​Even in this strange and uncertain time, we can find reasons to celebrate. Two big reasons come to mind this month.

​April is National Poetry Month, and if ever there was a time to read poetry, it’s now, when many of us have extra reading time and are looking to fill our minds with something other than dire news reports.

​​This month also brings the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day next Wednesday, April 22. Though the mass celebrations that had been planned will no longer be possible, we can still commemorate the day.

Combining these two celebrations, National Poetry Month and Earth Day, I asked local (and not-so-local) poets to contribute Earth Day poems to today’s blog. I’m happy to share those with you now, along with the collage I created for the occasion.

As I worked on the collage, I went back and forth in my mind about whether to portray the vision of a healthy Earth that many of us had on the first Earth Day in 1970 or the reality of Earth in 2020. In the end, I opted for the more hopeful vision, because I want to believe there's still hope. 

​Once the piece was done, however, I noticed it's darker than most of my other collages (many of which are now posted on the COLLAGES page on my website). Perhaps in the end, my Earth Day collage reflects both hope and concern, themes you'll find in the poems below.

And now, poetry.

The way the sun drips through the trees
feels like the tart sting of oranges
sliced through on a cold winter morning
the shadows sway on uneven stilts 
purposeful but perhaps a bit drunk
hawks flying through the thin mist
 
we did not come here to talk
but to recall bloodlines and bruises
to watch the ache of God's wounded finger
find its solace in the sky
we came to watch the forest settle
shivering around an old circle of coals
 
To pull new yarn out of old wool
to re-dye the worn, faded blue
to an unspoken, holy red
to choose new stones to throw
into the solitude of the lake
to settle into the night
and watch the fireflies shiver and shake

​I struggle to recall the words of those long-ago incantations,
but I can still feel the sun, and the sand spray of those of us
 
who ran down to the continent’s edge to shout wild oaths
and promises, twisted and torn from the wind itself.
 
Hoping for what exactly? I don’t recall. A certain slant of light,
or a feeling of home on the sun and sea-blasted turf?
 
It all looks so weathered now in a way that has grown familiar;
the landscape possesses the face that it has earned.
 
Not searching for monuments, though open to any eventuality,
I remember us, suddenly, as pleased and shy as deer in fields of spring,
 
not as tail-less, lumbering animals, growling and sniffing
for the bones we had buried and lost.
 
Ferns sprout large and primordial where none had grown
in the shaded region above the tides.
 
The sea has crept in closer; it has taken on an ancient aspect.
 
Through broken teeth I whisper a few broken words
and listen for those long-ago incantations.
 
Our footprints left a faint impression of our lives,
but the wind has carried the songs away to the sea.

 
* First published in Blueline: June 2011, Volume 32
Collected in Wanderings at Deadline (Aldrich Press, 2012)

Ninendaan gaawiin waa-babaamendanzimowaad
I think they will not mind that
 
wiikaa bi-dagoshinaan.
I arrive late.
 
Gijiigijigaaneshiiyag gii-giimoodaanagidoowag noopiming
The chickadees were mumbling in the bushes
 
besho naadazina’iganing.
by the box where I get mail.
 
Andawendaanaawaa Manaadendamaazowin
They needed an Honor Song
 
mii wenji-nagamotawagwaa
so I sang to them
 
nisidawenmangwaa miinawaa
because we understand them again
 
ezhi-manaadenimangwaa ingiw wiidokawiyangidwaa
the way we respect those who keep us company
 
gabe biboon
all winter.
 
Gaawiin da-giizhokoniyesiiwag misawa
They do not need to dress warm and yet
 
giizhokawiyangidwaa gidode’iminaaning.
they warm our hearts.

I am Soulofhawk come to sing my song – may your ears and heart be opened.

I stumble in this foreign tongue and try to make the talk
I speak of when this land was young, and of my brother hawk
My spirit voice is hard to hear, I have so long been gone
But I will whisper in your ear, and having spoke, move on

This finger pushed into the sea of sand and swamp and pine
Has been a welcome home to me – I sing this land of mine . .. . 
Of night song sung in joyous trill by every kind of fowl . . . 
Of chickadee and whippoorwill . . . of warning from the owl . . . 

Of plenty fish and wild oats . . . of berries blue and red
That danced their way down happy throats to bellies always fed . . .
Of rivers coursing through green world of gleaming golden lake . . .
Of alligator, hog and squirrel . . . of moccasin the snake . . .
​
The screaming panther ruled the pine, the eagle ruled the sky –
Oh, will you hear these words of mine? Will you even try?
I have no words on talking leaves for you to read, my friend
For all this simple man believed was written on the wind.

