Tag Archives: writing

If You Think

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After taking a sip of iced tea I looked over at my author friend, Douglas Wood, as we shared a leisurely and quiet North Woods moment. Chats of my challenges of aging, of his fighting through the recovery of his “fret” hand he broke this spring and is trying to regain his unique ability to play his mandolin and guitar. One wouldn’t guess he had an issue. He can. Our curse as artists is in visualizing the unattainable. He’s an excellent performance artist as well as a fine writer with some 30 published books.

We were seated in the wonderfully comfortable and aged Adirondack chairs on the communal deck outside of the kitchen/dining room that centers magical Mallard Island, part of a five island archipelago in Rainey Lake a few miles west of Voyageurs National Park along the Canadian border. Douglas’ and Kathy’s cabin is a short paddle away fronting this small grouping of rocky islands including one they have christened as Fawn Island, title of his first of three personal memoirs.

Douglas Wood listens as his wife, Kathy, tells a story in their Fawn Island cabin.

On this afternoon our conversation drifted toward memories of a mutual acquaintance and friend, the late Bill Holm. “He was sitting on this very deck when we first met,” Douglas said, words accompanied by pine top songs of White-throated Sparrows, a cheery blessing of the islands. While taking a break from cooking dinner, Holm sipped an iced scotch and smoked his beloved Camels as he carried the conversation. I suspect Holm towered over Douglas as he did me with both his size and captivating personality. An incredible story teller and musician, Holm loved telling tales of the prairie, of his ancestral homeland of Iceland, and impressions of his worldly travels, and he wasn’t shy about politics, either. He loved to entertain, yet could take a teasing, often interrupted by gushes of laughter. I didn’t know him well, although we shared some fun and laughter.

Douglas spoke of their conversation, one he eventually published as an essay in “Fawn Island,” of how Holm moved on from his hilarious litany of Ole and Lena jokes to seriously discuss a book he’d just read about arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson in which he quoted a passage to my friend, the naturalist who has paddled arctic waters himself: “The arctic is a friendly place (pause) if you think.”

A leisurely moment on the wooded deck with the Adirondack chairs.

In retelling the story, Douglas emphasized those last three words as Holm had as they were parting company later that night: “If you think.” We sat silently for a long moment gazing at the canal between Mallard and Crow as those words sank in. While sharing our respective Holm tales, along with a few laughs, I thought about this deck, these chairs and of the overall ambiance of Mallard. I would learn that an old friend and fellow CURE board member, Don Marondi, played an integral role in Mallard lore, and that our hostess was long time singing artist, Prudence Johnson, who we once saw perform on Prairie Home Companion back in the 1980s. 

Historically, Mallard, was the lifelong home of famed conservationist, photographer and writer Ernest “Ober” Oberholtzer, who lived here from 1919 to 1957. Its rustic ambiance and cedarbark veneer adds to the charm. Nowadays the island serves as a creative retreat managed by the Oberholtzer Foundation for events like Douglas’ “Writers in the Wild” which was followed by a retreat for classical musicians.

Music play by Douglas and harpist Terri Tacheny was both soothing and insprational.

We ten writers and staff would share private moments over the week, writing specific assignments before being tasked by a reading of each. Sometimes twice. One evening author Jane Harmon read from her novel, “Mary and Inger”, and harpist Terri Tacheny sent soulful music through the pines as did Douglas adding calm resonance drifting through the pines. In between, spending private times with a friend who has shared some nice moments over the years was comforting, both with appreciating his talent as a writer but also the music. Douglas and his good friend, Borgie Borgstrom, have played house concerts in our Listening Stones studio. 

My hope for the week was a recharge, a way of escaping the continued ride into deeper, troublesome times I feel are consuming much of my creative energy. “If you think” moments. Yes, some energy was grasped in nature with my camera, yet for months I’ve suffered “writer’s block,” a completely new curse for me, something that I rarely suffered in my long career as a journalist. Could that energy be recaptured?

Kelly DeBore found one of the hideaway spaces to work on an assignment.

