Blog Posts

Furled green lichen Clinging to gnarled birch twig Now pressed in fresh snow

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It’s spectacular autumn weather up here on the Gunflint Trail! This 5 month stretch on the trail has been one of moving and learning, thinking and reflecting.

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On a very still and sticky mid-August evening, we had the most fortunate evening paddle. Caroline had just purchased herself a used Kevlar canoe from a local outfitter, so of course we had to take it out for a test voyage. Chacha and I had the privilege of being the duffers, the non-paddling members in the canoe.

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The crickets have begun chirping in earnest on this cool summer evening. Their unmistakable song; an ever present reminder that we’re entering the later days of summer which lean into autumn. I love the sound of them, but the cool breeze makes me shudder a bit in anticipation of even cooler breezes to come. Which reminds me that overall, one of the greatest lessons of life is to treasure the present moment and to let go of the past. So much easier said than done.

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“Hope is an act of defiance against a politics of pessimism and a culture of despair that depends on us not being able to imagine something better than where we are now.” — Rabbi Sharon Brous

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For anyone who knows me, my closest friend these days is a retired Alaskan husky dog named Chacha. We adopted her when she was 8 years old in the middle of the pandemic, and she has been quite the little therapy dog. In breaks between the multitude of zoom calls during the pandemic, a stroke of those luscious ears and a snuggle brought my blood pressure and anxiety levels down. In exchange, I spoil her as much as I possibly can with walks, special treats, and her favorite activity of running off leash in the woods.

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Hello from the end of the Gunflint Trail! I’ve taken a wee bit of a hiatus in writing blog posts as I’ve been in the process of packing and moving to a very remote area of the state. My partner in life, Mark, took the job as the executive director of the Chik-Wauk Museum and Nature Center 3 summers ago. After 2 summers of living separately, I have joined him and now work here as well for his third summer up here.

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Happy belated Mother’s Day!

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To contemplate again on national poetry month, I turn to the words of Father Richard Rohr. “We first need to experience ‘a lump in the throat’ to have encountered the sacred. The sacred is something that inspires awe and wonder, something that makes us cry, something that gives us the lump in the throat. We must first encounter the sacred in the concrete and kneel before it there, because we can’t start with the universal.” He writes this in response to his reflections on art and contemplation. This particular writing was on the connection between poetry and spiritual contemplation.

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In addition to the April showers that bring May flowers, it’s also National Poetry Month! If you go to the Academy of American Poets website, you can sign up to get a poem a day delivered to your inbox. How cool is that? This honoring of the month of April for poems is an opportunity for anyone who is at all impacted by the written word to celebrate the value of poetry in our lives. In my humble opinion, that includes all of us.

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I’ve been thinking about beauty a lot these days and the need for it in our lives. As I write this, I’m watching the flames in a wood burning stove as they dance and flicker, putting me into an almost catatonic state. Chacha, our retired sled dog sighs and adjusts herself into an ever increasingly comfortable position on the sofa next to me. I’m struck by the beauty of her, this gorgeous retired athlete who still sports the body of a much younger canine.

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As Sofie and I have just published our first book, I thought it would be interesting to think about this generally accepted statistic from www.wordsrated.com and other writing websites. They state: Within the book publishing industry, it is agreed that the odds of an author getting their work published stands between 1% and 2%.

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When I tell people that my daughter and I created a book together, I’m usually met with lots of “Awwwwws,” and then, from other mothers of adult daughters, that look and question, “So, how did that go?” Meaning, whew, that must have been some baggage to work through!

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The question has come up a number of times, so I thought a good first blog post for this website would be to talk about haiku. As the book explains, haiku is a literary poetic art form that originated in Japan and Matsuo Basho is considered one of the most creative and founding thinkers on haiku. I did spend many years in Japan, 18 to be exact, but I am by no means a haiku expert.

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