​While we bow our heads to the ground
and our hearts seek meaning among the stars,
wild creatures assert their presence
in the here and now
and the just here and gone.
 
Unknowable in the way one speaks
of the alien and other-worldly,
the title to their kingdom is forged
in their absolute
manifestation of the flesh.
 
If this seems ironic and abstract,
then so be it.
 
For irony and abstraction
are our great gifts--
not to the world, but to ourselves--
invented for our survival.
 
And we, of course, are the real aliens;
Each a world unto one’s own,
orbiting a sun of its own devising.

 
* First published in Sixfold, July 1, 2013, Summer 2013
Collected in Jeremiad Johnson (In Case of Emergency Press, 2019)

Listen!
          Do you hear her – Our Great Mother?
                      In this moment, in time - a reprieve -
                      when all human activity
                      has slowed to bare bones minimum,
                      She inhales an expanse of cleaner air.
                      Exhales a wasteland of toxins.
 
          Do you hear her – Our Great Mother?
                      She weeps for us, her children – All
                      Residents, two-legged and four,
                      winged, finned and serpentine. We
                      share the same earth, sea and air.
                      We, the two-legged ones, hold
                      the choices in concert with Our Mother.
                      Even as forces seem out of control, and
                      the playing field remains unequal.
 
          Do you feel her – Our Great Mother?
                      She shudders as the sludge venoms
                      from Frack wells, the vast desolation
                      from wildfires, and endless wars’ ravages
                      do a rival dance with the C-virus.
 
          I wonder about this massive
                      Blue Marble in our universe. The
                      one we call home. Our Mother. 
                      There’s nowhere else to go.  We cannot
                      just walk off or fly away.
 
          I wonder, if I were an astronaut, or
                      could hitch a satellite ride, how - in this
                      Pandemic blink of time –would
                      Our Mother, our home - look?
                      Would her greens be greener, her blues
                      be bluer,  her storms less turbulent,
                      her mass free from veils of smog?
 
          Like a cataclysm, would I see
                      a rotating orb, vibrating
                      glimmers of brighter, kinder energy?
                      Perhaps violet or white? Would
                      I know – would we all know- we’ve
                      begun to exercise our choices for love?
 

Control and fear became our story
Addiction lies between the lines
And love was lost to pride and glory
This ego virus made us blind
 
Your mother's dying by your hands
But you won't listen
Her blood is all over your hands
Will you listen
 
The soul was lost beyond the shadows
The fog will choke us into dust
Collective conscience chose the gallows
The time of man will turn the dust
 
Your mother's dying by your hands
You won't listen
Her blood is all over your hands
Will you listen 

​I hear it in the river.
I see it in the buds of the maple.
I hear it in the sounds of the red wing black bird.
 
Inquisitive cat so happy to be playing outside
Warm breeze on the back of my neck
 
I see it in the new bright yellow feathers of the gold finch.
I hear it in a distant barking dog.
 
Ever grateful to be walking this Earth mother experiencing my spring soul

​Once the land was green
And the buffalo could roam
The rivers clear and clean
Washed by our simple homes
And all turned in the wheel
And the sacred song was sung
To teach us what was real
And the earth stayed young
Once a man would take
No more than he could use
Set bones back in the lake
When a meal of fish was through
And all turned in the wheel
And the sacred song was sung
To teach us what was real
And the earth stayed young
     
Once the earth was young
And men saw with their hearts
That everything was one
And man was but a part
And all turned in the wheel
And the sacred song was sung
To teach us what was real
And the earth stayed young
Now the earth is old
The buffalo are gone
The rivers have been sold
And man stands all alone
Let all turn in the wheel
And sing the sacred song
To teach us what is real
So the earth stays young

​You can't eat the money
That you've all been praying on
That God has only destroyed you
And you can't drink the oil 
You've been pulling out of the ground
Your momma's shaken and torn . . . fool
 
Do you know what you are
And what you're here for
When it all comes crashing down
What have we learned
 
Distractions have kept you
From what's really going on
Keeping you away from your mother
Her life source you could tap into
Can heal that broken bond
Yes, you can get there inside you
 
Do you know what you are
And what you're here for
When it comes crashing all down
What have we learned

​There is a sudden authority to nightfall
in the flight of a heron, and to the surrounding
darkness where countless feed.
 