Then came those conversations on the boarded deck seated on those comforting weathered and worn Adirondack chairs, ones Holm and Marondi and hundreds of others have sat on sharing similar conversations, chairs filled before and after meals. If privacy and a more personal need of thought was needed, dozens of hideaway benches and alcoves existed to encourage reflection and thought, among the rocks and trees and in each of Ober’s buildings. Hundreds of dusty books exist on shelves in each building, which you were encouraged to read with explicit instructions to leave them in place. Thousands of Ober’s photographs were within touch in albums and organized drawers. Rocky paths guided you through the island, a length similar to our Listening Stones prairie, and even I could toss a rock across the width.

Back on the deck on another warm and calm afternoon, again comfortably seated in those weathered chairs, Douglas shared his insecurities as a young man in trying to win the love of his life, his dear Kathy, an incredible musician in her own right. Followed were conversations over those who have honed our conservation ethics … Aldo Leopold and Charles Schwartz for me, and Sigrid Olson and Ober for Douglas. Sigrid and the BWCA were nowhere near my radar before we moved to Minnesota in 1982. Leopold was introduced to me years earlier after a lunch with Schwartz and his wife, Elizabeth, in their Jefferson City home, after which he gifted me a copy of Leopold’s “Sand County Almanac” that included his illustrations of incredibly realistic nature art. It was a life changing book for me. Like Douglas, I’ve visited Leopold’s sand county farm near Baraboo and rested on his bench on a bend of the Wisconsin river … benches similar to Sigrid’s at Listening Point, or like Ober’s here on at Mallard, benches many of us writers sat on over the week.

Douglas and Kathy Wood in their iconic Fawn Island cabin.

Douglas had also met Schwartz, and recounted a weekend in my home state where he met his “Holy Trinity” of nature heroes … Leopold, Henry David Thoreau and John Muir … during a special event in the Ozark Hills where he served as moderator. Played by three actors who had created life-long acts portraying the three icons of the conservation movement, he spoke of his fascination of how each remained in character in both dress and spoken word throughout the weekend, one that came to a close after a nighttime hike up a wooded Ozark hillside that ended in respective silence as their hosts, the three character actors and Douglas himself were left in respective silence by an array of dancing light created by lightning bugs.

In Ober’s main residence, where we gathered seated around our mentor, a framed photograph of him and Sigrid Olson added to the awe of our retreat. Douglas is at home here in the North Woods, and perhaps could have been my home had I not been stopped in mid-life by the ambiance and arts of the prairie. I told Douglas the story of how after a speech and bit of ragtime music by Holm I had teased the Minneota prairie man and college professor about his beautiful essay titled “Horizontal Grandeur.” Holm had penned this after feeling “imprisoned” by tall pines and short vistas … of how when he passed through Willmar he celebrated finally being back in his lovable prairie with unlimited vistas. After stopping his car, he stepped from behind the wheel and thoroughly embraced his “home again” moment. Perhaps he was returning from the same Mallard Island moment Douglas had shared on that earlier afternoon.

Ober’s boat was pulled from the waters to allow nature to take its course.

This was among my “Holm moments” shared in our conversations on those laid back Adirondacks followed by  Doug’s story of his dinner, of Holm’s benediction. It comes to mind, now weeks later, especially as we collectively grasp for calm reality of our political situation by using Stefansson’s story from the wilds and uncertainty of an uncharted arctic wilderness as a metaphor. Perhaps Stefansson and Bill Holm had both laid out a road map for our trying times and survival. “If you think …” 

A Dawning of Hope

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I didn’t initially grasp the significance of witnessing something I hadn’t for far too long: That feeling of hope that comes with the breaking of a new day. It seemed as if inspirational author Jayita Bhattacharjee was speaking directly to me when she wrote: “Let me tell you about the dawn, the birds, and the opening buds, so you will feel hope in your veins.”

Perhaps I’m not the only one searching for some semblance of hope in these trying times, times a friend described as “marinating in a cesspool of vulgarity.” Could an obscure, singular sunrise create such magic, such mental peace, such hope? Admittedly it has been awhile since I had awakened in time to catch the breaking of a new day, let alone birthing a sense of hope. Maybe this sleeping in is an “age thing” for in my younger, working days I was late to bed and early to rise. Always. Rising early enough to get in a jog or walk while making it to the C-Store for the morning newspaper by 6 a.m. 

