savanna, it happens. Cars will slowly cruise down the single gravel road to the Education Center, turn in the wide loop before heading back slowly toward the climb out of the park and valley.

While it seems most convenient to take the lakeside trail, especially with the snow cover, tackling the various loops into the hillside woods beyond the Education Center is almost like entering a different world. A cathedral of tall trees.

A friend, writer and musician Douglas Woods, regularly sends his Sunday morning thoughts from his cabin along the Mississippi River, his “Church of the Pines.” Douglas is seemingly closer to God than I am, although over time we have individually found our respective woods of worship. Mine is here at Bonanza, where when I drive up that hill out of the valley I most often do so with less tension and a sense of mental freedom.

Twice this week that has happened. Somehow I feel stronger. Mentally refreshed. Again I look toward nature. The coming migrations of snow geese and sandhill cranes, of pasque flowers popping up from roughened and sparse hillsides, of wading shorebirds and cottonwoods filled with bald eagles … those passing through rather than the ones now tethered to their nests.

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