Catwalks

     This story is the best way I can convey the experiences, inner and outer, of this summer. They didn't literally happen this summer, but kind of...   A little more explanation is at the end.

CATWALKS

      The canoes first appeared as dots, emerging from behind the slim silhouette of an island across Devil’s Bay. At first I wasn’t sure. No one else had seen them yet. Children were jumping off the diving tower; parents were milling on the shore. All around me, there was a thread of adrenaline rippling through the waiting families. But when I shifted my stare just a little, I could see them in my peripheral vision: five canoes on the silver water.

      Of course, from where I was standing on the camp’s dock I couldn’t tell they were wood. But like my daughter, I too had traveled this raw landscape in these timeless boats at the rhythmic pace of a paddle stroke. I had portaged loads over the ancient pathways between lakes. I knew her anticipation of this moment, this victorious return.

      Her canoe trip was coming in after nearly forty days. These girls -- no longer girls but hard-tested young women -- had traveled far to the North. Some of them would be changed physically, from soft to muscular, round to lean, thin to strong. All of them would be changed emotionally. The exuberant whooping they would sing as they closed in on us would be a song of triumph – a band of women bound together through trial, mishap, deep beauty, and intimacy. The moment of return, to “civilization” we had called it, was both glory and despair: we had done it! -- it was over.

       Instinctively my heart tightened. Though I stood on the dock among the families as just another mother, in truth I was out there, on the water, under way.

       ~           ~           ~           ~           ~         ~          ~

      “Air raid!” shouted Heather in the front canoe. In my boat, the two campers and I threw down our paddles, kicked off our boots and jumped over the gunwales into the cool depths of Florence Lake. As my body left the glittering sunlight and sank through the blue, I opened my mouth, drinking in the clean water. This was no boggy “piss pond” between portages. This was a big, deep, clear, rock-lined lake that captured the blue sky in fluid play. I burst through the surface and laughed out loud as the others leaped from their canoes around me. Air raids were the champagne of a canoe tripping day: a mischievous, chaotic, giddy reward. And we had earned it.

      In this glacially carved land, travel is easiest on water. Crossing between lakes is hard. I had lumbered across many miles of portages over the summers as a camper, bearing a canvas Duluth pack with leather shoulder straps and a broad tump band across my sweaty forehead.

      This summer I was a counselor, and I carried the wanigan, a rectangular plywood box as wide as my shoulders. It held difficult-to-pack items like the billy set and the knives, and for the first few days, a couple dozen eggs. Borne by only a tump, it was a certifiable torture device. My campers laughed at my “wanigan wiggle”, a trademark walk the wanigan bearer develops. My hips and legs would deftly zigzag around rocks in the trail while my neck and back remained rigid under the box. Particularly tricky was walking the crude log catwalks over a bog. They required balance and agility. I was good at carrying a wanigan, though a sore was developing in the small of my back where it rubbed.

      An hour before the Florence Lake air raid, we had arrived at a notoriously difficult portage. As usual it was a scramble. We dragged the packs out of the canoes and hoisted them onto the campers’ backs. It was like loading a mule train, except most of the girls looked more like long legged colts. They were anxious, but, tumps adjusted and paddles in hand, they staggered off together, one behind another.

      The portage was long, wet and buggy. Relief would come only at the end, when the trail climbed up over a dry ridge before it came down to the landing at Florence Lake. As I trudged along with the wanigan, lost in the Zen zone that allowed me to ignore the mosquitoes, I looked up to see one of the girls sitting slumped on a rock ahead. It was Heather. Her canvas pack and paddles were on the ground. Everyone knows that on portages you don’t sit down, because it’s even harder to get up – it's best to just keep going. Two-stepping in front of her was a still-loaded girl, urging her onward. Heather just shook her head. As I approached, the dancing girl said, “Well I’m going to get them over with”. She turned and walked on.

      Ahead were catwalks.

      Old pine and birch logs lay paired end-to-end, stretching away from us like a narrow raft over the marshy muskeg.  Catwalks inspired dread.  The girls had all heard stories about someone who fell off and was either stranded like a turtle on her back, or mired up to her hips unable to escape.  Crossing catwalks took self-assurance.  These were the first of this trip, and the sight of them had crumbled the will of the already faltering girl.