Nowadays I miss most the sunrises, of being greeted by a soft, ground-hugging fog, of the sounds as nature awakens. I remember backpacking into the Rockies and heading to a stream with my fly rod for an early morning trout to fry with eggs. Or paddling as fog shrouded an island in the Boundary Waters. One of my last sunrises came at Crex Meadows last November, the morning after a gorgeous full moon gifted me with many beautiful images of Sandhill Cranes. Perhaps there was one or two since … over a half-year span.

A few weeks ago a promise was made to set my alarm one morning each week to revisit those day-breaking joys of nature. We’re not in a city where horns and the sounds of commerce increase with the awakening of a new day. Our home is now in the prairie where places exist to greet birds and the opening of buds. So when a friend with delightful tastes, Khadija Benaissa, posted some photographs of prairie flowers she had taken on a recent jaunt along the auto trail at nearby Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge, she included a pictures of beautiful meadow of coneflowers that for the past few years seemed hidden within heavy foliage. A thorough prairie burn this past spring appeared to have given those precious flowers some freedom in the meadow; thousands of coneflowers dance in the prairie breezes on sunny afternoons. 

To count the number of images I’ve made of those flowers in that same meadow through the years would take several hours, yet I can’t recall many being made at dawn. Let alone on a foggy dawn. One of my favorite images was of a high school senior, the daughter of a long, dear friend. With this humidity we’ve experienced these past few days the visualization of capturing images of coneflowers bracketed with a foggy dawn was much too alluring. My alarm was set for 5 a.m. which would hopefully allow for the 11 mile trip to arrive early enough to greet the new morning with my Nikon in hand a full half hour before sunrise. Ah, that anticipation of hope, of capturing beautiful moments of a prairie sunrise!

Those hopes rose even higher looking out the bathroom window after the alarm sounded, for even our home prairie was shrouded with a fog hugging those rising purplish leaves of big bluestem, and the short drive moments later certainly didn’t diminish my hope. Coming over the last hill that descends into the valley that is home to the headwaters of the Minnesota River even offered more promise. And there is this: Khadija has never, to my knowledge, led me astray. That blanket of coneflowers would be waiting.

Perhaps I entered the auto tour at speeds frankly frowned upon, and hopefully there aren’t skid marks on some of the sharp turns. When I finally crossed that last speed hump that meadow of pinkness spread out before me as a sight to behold. Acres of pink dotted through the grayness, blossoms so delicate, yet staunch enough to fight against a prairie wind. A softness prevailed, and the depth disappeared into the muted grayness of morning. 

Interestingly, the fog was quite thick, much more so than on the Big Stone Moraine where our prairie is located. After a good 20 minutes of playing around with the coneflowers, I left to see what was visible in the West Pool, although a few stops were made to capture some photographs of first a family of Canada geese easing across the stilled waters of the pool, then moments later those of a prolific chick-sitting merganser with her numerous brood cutting across the wetland directly across the West Pool dike. 

Since my goal was to experience the beauty as much as humanly possible, I was quickly out of the car with camera in hand. As I stood along the edge of the dike, mesmerized by an awakening morning as the sun began its assent into the grayness, a golden hue colored the eastern sky and the realm of water. Nature’s gold. Ring-billed gulls drifted across the sky and stilled waters, silhouettes peeking through the misty dawn to answer my prayers of magic. In that moment I realized what I’ve been missing for far too long. I noticed, then, the calmness of my breathing, as if I had just spent an hour forest bathing or practicing meditative yoga. Those feelings Bhattacharjee writes about in her meditative journals that speak glowingly of the magic of such moments of breaking light. Of experiencing a rising sun in the quiet of an evolving new morning.

After the sun had gained it’s foothold of the forthcoming day, I stepped back into the car and momentarily thought of the meadow. Perhaps I was mistaken, for there were thoughts that by the time I made it back around the prairie loop to the meadow the sun would have lifted too high for anything magical. 

Yet the magic was far from over. Heading toward home I remembered a grouping of Great White Egrets hanging around a Pleasant Valley wetland, those surviving pothole treasures of this old glacial moraine. When dropping Joe Pye off at the kennel a few weeks earlier I had passed the tall white birds congregating in a marshy area, although several trips past that spot since has been unsuccessful. Once again the marsh was barren of birds, so I made a turn toward a series of wetlands to the north where I received an early morning bonus —  a lone egret lifted up from the cattails, all bathed by those beautiful, soft golden hues of the fresh, early morning light.

