UP Dreams: July 2017

Circles.

You know how people say, "What goes around, comes around"? Most people use that phrase to mean something like that other saying: "Karma is a bitch," meaning that if someone does something bad, something bad will happen to them in return. I have been guilty of using that former phrase that way, too. A lot. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Because forgiveness makes the negative jab of that phrase go away.

So does faith.

Now, when I hear "What goes around, comes around," I think....YES....it does.

The world is a circle.

It's that road you take in the forest

that you get lost on and somehow wind up back where you started. Only when you get back to the beginning, everything has changed so profoundly, you may not even recognize your surroundings.
Or yourself.

But I wish you would.

Because what you might find...the second time around...is that circle is so beautiful. As well as all the people in it who love you...especially YOU, if you can find it in yourself to love yourself as well.

I can't explain why things happen.

But PLENTY happens as you walk that forest road. Bugs bite you...it hurts. You may fall down and hurt yourself much more.

You may even...and this is likely...lose people entirely along the way.

angels are everywhere

But.

There is So Much Beauty. And it's not just the glance-at-it-once-and-sigh-rapturously type...although there is plenty, plenty of that. It's the type of beauty where when you come around again, instead of feeling lost, you look and see how the forest is all interconnected, in ways you couldn't see the first time. It's so complex that you know that YOU couldn't have created it, and you start to get just an inkling of that higher power.

And that inkling starts to grow and grow.

So. Beautiful.

Because when you start to see the connections, you know that EVERYTHING DOES happen for a reason. Not my reason, maybe, and yet....YES...it is my reason, for everything, for life.

Sound complex? Maybe, unless you are in my head today. To me, it's simple.

Stop worrying. It will turn out okay. Better than okay. Rapturously, perfectly, beautifully okay.

Dominus Vobiscum.

Amen.

I have a favorite poem. I bet you've heard it.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Yes, Robert Frost. I think, because in my heart I want to be a forest creature, this poem speaks to me in such away that I can't read it without visualizing the entire story. In fact, I've been there, in both the literal sense of on a forked path in the woods, and figuratively on that journey through life where every day one has a choice of one path, or the other, one or another, over and over again.

Two years ago...

I chose the road less traveled.

I sold my stuff.

I quit my job.

I left one son to his undergraduate pursuits in Iowa. And uprooted the other to a new life.

I found a little house in Paynesville.

I started building a business in Ontonagon.

I drove hundreds of miles of forest roads, took thousands of pictures of the wonders I found within.

I twisted miles (yards, anyway) of copper into fanciful jewelry.

I invented the Hummingbee,

These little birds,

Dragonflies and flowers and hearts and many other happy things.

And made Yooper Animals from Iowa Monkey Socks.

I worked hard to help my younger son deal with all the typical teenage drama and angst, and to adjust to his new slower lifestyle in the UP.

I watched my husband work hard to establish a law practice in Michigan and take up the slack in so many ways so I could explore my creative side.

I worried a lot, since worrying is something I do much too well.

But I remembered, most of the time, anyway, to stop....and breathe. The air is so good here. And so is my life.

Taking that path....THAT has made all the difference.

The rewards have been huge:

I wake up in the morning to beautiful sunrises, or the smell of fresh rain (it rains a lot here, compared to Iowa), or the muffled silence of months of gorgeously devastating snow.

I am every day greeted by my happy-to-be-a-morning-person husband, and two funny, lovable big doggies who just five months ago became our devoted companions and the source of so much unconditional love and wet doggy kisses.

Atlas

Theia

Blissfully sleeping

We all (husband and dogs) drive to work together most days, where I am blessed to be able to continue to explore my creative side, mostly by noodling and doodling with copper to bring to life ideas I never knew I had.

A doodle

Some days I get to stay home in sun or rain or gloom or snow and just watch the wildlife outside my windows. And what an absolute treat that is....deer and turkeys and foxes and skunks and pheasants, but mostly those songbirds that I love so much.

Purple Finch

This summer, Bob has added a garden in our backyard....and not only a garden, but another haven where I can go and watch things grow and observe the birds in the trees and in and out of the birdhouses and zooming around our property. And even though it has only just begun, our garden will provide a salad for us today of lettuce and spinach, kale, beet greens, and a few precocious cucumbers.

To compare....THEN...

...and NOW!

more of now

who knew...

...brassicas are beautiful

Our strawberry patch is not so far along yet, but yesterday we got our first sampling of berries of not-the-supermarket variety. They were small and so very red all the way through, sour and sweet and intensely flavored. Even just a few were a memorable treat.

not so beautiful, but intensely delicious

Just as sweet as strawberries is the summer here. It is fleeting and therefore so appreciated. The birds (and humans, too) are frenetic in their efforts to create and build and fly about singing an ode to the delights of the season. Happily, in the midst of all this, I am granted a short sweet visit from my eldest-nearly-flown-the-coop son. Bittersweet in its intense few days. Filled with love and a deep understanding of everything that makes me happy here, and in life. I am hopeful for more frequent visits as he becomes a true Michigander, too (GO Spartans!).

Summer is like the Birdsfoot Trefoil that fills the pastures and road edges. It has this delicate fragrance. It makes you want to hang your head out the window and sniff the air,

just like puppies do. And live just in that moment. And forget about how fleeting every thing in life turns out to be. To stretch out the summer into many many long luscious moments of singing and flying and tasting and breathing and seeing....oh, how I wish and hope you can see, as I do, the absolute sublimity, the to-the-bone contentment and joy that I feel in my experience of this less traveled path that I chose, two years ago, to take....