Air Water Earth

Air Water Earth

Phil and I have been on several weekend road trips lately--to Chisholm for a family memorial service, to Leech Lake for a reunion with dear friends, along with frequent trips to our cabin in Herbster. We like to listen to audiobooks along the way, carrying our minds to distant places, instead of the highway beneath [...]

Rare Bird

Just down the shore from our cabin an Arctic Loon was spotted and recorded for the first time in Wisconsin. The South Shore of Lake Superior may not be the place to see birds in great numbers, but often has interesting and rare species. Ryan Brady, an expert birder who works as a conservation biologist for [...]

Nana Who?

Nana Who?

"With the words, You are a grandmother... I became something different than I'd ever been before." Anna Quindlen from Nanaville: Adventures in Grandparenting by Anna Quindlen At Orchestra Hall with Louis to hear Cantus sing with Sweet Honey in the Rock, 2017. For the first time, my husband (aka Papa) and I (Didi) took care [...]

Swim Flight

Swim Flight

In a dream I dive off a pier into a lake.  I am not a strong swimmer, but today I dive with ease, surface quickly and skim along the water’s surface like Olympic racers do, in a rhythm that is easy and strong, fast and even.  I can see fish and plant life below the [...]

Containing Grief

My parents died of cancer, mom (in 2017) just 8 weeks after diagnosis and Dad (in 2014) after being sick for a year.  And over these last few years, I have been a student of grief, hungry for ways to express it in a healing way, to seek out others to give me a “how [...]

Foraging

One of my little rituals while at the cabin is to fill three small vases with the blooms and greens I gather from my first walk. I grab my scissors and walk the yard, driveway and road ditches. I guess you could say I forage for flora. Flora is the plant life of a particular [...]

Forest Bathing

Forest Bathing

Friluftsliv “open air living” is the desire to be in nature. The Japanese call it shinrin-yoku “taking in the forest atmosphere” or “forest bathing.” I first heard of this concept in a yoga class. We were asked to gaze out the window and find a tree in the near distance and study it while in [...]