So much beauty for one obscure sunrise, and one could wish that every sunrise offered as much beauty and opportunity for imagery. For one morning, though, it was thoroughly fulfilling. I had escaped from that “cesspool of vulgarity” that nowadays seems as real as breathing. So I offer my sincere gratitude to Khadija for her tip that provided the inertia I needed for such a fulfilling and special experience. I came home feeling the hope in my veins!

That Notice of Peace

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As my dear friend, Steve Bruns, began piecing together his final thoughts and stories for his family, the deeply religious man began with a simple statement: “I’m learning how to die.” His aim was in providing his thoughts about his personal view of eternity and how he now faces what remains of what has been and continues to be a full and vivid life. 

Among his thoughts were these: “The older I get, the more I notice colors. Maybe because life itself feels more precious now. Maybe because suffering sharpens your awareness of beauty. When you understand life is fragile, you stop rushing past sunsets. You stop overlooking robins’ eggs. You notice frost-blue snow early in the morning before footprints disturb it. You notice chickadees flashing blue-gray wings in winter trees. You notice the reflection of clouds in a quiet lake. You notice peace wherever you can find it.”

Although we’ve been friends for a quarter century, I hadn’t considered Steve a poet. An inventor. A creator. A story teller without par. A freind. Now I humbly stand corrected. Like Steve, though, I too notice peace.

A few months after learning his cancer had spread and is basically untreatable, Steve was encouraged by his beautiful and supportive wife, Jill, and his family to share his thoughts, to give his perspectives on his four sons and their families, to place in black and white those wonderfully entertaining stories his friends and family have enjoyed and laughed at over the years. They found a computer program that allows him to tell his stories as he always has and the words are printed as if he had written them. That moment of poetry was among his spoken thoughts.

His thoughts of peacefulness and colors resonated with me as I laid in the crunchy browned prairie duff focusing on one of my favorite and most interesting prairie forbs, Prairie Smoke. This “awareness of peace and beauty” was at the Lake Johanna Esker north of Sunburg and a bit east of the tallgrass Ordway Prairie. Such vivid colors, of such interesting shapes, mingled naturally with other May flowers on a haze-blessed sunny afternoon.

While Steve has found his peace in the color of blue, mine is more universal, more defined by the moment, and certainly as he stated, such moments seem more precious with age. For years Prairie Smoke has attracted my interest, an affection that has not waned with age.  

My discovery of Prairie Smoke began when we first moved here to Listening Stones Farm in 2013, moving into a house that Steve and I had labored to convert into the modern era with new insulation, wiring and plumbing, working seven days a week and long past “eight hour shifts.” A few weeks after he returned home to Hector, my soon-to-be (and long divorced) wife and I were rummaging through the nearby native Clinton Prairie when we came across my first sighting of Prairie Smoke. Immediately hooked, I would return time after time to find various angles of portrayal until the “smoke” eventually disappeared.

A few years later word came about a broad blanket of the spiky flowers existing at the Esker where acres of them brighten that virgin prairie with such color, beauty and joy. Our trip this past weekend was one of many over the years and once again added both peace and joy. Our adventure began by spotting several Prairie Blue-Eyed Grass blossoms just inside the fence, yet the pinkish allure of Prairie Smoke beckoned from the nearby rise, the pink vividness arching in contrast to the blooming White Pussy-toes and speckles of Blue-Eyed Grass. A bountiful floral vision!

This is such precious geological remnant, for an esker is basically a rocky stream bed created within a glacier, and that mound of historical wonder dominates the landscape. Such an esker is a rare find nowadays for many have been destroyed for gravel mining. In the prairie below was where the colorful carpet lay. And it didn’t take much hesitation to find just enough space to lay with a camera to search through the emerging “jungle” of greenery and colorful blossoms for interesting imagery. And Steve’s bit of poetry rang true for every moment I lay prone and in awe. Prone and in peace.

