Somehow summer doesn’t seem like summer if we haven’t had
the chance to get outside the city for a while. Created from the stuff of the
earth, there is something in our humanity that responds naturally, viscerally
to the created world. Though on the side of personhood we share something that
sets us aside from the rest of creation in bearing God’s image, we are also
creatures and thus fit in creation with our fellow creatures. It is a
relationship both important and deep, and something to be both cherished and
nourished.
Last month Dave and Paula Kauffman once again loaned us
their cabin outside Minocqua, WI—such astounding generosity. The week there,
besides being a time to be with family, gave us the grace of time outside the
city.
Between the cabin and the dock is a massive white pine, one
of the largest and oldest trees on the lake. A red squirrel prowls its
branches, occasionally coming down the trunk to run frantically across the
ground to another tree. Lichens and other parasites colonize the branches and trunks with abstract designs of color and texture. Along the water is a small stand of hemlocks, their
delicate cones and two-toned needles (white on the underside) so different from
the bulk of the white pine.
 |  |
Rain has been regular this summer, so the ground is saturated.
Mushrooms sprout, some so tiny that they are hard to spot while others break up
through the leaf and needle litter in the woods like some mysterious white
growth bursting into view. Some were stout and flared, others neatly topped
like a table, and a few tall, delicate and slender. In several places I found
the fabled fairy ring, brownish tinted white mushrooms growing together to form
a circle in the grass. Mushrooms in a ring are connected by a lacey network of
threadlike mycelia spreading out underground, and as I walked around them I
wondered what was lurking unseen beneath my feet.
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
At night loons cried in the darkness, their eerie calls
echoing over the water. Bald eagles floated effortlessly in the sky, one
swooping down to skim just above the surface to pluck a fish from the water. A
kingfisher sat on a branch of a tree near the lake over a body of reeds,
occasionally splashing down to catch dinner. One evening we were surprised when
a badger waddled across the grass. When we walked over to look it went under
the cabin’s front steps and froze, almost like it was daring us to come closer.
Instead we looked, and backed away, leaving it to whatever business it was on.
How is it that these things so refresh my soul? Why is it
that stopping to look, and watch, and listen, and be still nurtures our
humanity in ways that nothing else does? And how can I keep the memory of it,
of the glimpses of glory that nature reveals alive in my memory and heart now
that I have returned to my life in the city?
This entry was posted
at Friday, September 03, 2010
and is filed under
Beauty,
Creation,
Rest,
Vacation
. You can follow any responses to this entry through the
comments feed
.