Sitting on the deck here at Swamp Camp with morning sun warming the nape of my neck. Trying to deworm myself of the squirmies that make me think I need to “Work, work, work , work , work work work….” All is calm ‘cept for the the neighbors coon digs warming up for the midnight choir. Winter’s angle of light fills pools gently pulsing in reflections of Cypress at ease with their gnarls and the storms survived and yet to come. There is brokenness all around. The old trailer wracked by floods and meth cooking. Love notes of Red and Jamie Lynn inscribed on moldy bedroom walls and the fish cleaning table. Geaux Saints keep marching in and the Light keeps getting through shimmering out of this diminished thing.
Unencumbered
Unencumbered(or how to get your crown)
To wake up to the call of “Daylight in the Swamp”
To hurry knowing there is much to do, but where to start? To round the corner of the porch deck toward the smell of breakfast and have your gait paused by the nonchalance of the white egret: swoop from dead tree,, spear fish with beak, perch near wild azalea.
And just as the day before, when kayaking the river, this same egret had been the haunched guide on every river bend to reassure, “Yes though you may not realize it you’re doing fine.”(flap wings... fly ahead) “Yes this is the way though you may not see it” (hurtle on to wait at next point of uncertainty/anxiety) Yes this really is what you are seeking, stay the course.”
This minister with the white robe doesn’t shout, tremble or strike much of a cadence. Again with nonchalance listing and repeating back to you, your story:
Yes the swamp is a scary place but look how you met the snake coiled in the branch above the flood water, eye to eye. Twice.
Yes the swamp is the low point where the sadness of human sin suspends in the water before lodging in muck forever. You can not begin to see through what you float above.
Yet to be baptized/capsized in this water is to embrace all the contradictions that is life itself. Why not come up from this water drenched and cold and gasping to proclaim, “But I was once a princess!”
Rising to take your crown from the ringed gnarls of the centuries old cypress, never too old to feel the verve of yet another Springtime. Unencumbered.
Amish Take the Beach at Dawn
Where I live in rural SW Wisconsin there is not much diversity unless you count the Amish. They mostly keep to themselves and the rest of us respect their privacy and appreciate that we live in a country where we are “Free to worship.” The Merry Green Marvel carried six Amish parents and their 19 children on a night drive from their farms in Wisconsin down through Chicago to SW Michigan. It’s late August and the work of planting and tending to crops has been given a two day pause before the fields begin to golden as they move toward harvest. I remember this time of year when my folks scraped enough money together back in 1966 and loaded four of their children into a Chevy Impala. Sustaining ourselves on bologna sandwiches and braunschweiger with saltines we made it out of the tall corn country of Iowa and lifted our gaze to the wonders of Yellowstone.
As the bus driver for this Marvel bus, I get to feel the thrill of this lifted gaze over and over as adventures unfold, trip after trip. Imagine waking these dear Amish folks who strive to be “plain” so as to give God the greater glory. From their sleeper coach beds they rise with the first bend of light over the Easterly horizon. They gather up the babies and little ones and move as one across the beach to feel the power of Lake Michigan wave to land. There was no scattering with each child answering their own call to thrill. They stood together as is their way, well before others arrived with towels, beach chairs and tanning lotion. Their lifted gaze took in the pink blush painting the edges of Great Lake clouds as the sun pushed the brush.
Hearts full we went onto the farmhouse where many families had gathered for this reunion. Men kissed men. Women kissed women as is the tradition of the “Holy Kiss” to convey the joy of being in fellowship. I was invited to join them to sing in the basement of the farm house. Relieved that I didn’t have to have a bowl haircut to join I cleared my voice. We sang hymns from a hymn book with women and girls on one side and men and boys on the other. Anyone could call out a song and page number and we would all join in.
I remember the tingle of being under my dad’s arm on a boat ride on Jenny Lake looking up at the Gran Tetons. I feel that same tingle here in the farmhouse basement singing with the Amish. Male voices holding the bottom steady and the feminine soaring above forming a holy confluence flowing as one out of the basement out into the Michigan blueberry fields “Precious memories, unseen angels sent from somewhere to my soul...how they linger, how they ever flood my soul…” It is good to get together.
The Edge of the Property
I was standing on my Amish neighbor’s porch to get some eggs. The corn in the fields around us was just starting to shoot tassels. The first cutting of hay was down and the jewel of the woods, the black cap raspberry was getting ripe. This was the first time I saw LaVina sit down from her work indicating that I might sit down too.
We had a few pleasant exchanges of what might be considered boring, small talk by outsiders, but really is a way for country folk to size someone up to see how far the conversation might go. After a pause La Vina said , “We lost a dog.” It took me a while to remember, “Oh the old mother dog?” I wasn’t sure it had a name. “Yes it went missing a week or so ago. It was odd that it didn’t come home. It always kept close by us. (It was a shepherd dog) We thought maybe the coyotes got it. She wasn’t getting around so well. Then Rudy (LaVina’s son) was out mowing hay and caught the smell of something dead. He brought the horses to a stop, got off the mower and walked over to some brush along the fenceline at the far corner of our property. There was Trixie lying there. There didn’t look like anything wrong with her. Nothing had got to her. Apparently she decided to go off knowing her time had come.”
There was a tinge of sadness in LaVina’s voice. But even more so I felt a certain surrender that comes from seeing enough of the coming and going of life. Seen enough to know better then to fight it. To say there is this place out there on the far corner, on the edge of what we know that we get called to again and again. It’s out there that we die to old things to make way for new things. From out there comes the call to adventure. To come to the edge of your comfort zone.
The old dog went out to meet the host of the edge. A place she knew she had to go so as to not be a burden to others and to give herself over to whatever comes next. “Rudy said she just laid there under the brush and had the look of peace on her face.” Then LaVina got up and went back to her work.