Prairie Smoke has long been one of my annual “photographic seasons” that begins with Steve’s favorite blues ­— beginning with post-melt Pasque Flowers and ending with that of autumn Asters. Since that first sighting of Prairie Smoke I’ve captured it throughout it’s short lifespan, and yes, we’ve even purchased plants from the nearby Morning Sky Nursery in Morris to plant in our native prairie gardens. Unfortunately, the “bully” Compass Plant has all but crowded out almost everything in that particular garden including our three Prairie Smoke plants.

So, yes, I suppose there are ample images stored in my files, so many I probably have no need for more. Ah, but there’s that difference between “need” and “want!” Yet, there is always a quest of perhaps capturing a perfect moment or image. If such a moment or image should exist.

Then there are the unexpected moments that have come along in those numerous quests: An unexpected fly-over of a pair of Sandhill Cranes offering a rare glimpse of timelessness for an image that was surreal geologically; or that muted blueness of pre-dawn light in such contrast to the softened pinkishness of the Prairie Smoke; or that explosive blast of a setting sun searing through silhouetted spikes; or the standing fluff of “smoke” from three individual blossoms made at sunrise that appeared as beautifully splendid and fanned widely as would a trio of fluffing peacocks. And, on and on. 

Which leads me back to another touch of poetry from my dear friend as he faces his conclusion of a full and beautiful life, one where he fears not his path toward eternity though he does his actual act of dying: 

“Back home on the prairie, the sunsets may still be my favorite. There is a moment just before darkness arrives when the entire sky becomes layered with oranges, pinks, purples, and deepening blues. The fields grow quiet. The wind softens. Trees become silhouettes. Sometimes the clouds catch the sunlight so perfectly it feels like heaven cracked open for a few minutes just to let us peek inside.”

Peeks into a heaven where he awaits a calmness in finding. A notice of eternal peace.

A Calmness in ‘Colorful Silence’

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There, at the foot of my driveway, came an unexpected moment of peace. Drifts from the seemingly endless winds had edged the blowing snow over the rise and into the lip of our south prairie in near parallels, forming a fan-like array. I was en route to the mailbox as the sun was lowering into a sunset. Fortunately I had my camera along. A quick single paragraph back story:

Moments before I had looked through the plateglas window of our kitchen when I noticed odd poetic lines crossing a smooth expanse of snow. A “blue hour” color tinted the snow. At the moment and the distance it was difficult to see what might have created the burrowing lines, so I quickly dressed for the elements and grabbed my camera. Closer to the two inch depths of the lines were literally thousands of tiny paw prints. Voles were my assumption. Just beyond the half tunneled lines were telltale rabbit prints, which were enormous compared to those inside the small crevices. It was moments later that I came upon that unexpected moment of peace.

It was impressionist artist Henri Mattisse who noted that “a certain blue enters your soul.”

From the “snow waves” at the foot of our driveway.

Was that my “certain blue?” This was late afternoon mere hours after the brutal murder of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, the second of two ICE murders and the third resident ICE had shot. Renee Good’s murder, and the short film of her comment to her killer seconds before she was murdered, was challenging enough for my son had lived for a few years within a block of her murder. Pretti’s murder two weeks later hit me almost in the same manner as the second plane crashing into the World Trade Center. This time the attack against our nation was from within, perpetuated by our own president and his minions. After plodding through a trying day of distress came this unexpected sense of calm.

As this wave momentarily washed over me my breathing was easier. That cloud of discontent and anger was slightly lifted. Bluish colors eased from the images an hour of so later when I brought them up on my computer along with various shades of violets streaking through. Although I had driven and or walked past those drifts a few times before, there was hardly a reaction. Which made me wonder if the colors could have possibly created such a near instant sense of calmness?

The yellow light seemed a beacon of hope on the day of the Winter Solstice.

A study by the Moffit Cancer Center found that colors can affect your subconscious, and the color blue is strongly associated with peace, calm, and tranquility, evoking feelings of serenity, stability, and relaxation. Shades of violet, or purple, adds the Center, can evoke spirituality and inner balance. Perhaps that might explain the psychological finger-snap of calmness I had felt.

Other colors the Center says may have a similar impact: Green represents nature and offers a calmness and restfulness, while lighter shades like soft pink may promote physical soothing, and even white symbolizes peace through symbols like a dove. Snow and ice perhaps isn’t quite as soothing and comforting as, say, Richard Bach’s “Jonathan Livingston Seagull.” 