But so much that is unattainable, so much
that lies beyond the sovereign dark, rises up
out of the pale blue season of twilight
 
like fireflies summoning among the trees
as the moon loses her translucent and ghostly pallor
in the evening’s first clear and troubling dreams.
 
***
 
Toward daylight, the deer rise up
from among the flattened grasses
and low-lying hummocks,
 
emerging in the cool of morning
from indiscernible swales
and cedar swamps,
 
wary and shy, but alive with owning
at least a part of this
pale blue season of wildflowers.

Outside my window, the maples are beginning to blush. Soon, the whole woods will be bright with scarlet, gold, russet, and burgundy. In such a dazzling display, it's easy to lose sight of the individual colors.

Life can be like that, too. With so much going on in the real and virtual worlds, not to mention our own imaginations, it's sometimes hard to narrow our focus. Yet often that's exactly what we need to do to feel calm and grounded and to nurture our creativity. 

I recently came across an intriguing exercise that reminded me of the benefits of concentrating on one thing at a time. In her Writing and Wellness newsletter, author Colleen M. Story wrote about boosting creativity with color walks. You pick a color before heading out on a walk and then let that color lead you as you search for objects of that hue.

Colleen's article goes into more detail, with tips on how to get the most from the practice. 
​
I'll let you read that on your own, because I'm eager to show you what I found on my color walk. On the summer day I chose for my walk, everything was green, so as a challenge to my powers of observation, I picked yellow. I was surprised how many yellow things I found and how paying attention to them helped me see my familiar environment in a whole new way.

I hope you'll try a color walk, too, and tell me how it goes.

I realize it's not the last Wednesday of the month, but I haven't done one of these compilations in quite a while, and I blew right past last month's bonus Wednesday, when I fully intended to post something extra. So I owe you! Besides, I've been finding some good stuff that I really want to share.

​So here you go . . . 

We tend to think of consciousness as skin bound, brain tethered. However, in nature we can sense something vaster--and that something larger senses us. And from here our perception and understanding transforms. We start to think from this bigger perspective.
-- Mark Coleman, Mindful magazine, April 2019

I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse. First things first.
-- Edward Abbey, "The First Morning," Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness

Bees teach us so many lessons. When they take all this nectar from the tree, does that deprive the tree of anything? No, it enhances it. And when you give your time and energy to helping someone, does it deplete your skills? No, it gives you something to be proud of.
-- Brother Blaise Heuke, "The Beauty of a Bee," AARP The Magazine,  

Live with unremitting alertness.
-- Joseph Campbell

[W]ith art comes empathy. It allows us to look through some else's eyes and know their strivings and struggles. It expands the moral imagination and makes it impossible to accept the dehumanization of others. When we are without art, we are a diminished people--myopic, unlearned and cruel.
-- Dave Eggers, The New York Times, June 29, 2018

Authorship is a solitary business, always coming down to a writer and a blank page, but inevitably it becomes a social act as well, because the book is inextricably part of the world. It finds readers, it begins a conversation, it tells a kind of truth that can't be told in any other way--or else it fails to do that.
James Gleick, Authors Guild Bulletin, Spring-Summer 2018

But here's the thing: Humans are not what we do. Humans are everything we do, and feel, and think, with a dash of stardust thrown in. The same is true for writers.
-- Lenore Myka, "When to ignore good advice," Poets & Writers magazine, Sept/Oct 2018

You need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.
-- Andy Warhol

Life is a great bundle of little things.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

For a long time, I was looking for happiness from success. Now I am looking for success from happiness.
-- Kathryn Budig, Yoga Journal, August 2018

​​For a few years now, I have closed out most weeks by taking to the trails with the Wander Women, a local hiking group. We walk, and we talk, and we take in the sights and sounds along our woodland paths. But the truth is, we don’t really wander. We have a definite destination and an approximate time frame, from which we rarely deviate.

​That’s as it should be. We all have post-hike errands to run or appointments to keep or evening engagements to get ready for, so it helps to have an idea just how the day’s hike will fit into all of that.

​​Sometimes, though, when I’m on my own in the woods—or on a city street, for that matter—I like to just aimlessly meander. That makes me a flâneur, a word I learned from a lovely article in Mindful magazine. The word has been variously defined as “an aimless idler” and “a passionate wanderer.”

​I guess I’m a little of both. So, apparently, was Henry David Thoreau, who extolled the virtues of “sauntering” and letting his mind wander along with his feet. 