     The only way to get Heather across was to splint her weakened spirit to mine.  We got her pack on, and I told her to follow my steps.  Humor helped, and as I mounted the logs with her close behind, I told her to watch my wanigan-wiggle for the infamous marsh-wiggle variation.  Step-by-focused-step we walked log lengths, crossing from fat logs to narrow, some decaying, some partially submerging under our weight.  The mosquitoes clamored around our ears, but we didn't swat at them for fear of losing our balance.  A forward rhythm seemed to help, giving us the momentum to move lightly.  At long last, the mire underneath transitioned to mud, and then finally to dry land.

Heather unlocked her gaze from my feet and looked up: a whooping and hooting started. Three girls had waited for us. Fully loaded with packs and paddles, ignoring their instincts to get to the end, they wanted to cheer on their tripmate and walk the last section together. Heather surged toward them, victorious. The four of them high-fived and set off in unison up the trail, singing. I shifted the wanigan away from my sore spot and followed.

    ~           ~            ~           ~            ~            ~

      I found myself gently massaging the small of my back when a shout went up around me on the dock. The five canoes on Devil's Bay had been sighted. Younger children clambered out of the water to stand dripping, watching. The approaching dots on the water became canoes with flashes on both sides, sunlight reflecting off the blade of each wet paddle dipping in time. We waited.

In numbered minutes, the trip would be over. Each girl-woman would be welcomed back into the throng of parents to resume her role as daughter, and tomorrow she would be driven away in a car. But none of them were the same: the wood, the water, the sweat and their shared stories were in these young women now, and they were beautiful and strong.

Their song rose suddenly across the water. It was a glorious moment. As the crowd on the dock roared, the girls raised their paddles high in the air, in salute, in unison.

      I wrote this story years ago. When Bob and I were checking out canoe tripping camps on Lake Temagami for Meg, my own memories of tripping (with a different camp) emerged, and I couldn't believe I might one day be the parent on the dock when I really still felt like the teenager in the canoe.  Catwalks has come true, and I stood on Wabun's dock this summer and watched Andrew and Anna paddle in with their own sections to a glorious reception.  And Meg paddled in too... as a counselor, leading her campers over the lakes and across the portages of their first canoe trip.
     The details of this story -- place names and locations, tripping style -- are real but not perfectly accurate.  For example, the portage I describe goes into a different lake than Florence, but I love those clear blue waters and there is no better place for an air raid.


  

Anna's birds

     In the last post, I wrote about Anna's bird drawings.  Here are the four birds she completed for me before she went to Wabun.  I found when I was writing about birds, I needed a picture to go with the recordings I had made, but it was too hard for me to get my own good photos.  This is her gift to the blog -- and to me.

Phoebe

The phoebe says its own name - incessantly. 
(First posted in "Coming home" - 4/9/13)
 
Black-throated green warbler

The black-throated green's "zee-zee-zee-zo-zee" is one of the earliest and most discernable warbler songs of the spring. 
(First posted in "Spring ephemerals" - 4/30/13)

Common yellow-throat (warbler)

The "wichety-wichety-wichety" of this small bird usually comes from shrubby or wet areas. I recorded this one down the road in some alders around the wet area in the field.

Ovenbird (warbler)

The ovenbird is a nearly invisible warbler of the deep woods, but its "teacher-teacher-teacher" song can't be missed.  I haven't heard one in several days now, and so I offer this track from the public domain (thanks to dmoon9931!).

Fledging

     The dawn chorus these days is changing. It's mid-summer; the sun is high, the meadow grasses are wheat-colored, it's hot. Most of the birds are no longer setting up territories and singing for mates as they did in the spring. This is the season of fledging. 

     Before Anna left for the summer to paddle the mighty Coulonge River in Quebec, I asked her to draw four of our favorite birds for me. I had recorded their songs with my i-thing because their songs are so distinctive, and I want to be able to offer a picture of them without infringing on anyone's copyright.