According to their website, yoga mat company, Manduka, did numerous studies on the affects of color as they searched for hues they felt would create a more mellowing mood for practitioners, and blue was among their favored colors.

An ambient sunset over the Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge.

Enough of science. How does this fit into the spectrum of the arts? After looking at the colorful blue and purplish sunset colors amplified by the wind waves at the base of our driveway, a quick review was made of some of the earlier images that had affected me at some point. One example was a Winter Solstice image taken last December. Although I had visualized a different image, a walk to the river’s edge allowed me to find a slight hint of yellowish light in the midst of a jagged ice floe bathed in a soft blue. That yellow seemed to symbolize an emergence of resistance in the depths of the blueish ice ­— this was barely a week after ICE had landed in Minneapolis, and only a few weeks before their two murders. Within the comfort of blue the yellow seemed a beacon of hope.

Impressionist Claude Monet described such a sensation as a “colorful silence,” while Ralph Waldo Emerson noted, “Nature always wears the colors of the spirit” while capturing the serene, grounding influence of softened hues. 

As I look around in these dour and dangerous times, there seems a need to find a some sense of inner peace and comfort. Moments in nature are offered as a way as do colors. Mine momentarily came in remnant colors of a sunset on a cold winter afternoon at the foot of our driveway. And a day or so later, walking along the edge of the prairie as evening settled in came another moment of calm that is much more common, that of what a young friend once labeled as a “rainbow” sky ­­— those “twilight hues” of softened blues that meld into a soft violet along the prairie horizon as darkness settles in. I have a deep longing for such moments.

A ‘rainbow sky’ above our family’s Shagbark Waters farm pond.

Long ago my eyes were drawn to the eastern sky more so than a setting sun, seeking those ambient and softened colors along  the horizon, those same twilight colors I remember from my teenage years while casting flies close to the cattails of a farm pond and feeling the coolness of the evening surround me. That softened violet that yields ever so slightly to a milky blueness, of how those pastel colors of an approaching evening would slowly ebb away the cares of the day. Yes, Monet’s “colorful silence.”

Unless we are blanketed with deep cloud cover, the beauty of ambient colors banking off distant clouds in easterly skies have captured me for decades. Then there are those rare moments of being unexpectedly surprised by the soft blues and purples in wind blown snowy drifts that offers a sudden calmness in the midst of our nation’s turmoil. In these changing times. In these times when a hint of “colorful silence” seems a blessing.

The Gracefulness of Being

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Perhaps it was the title: “How to Age Gracefully.” I was hopeful that this was a question more so than a statement for I’m not getting any younger, and now in my 80s, a time when many of my peers have sequestered themselves into a recliner or couch, I sense a need to keep charging forth creatively with an intense fear that my slowing down is the first step toward the grave. Following, perhaps, a lengthy time of acute boredom!

For the past few weeks hours have been spent in my wood shop and studio preparing items for the area Christmas Markets, and then an old friend, Dale Pederson, arrived with a pickup full of pre-cut timbers to install a planned canopy over our studio door to keep snow and ice away from the entrance. We were both fighting the calendar and weather.

In trying to balance all of that, by bedtime for three straight nights my mind and body was a wreck. There was nothing graceful about it, or me, and yes, on one of my ventures into the wood shop to rip a board on our last afternoon a misstep sent me sprawling across the concrete floor. Grace? Hardly. Fortunately my head missed a standing concrete block that was off to one side. Does that count as an old man’s fall? 

Grace is what I sometimes find in nature …

A few days later at the library while returning a great nonfiction book called “Sea of Grass,” an in depth portrayal of the complete destruction of American’s vast prairie between the Smokies and Rockies by Dave Hage and Jo Marcotty, this new book … “How to Age Gracefully” … seemed to jump off the shelf and into my waiting hands. 

Like Hage and Marcotty, the author, Barbara Hoffbeck Scoglic, was also a former reporter for the Star Tribune. My wonder was if my quest for grace was irrational, if not impossible; is there an emerging path for my unstoppable aging? Scoglic’s was an interesting read, though basically she wrote a day by day journal of her moving into an assisted living senior center. Now in a wheelchair, and being completely unreliable on her feet, Scoglic recounted various conversations and personal memories along with a morning ritual of coming off the elevator to see who might have survived for another night.