​When I worked in downtown Detroit, I spent most lunch breaks walking, usually with no particular destination in mind. I might end up strolling by the Detroit River or losing myself in the Ren Cen’s maze of hallways and catwalks or exploring Greektown or Harmonie Park or Washington Boulevard. Wherever I roamed, I always came back to the office refreshed and ready to work for the rest of the day. 

​​Later, when I worked in Ann Arbor, my lunchtime walks took me into various neighborhoods, where I found inspiration in the creatively-designed gardens, quirky houses, and funky yard art I passed along the way.

​“When you wander, the spring you tighten in order to secure your purpose and direction can unwind,” editor Barry Boyce observed in the Mindful article. What’s more, he noted, wandering can even be a kind of mindfulness practice. While we tend to think mindfulness is all about corralling our restless minds, the definition can expand to include “the practice of just noticing one thing after another as we let ourselves out to play.” 

​​That’s exactly what I find myself doing on my walks these days. A just-bloomed wildflower, an oddly-shaped stone, a leaf floating down the creek—there’s no telling what will catch my attention and take it far from whatever minutia occupied my overloaded brain before I set out on my stroll.

​I seem to wander best when I wander alone, but some folks are joining up in free “walkshops” organized by the nonprofit group Street Wisdom. On these volunteer-led strolls, participants are encouraged to tune into their senses and use their heightened awareness to sharpen their creative problem-solving skills.

​​Whether you ramble solo or with fellow flâneurs, you can bet your creativity will get the same kind of boost, as long as you let your mind meander freely. Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology found that frequent daydreamers scored higher on tests of intellectual and creative ability and used their brains more efficiently (as measured with brain scans) than people who zoned out less.

​All of that is reason enough for me to get up from my desk and wander off. See ya later!

​In some ways, the third Monday in March seemed like any other Monday. Early that morning, eleven of us trooped into Fae Wood Studio, the serene space that’s been our yoga home for the past couple of years. Just as she had on so many other Mondays, our teacher, Behnje Masson, led us through a series of moves that refreshed our bodies and boosted our spirits.

​Our spirits needed boosting more than usual, because—appearances notwithstanding—this Monday was not just any Monday. It was our last class at Fae Wood Studio, and for now, at least, Behnje’s last time to travel to Newaygo to teach us. 

​For this community of yoginis, this ending marked yet another change in a long history of practicing and studying together. More than twenty years ago,  our neighbor Sally Kane initiated the class, teaching every Monday morning in her basement. When Sally went back to school to become a teacher, Ellie Randazzo appeared at just the right time. Ellie took over Sally's class and went on to add more classes, build a devoted following, and eventually open her own studio, Woodland Yoga.

​As I've written about before, yoga with Ellie, followed by breakfast at Hit the Road Joe Coffee Café became a can’t-miss Monday-morning routine for the group (which I  joined about seven years ago), and friendships flourished in the process.

​

​When Ellie died unexpectedly in 2016, we were adrift. Yet we kept our Monday morning yoga-and-breakfast sessions going, even when we had to squeeze into someone’s living room or loft to practice together. Then, through a charmed confluence of events, Ellie’s sister Kathy invited us to use her newly-established studio, Fae Wood, and Behnje offered to drive up from Grand Rapids twice a month to teach us. It was an ideal arrangement, one we’ve been privileged to enjoy for almost two years. 

​But just as Ellie always taught us, change is inevitable. Sure enough, everything has shifted again, and it’s time to readjust. 

​After deciding to move back to Grand Rapids, Kathy has sold her home and closed Fae Wood Studio. Meanwhile, Behnje’s studio in Grand Rapids, From the Heart Yoga, has moved into a new location and needs more of her time and attention. All of that means we’re adrift again.

​But sad as we are to see this chapter close, drifting for a bit may not be a bad thing, especially with all the possibilities swirling around us: continue practicing together at a new location, carpool down to From the Heart Yoga, try out other local yoga classes.

​At the end of our last class, we gathered at the back of the room, near Ellie’s favorite statue of the Hindu archetype Ganesh. Behnje talked about the importance of letting go of what you’ve lost, without trying to figure out in advance what’s coming next. She used the image of casting the old into a stream and just waiting to see what flows back to fill the space left open. 

​It was fitting that this last, momentous class happened to fall in the same week as the vernal equinox, a time associated with balance, but also with change, cleansing, and new beginnings. As we contemplated this latest change, we could feel winter loosening its grip, allowing us to move forward into a season of growth and beauty.