     She sat on the tall chairs at the island in the kitchen, bird books spread before her, intent on her work. Before my eyes, this mascara-wearing attentively-dressed teenage athlete shrank down to the little blonde tomboy with bangs and braids who used to sit at the counter in her plaid shirt and cargo shorts, drawing birds with the same consummate intensity. Anna drew birds pretty much from the start. When she was in Kindergarten, she would invite her best friend over, and I'd find them sitting at the kitchen counter playing games with the bird book: sometimes it was flipping through it randomly and trying to name the birds they opened to, often it was drawing birds side-by-side.  On the walls of our rather grown-up looking dining room are two
 bird portraits done by Anna when she was age 7 or 8: a downy woodpecker, and a peacock. On my desk in my shed is a cigar box painted with a sandhill crane. Her “special box” in the basement, the place where each child keeps the mementos of their childhood, is filled with bird drawings.

     She's fledging now. At Wabun, her first two years of canoe trips were loops, always returning to the base. This year is a long river trip – they go straight out to journey the length of the Coulonge and challenge themselves with the whitewater and wilderness that come with it. Her one letter that made it here before they left post offices and cell phone towers behind was filled with exclamation points. Her wings are strong; she's off.

     And here at home, the phoebe and the black-throated green warbler, the ovenbird and the common yellowthroat are still singing, but not like they were. These are the mornings of crows and the song sparrows. The song sparrows have nested nearby, and when I am in the garden they sing as if to warn of my presence. The crows are also a family now; the young follow the adults, begging for food, cawing in their plaintive nasal voice. In the recording, you can hear them behind the very assertive call of the adult. These are the birds that wake me before dawn.

     By the time Anna returns, the young crows will no longer be dependent. Who will sing in the morning? Maybe it will be quiet – or maybe there will be another shift: soon it will be the time of the late summer crickets and cicadas invisibly buzzing, whirring and droning from the meadow. And Anna will ask, “Can I drive?”

Fireflies

My road overlooks swallow fields,
currents of long grass 
come to rest,
the hush of evening
ribboned
by the remaining veery
in woods beyond.

Out there, patiently, one hope flares,
then another, another,
rising,
loosening from the earth to fly
in between.

Some answer is there,
afloat with the silent fireflies,
almost within reach.
Looking up, I see
the mirror.
What do I expect from stars?
I don't even know
my question.

Turning, the road cool now,
I head toward home.
Flash
by my hip:
Heaven,
silently dancing,
almost bumping into me.

The Veery

     I never know where a teacher will come from. 

     There are teachers that are acclaimed for their teachings; you can read their books or go to their church or attend their weekend workshops. Some of these teachers are only the skin of a balloon, and need the attention of their students to inflate them.

     Others, I believe, still see themselves as students, even as their way of being in the world attracts followers. Teachings flow into and out of them like water spilling from one pool to the next in a waterfall, constantly filling and emptying, student-as-teacher-as-student. These teachers may also be acclaimed, or one might be the person you keep running into at the grocery store.

     My most recent teacher was a bird.

     A Veery is a woodland thrush, a robin-sized brown bird that is known not for its looks but for the unusual way it sings. It is a polyphonic singer. This means that the Veery can literally sing with two voices simultaneously. It uses both sides of its syrinx (its voicebox), and it can control each separately. To me, the Veery's two-voiced song is neither harmonious nor melodic, but nonetheless to hear it echoing out of the forest is thrilling.

     I heard the Veery sing the day before Meg left for the summer. I had just returned from watching my nephew play Little League baseball, and the slowness and sunshine of the rising summer was in me. But so was the force of emptiness that was coming: after Meg left, I had only ten days before Anna and Andrew would leave. Then, the house would be still. That feeling I loved and longed for – quiet, slowness – was also the thing I dreaded. My heart pumped two different songs simultaneously, and they stuck in my throat.

     I stopped writing. I just couldn't “find time”. The words weren't there, bubbling up like they usually are. I could feel confusion in my heart, and an aching at not being able to give it voice. But the Veery's song stayed with me, and I knew there was some wisdom in it, and that when the quiet came, I could tease out the strands and finally write the song that would free my voice.

     In the abrupt quiet on the afternoon that Andrew and Anna left, I took a long walk in the drizzle. I brought my i-thing that records voice memos. As I walked, the unformed feelings of the Veery's song in me began to take shape, and I recorded them line by line. I knew I had captured the twin-voiced song by the time I returned home, and felt released. But when I sat down to transcribe the song into a poem, I found that somehow I had inadvertently deleted the recording. I had nothing.