Perhaps I missed the “graceful” piece. No, her’s was not a “how to” effort. So my venture continues as I wander down a different path. 

Grace … a moment of tenderness of a burly bison cow with her newborn calf …

While I was working with Dale, and on various pieces for the Christmas Markets, an old conversation from years ago kept cropping up. It was on a cold, windy and snowy day “way back when” that I unloaded my collection of items from my van into one of Montevideo’s Chippewa Village historical buildings to discover my display partner was a 91-year-old man, a flat-plane wood carver and painter of Norwegian trolls, gnomes and Ole and Lena farm characters. After our introductions and getting set up, I asked the elderly artist about his work  and what kept him going.

“At my age,” he said with a wry smile, “what else would I do?”

Grace … when unexpected swallows appear to give ambience to an image …

Often I think of him, and have told that story to other artists who confide that they’re thinking of retiring, of giving up. Nowadays I sometimes wonder about myself. It’s not so much about aging gracefully, whatever that means, rather than wondering what else would I do? The walls and panels in my studio are full of canvases, and I make numerous smaller items featuring my photographic work. Over these past few weeks I’ve poured through a few thousand images created over the past 15 or so years, from when I retired from the country weekly to begin my efforts of portraying the last one percent of an ancient and nearly completely destroyed original prairie pothole biome. 

In so doing I sometimes find a choice image previously overlooked, or marvel at something long ago printed onto canvas and sold, and still hopefully hanging on someone’s wall. I also have thoughts of why continue? Do I need more images? Yet, quitting seems so unreasonable since I still throughly enjoy working with the magic of natural light, composition, ambient colors and those quirky surprises your find in nature. Those valued moments of internal celebrations when all those artistic elements come together … like when a trio of Sandhill Cranes flew over me recently at Crex Meadows in the ambient softened colors of a prairie sunrise. Yes, a portrait of grace. Color. Movement. Poetry. Nature. Perhaps finding grace in the imagery is more than can be expected. Then there’s this: What else would I do?

Grace … when poetry of nature blesses you with a memorable moment …

I still find magic in the prairie, in the skies, the timberlands, the BWCA, the mountains and in those sweeping landscapes all around. I find joy in the wild beings, in an unexpected flush of birds over a prairie meadow, or a poetic surprise of birds suddenly appearing in an otherwise mundane landscape; the immense poetry of trees, of their hefty, spreading limbs, of how a single tree within a forest can portray such stark individualism, of how the symmetry of autumn leaves can bring a smile; plus the wonder of the beyond, be it a breathtaking full moon coursing light across water or a sea of prairie grass, or offering a special moment to silhouette a crane or heron, or the fluid aerial ballet of an Aurora Borealis offering graceful waves of heavenly beauty; or even that of my dog, Joe Pye, ambling through our tall grass prairie at Roberta’s side sniffing at mysteries I’ll shall never know, of his pure excitement of simply being alive and free.

Yes, alive and free, of an ability to create and hopefully capture beauty that so long ago was basically erased from our collective consciousness. Hopefully in my aging I’ll continue to embrace those joys of capturing natural poetry more so than in my seeking some sense of personal grace. My fear is if I don’t note that discovery of natural poetry with my art that I will no longer find joy or the magic in life. Without that magic and joy, what would be the point? What else would I do?

In Pursuit of a Dream

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My dreams and visualizations of capturing my beloved sandhill cranes, birds of such poetic flight and stoic stance, silhouetted within the glow of a beautiful full moon have been craved for years. Cravings that caved, especially along the Platte River in central Nebraska years ago when “uncooperative” cranes simply avoided a full moon high in the sky. This, I hoped, would be different.

When forecasts of a full moon were made a lovely Wisconsin marshland refuge beckoned. I was hopeful of having a large globe rising from the horizon, blazing with color … something quite different than that moment in Nebraska … with the cranes cruising through. Hope resonated from the colorful moon names all heard within moments of our arrival …   “Super” moon, “Harvest” moon and “Beaver” moon. Native American lore provides even more mental possibilities, dangling the names of a Whitefish Moon, Deer Rutting Moon and even Frost Moon for the November lunar show. How about a “Sandhill Crane Moon?” That, at least, was my hope.