​It was a good time, too, to be reminded that yoga itself is all about change. As instructor and author Cyndi Lee writes in the March/April 2019 issue of Yoga Journal, yoga “offers a myriad of experiences, many that we could never have predicted.” The point is not to nail a particular pose and hold onto it to dear life (no matter what we may think as we totter in Tree pose), but to adapt, adjust, and explore the range of possibilities. 

​“See how your actions come together to make certain poses, and then notice how that experience dissolves and is over. We are learning the truth of impermanence. Since everything arises and passes, we try to appreciate it in the moment that it is here.”

​In the days leading up to my recent birthday, colorful envelopes began appearing in our mailbox. Guessing they were birthday cards, I set them aside to open on the actual day.
 
Except for one. More a card-sized parcel than an ordinary envelope, it intrigued me with its cobbled-together lumpiness. When I noticed it was from my uber-creative friend Val in North Carolina, I couldn’t resist opening it right away.
 
In an earlier email exchange, Val had told me about her latest obsession: making “junk journals” and altered books from bits of this and that. I had no idea that junk journaling is a thing, but it is. Val confessed she’d gotten wrapped up in YouTube videos showing how to make the whimsical little assemblages.
 
More on those videos in a moment, but back to that mysterious envelope.

​Inside, I found a mini-journal filled with a most imaginative and personalized assortment of miscellany. The cover was fashioned from a small manila envelope, folded in half, with one end left open to form a pocket for stowing notes and mementos. Val had covered the outside with a tropical print reminiscent of Samoa, where we met as teenagers in the 1960s. Inside were more pockets and envelopes made from magazine and catalog pages, sheet music, and so on, and stuffed with little treasures: maps of Samoa and my home state of Oklahoma, a recipe for Michigan Party Cheese Bake, clipped from some fundraising cookbook, plus other scraps and tidbits with special meaning to the two of us.

​In the center was a two-page spread of another tropical scene, with Val’s face smiling from the window of a beach house and two little figures like the ones that populated the cartoons she used to draw in our Samoa days. My birthday journal was a delight from cover to cover, one that I’ll enjoy looking through again and again.

​At Val’s prompting, I decided to try my hand at junk journaling (fully aware that the last thing I need right now is another project, but rationalizing that a hands-on activity would provide a good and necessary break from all the writing and book-related work that’s consuming my life these days. Sound convincing? I thought so.)
 
A junk journal is really whatever you want it to be, but it usually includes some combination of words, pictures, and other memorabilia, such as brochures, ticket stubs, maps, calendars, cards, or whatever else you want to include, all assembled in a helter-skelter way. The idea appealed to my passion for making collages and my tendency to hoard paper memorabilia with which I have no idea what to do.
 
But before I plunged in, I felt like I needed at least a little guidance. That’s how I found myself in the online realm of junk journal inspiration. It soon became clear that, like scrapbooking, junk journaling is one of those hobbies people can go a bit overboard on. I found photos of amazingly—and intimidatingly—elaborate journals, along with lists of all sorts of paraphernalia one might want to purchase, either to decorate the journal (where’s the “junk” in that??) or to use in crafting the journal: pre-made pockets, special paper cutters, fancy papers, bookbinding twine.

​Yeesh. This is why I tend to stay away from Pinterest and crafting blogs. They’re inspiring, yes, but they also feed my insecurity when I start comparing my slapdash efforts to other people’s lavish creations. What’s more, have you noticed that it’s virtually impossible to find written instructions and diagrams for anything anymore? Learning how to do even the simplest thing requires watching a YouTube video. Or several.

​​I could see hours, if not days, swirling down the drain. So I set limits. I would watch only enough to learn a couple of things: How to make origami envelopes and library card-style pockets. Then I’d figure out the rest by studying Val’s example and just winging it. This decision also helped with the intimidation factor. Junk journals are supposed to be messy, but some people’s messy still comes out looking a lot more artful than mine. The sooner I stopped looking at videos and started doing my own work, the happier I’d be.

​I chose a theme for my journal: Yoga and meditation. Now, here’s where it gets a little woo-woo. I went looking for card stock to use for my journal pages and found a stash left over from previous projects and recycled from other purposes. For my first page, I chose a pale yellow piece that seemed to stand out from the others. I had noticed that some of the pieces of card stock had color on only one side, with gray on the back, so I turned over the yellow piece to see if it had color on both sides.

​​​Here’s what I found on the “back,” which had originally been the front: A flyer for classes taught by our beloved yoga teacher Ellie, whose death two and a half years ago devastated our community. Of course I wouldn’t sacrifice that flyer to make an ordinary page, but I’d find a way to give it a special place in the journal.