     Here it is, the thing that is finally coming clear to me: it's not about the song, it's about the singing. My teacher, the Veery, does not hold onto her song. She sings it, the whole polyphonic inharmonious cascade of it, and it's gone. And then she sings another one. I have so many songs in my heart that trying to put order on them, words to them, meaning around them, threatens to stopper my voice. My mind gets in the way – but that's not where the song comes from. Sing first; keep singing; and then write. It may not always make sense, but the Veery has opened me to the polyphonic voices of my own heart.
--------------------
The recording of the Veery is by Andrew Spencer, and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.  For more information: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Not writing

     “Most women are good at multi-tasking” I heard someone say recently.

     I instantly felt less than. Less than I used to be. Less than Most Women. Less than capable. Less than the ideal.

     I've never quite felt that I lived up to the expectations of the Sisterhood. I didn't have a career and raise a family at the same time. I seem to be more of a sequential person. At least in the big scheme of life.

     But in the day-to-day, I was ok multi-tasking the household and child-raising needs. At least, so I thought with baby Meg, after a couple of years of practice.

     Then baby Anna was born. I had to let go of my smug sense of my own abilities, because things weren't always going as planned. And just when I got into a rhythm, one of them would enter a new stage, destabilizing us all.

     But when baby Andrew was born, that was it. Three children under the age of five, and I was toast. “Oh well” – with a sheepish smile – was my honest response whenever I dropped the ball: we were out of coffee, I left the diaper bag at my mother-in-laws', or I fell asleep on the couch instead of getting Meg to music class (I'm not revealing anything else). I found that when I laughed at myself, people went along with me and were quite forgiving. And this has been one of my best life lessons: learning that in fact I'm not in control, and there is a grace – and an ease – that comes with that.

     Which brings me to now. I can't write unless I can focus. And over the last three weeks I have been the shore as wave after wave of endings and beginnings have rolled in and dropped their treasures here: yearbooks, diplomas, sweaty lacrosse clothes, newspaper clippings about championship games, house presents from visitors, orthodontist and haircut appointment cards, a program from a funeral, packing lists, more laundry, a driver's permit and record of hours driven, plane tickets, medical forms requiring doctors' signatures, more laundry...

     I've been dreaming about writing. Literally. The words and stories are in me. The season is changing, and I want to smell it and hear it sing and savor it all again through the pencil in my hand. Soon the house will quiet as Meg and Anna and Andrew will all be at Wabun for the summer (see post on 4/25/13 Chocolate bannock:our parenting secret weapon). But until then I am in the joyful and crazy tumult of transitions. I want to focus long enough to write a blog post, but I also want to be with my kids before they leave. Torn between two desires, I find myself just now on the couch for a few stolen minutes. But wait, I just remembered, I forgot to get the laundry off the line before the dew soaks it all over again...

   

Oh well.

Convergence

     So here we are. In a convergence of the stories I've been telling. In a moment – a season – of beauty.

     Meg is graduating from high school today. Spring has settled into early summer, and the solstice is two weeks away. The only strand of story that does not meet here is the story of our changing climate. The day the atmosphere measured 400 ppm came and went, pretty quietly.

     The irony of writing about the coming season is that really it's about living in and observing the moments along the journey. Graduation is not an endpoint; the seasons will continue to cycle; the earth will warm... until we make a choice to change. So even though today is a marker, there is the comfort of accepting it for simply what it is – a day of beauty – and not looking ahead to what is coming.

     And still, I am a bundle of conflicting emotions. Behind the busy-ness of today's schedule, there is sadness, pride, a need to pinch myself in reminder that this is real and I want to be awake for it, joy at the miracle of my daughter, maternal brood-gathering as I hold my other children close, wonder at the truth that Bob and I have raised a child to this moment of her own fullness, and a little exhaustion.

     Spring is a fecund time, and the energy of the burgeoning earth is mirrored in the fullness of our calendar hanging on the kitchen wall. Summer will bring its rest. The nest building and pollinating and school year will be done. The fruits will begin to swell, the birds will quiet as they raise their young and begin to feed up for fall migration, our children will go to the wilderness and reconnect with their deep selves. Bob and I will be alone here.

     And that sounds just about right. For now. For today.