With luck a beautiful glow and globe of a moon would appear on a clear night, and since we had free time, we meandered across the state to Crex Meadow Wildlife Area just across a paved road from Grantsburg, WI. This would be a sunset/sunrise affair, prime times for sandhill crane activity unless you opt for mundane images of grain field gatherings. 

Thousands of cranes traditionally stop at this 2,400 acre marshy refuge where each autumn they congregate for pre-migration safety they find within the numerous and large wetlands surrounded by miles of dike roads as they stock up for their long flight. 

Certainly there were cautionary concerns on our four hour drive, for Grantsburg and Crex Meadows is as close to the Eastern Minnesota border as we are at Listening Stones to South Dakota. My concern? Clouds. Be it eclipses, Northern Lights, comets and numerous attempts of photographing the Milky Way, cloud cover has been a lifelong photographic nemisis. Still, I made hotel reservations and convinced a neighbor to mind Joe Pye overnight so we might fulfill my dream of capturing the cranes cruising through a rising, neon bright “supermoon.” What was there to lose except time and money? 

Then something entirely unexpected occurred. After spotting a couple of singular cranes as the “golden hour” light descended upon us, I pushed the review button to check on the color, light, composition and selective focus to discover a totally blank review screen. Yes there was momentary panic. All the visible and magical buttons were pushed on the camera body. To no avail. 

We began by working a large “flowage” along the Main Dike Road where I’ve previosely captured successful images. As the golden hour light began to bask we had seen only a few cranes. Yes, an attendent in the main headquarters had suggested this as a possible location for capturing the rising moon. When you have but one chance on capturing a dream, nervousness settles in. Quickly a move was made to the nearby “Phantom Flowage” where we found an excellent, unobstructed view of the eastern horizon. Our wait for cranes was short as they began returning from the nearby stubble fields.

Since it sounded like the shutter was working I continued to focus and shoot. Memories of all those years of shooting film without instant review came to mind. Apparently I’m now fully immersed in the digital age and long past those long ago travels to many of the lower 48 states for magazine stories and corporate assignments, back when there was a certain confidence that my images were securely captured and saved on rolls of Kodachrome or Tri-X, that in the developing the creativity would magically appear. Would it again? Regardless, I would be “shootiing blind.”

Magically the upper crescent rim of the moon suddenly broke on the distant horizon and it slowly rose higher into a lush fullness. A moment of awe struck even without my loveable cranes. I was still hopefully pushing the review button. Mental notations were made to remind myself to keep the faith, that I had been in this situation hundreds of times back in my career days. 

Initially distant flocks crossed in front of the moon, and thoughts were made to capture various images just in case I might convince my artist friend, Joyce Meyer, to sandwich if I couldn’t fulfill my visualizations. Over the years she has made about a half dozen “sandwiches” for me due to my ignorance of post production technology.

In the midst of those thoughts a few cranes began flying much closer to us to land just a few hundred yards across the marsh. With no way of knowing if any had been captured silhouetted against the incredibly beautiful “supermoon”, I continued to keep shooting until complete darkness had settled in. 

About an hour before sunrise we returned to the muskrat lodge to await any early activity. As I stood outside the car waiting for light and bird movement, those “trumpets from the orchestra of evolution,” as Aldo Leopold poetically described their haunting calls, began in earnest. Within moments I was surrounded with an unforgettable experience of sound. From either side of the graveled road, and from above as a nearly invisible flocks flew over. This was truly a moment of auditory heaven.

Eventually morning broke and I could easily capture cranes landing near enough for some nice photographs. In time, though, the curtains closed as the cranes, little by little, flock by flock, lifted from the marshlands to head toward the stalk fields. After a breakfast of hearty pancakes we made the four hour drive back home to the prairie where we were greeted by an anxious dog and a deafening quiet away from those syncopated sounds from the marshes. 

After a few friendly pets I rushed to the computer to insert the card and was graciosly greeted by cranes bathed in golden light and far more images than I would have ever taken had the camera monitor worked. Eventually I worked my way through some 800 images, or about 29 and a half rolls of Kodachrome, a tedious process that produced 80-some keepers that included many of sandhills silhouetted against that gorgeous supermoon. Dreams granted many times over!