​What else I included: Pockets holding decorated cards, with spaces on the backs for writing thoughts or inspiring words I come across in my reading; a freehand mandala I drew when I was going through a mandala-drawing phase; a collection of cards representing the seven chakras; a print of a collage I made for Ellie and another one that she especially liked; an origami envelope, made from Yoga Journal pages, into which I tucked a card with the names of my yoga friends. 

​I’m still putting together my junk journal, and even when it’s “finished,” it’ll still be a work in progress—something I can add to whenever I find something that fits.

​Will I make others? That remains to be seen, although I already have ideas for several.

​Will you make one? I hope so. And if you do, send me pictures, and I’ll share them in an upcoming blog post.

Mālo le onosa’i
-- Samoan proverb loosely translated as “patience is a virtue”

​I’ve been thinking a lot about patience—and its payoffs—lately. About the years I spent writing and revising and polishing my memoir, and the months of researching agents and publishers, pitching at conferences, and sending out queries.
 
Friends praised my perseverance, but I sometimes wondered if they were secretly thinking, Isn’t it about time she gave up on this thing and got on with her life? Sometimes I wondered that myself.
 
At the same time, I kept reading about authors—many of them famous now—who traveled the same plodding path, encountering rejection after rejection until finally they hit publication pay dirt. So I waited . . . and waited . . . and kept doing everything I could to improve my odds until, miracle of miracles, I had my own book contract in hand.

​​And then I found out still more patience is required. My memoir, Mango Rash: Coming of Age in the Land of Frangipani and Fanta, is due out in October of this year—a wait of another nine months, made up of a multitude of mini-waits. Right now, I’m waiting for my editor’s notes so I can begin another round of revisions. Then I’ll be waiting for more editorial input on final tweaks. And so on, and so on.

​Meanwhile, I’m suppressing the urge to fire off nervous-newbie question after question to my editor, knowing that she’s swamped with other projects right now and trusting that she will provide whatever information and guidance I need as I need it. Patience. Patience.
 
In that spirit, I’ve rounded up an assortment of wisdom on the subject to share with you today.

Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.
- Samuel Johnson

​Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy.
- Saadi

​The creative people I admire seem to share many characteristics: A fierce restlessness. Healthy cynicism. A real world perspective. An ability to simplify. Restraint. Patience. A genuine balance of confidence and insecurity. And most importantly, humanity.
- David Droga

I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.
- Lao Tzu

​Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.
- John Quincy Adams

​The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it.
- Arnold H. Glasow

​Having patience is one of the hardest things about being human. We want to do it now, and we don't want to wait. Sometimes we miss out on our blessing when we rush things and do it on our own time.
- Deontay Wilder

​Have patience with all things, But, first of all with yourself.
-  Saint Francis de Sales

​If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees.
- Hal Borland

Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.
- May Sarton

​Patience is the companion of wisdom.
- Augustine of Hippo

​Despite the common misconception, having patience doesn't mean making a pact with the devil of denial, ignoring our emotions and aspirations. It means being wholeheartedly engaged in the process that's unfolding, rather than yanking up our carrots, ripping open a budding flower, demanding a caterpillar hurry up and get that chrysalis stage over with.
-  Sharon Salzberg in “The Power of Patience,” Awakin.org, February 10, 2014

​The more you know yourself, the more patience you have for what you see in others.
- Erik Erikson

​We’ll replace our old, slothful habits with shiny, new diet and exercise regimens. We’ll be kinder, calmer, more generous and patient. We’ll work harder, or work less, depending on our situations and motivations. We’ll see new places and learn new things.

​

​In short, we’ll be far more fabulous in 2019 than we were in 2018. 

​​It’s an appealing fantasy, and I’ll admit, in past years I’ve made long lists of goals that ranged from personal improvement (find positive ways to deal with conflict; let go of resistance and cultivate lightness) to artistic (make a dozen new collages; take a dance class; write a poem every day) to niggling tasks (keep up on paperwork and email; sell or donate excess stuff).

​The trouble was, year after year, I grossly overestimated the amount of free time and energy I’d have to devote to all my aspirations and underestimated the time that would be taken up with doing the same old, necessary things week after week. I also tended not to take into account how little enthusiasm I'm able to generate for such tedious tasks as the aforementioned paperwork and email.

​Reviewing my list at the end of each year became an exercise in frustration. While I made progress on a number of projects and even finished some, I found myself carrying many of my goals forward onto the next year’s list, year after year after year. 

​​So just as I scrapped my bucket list, I resolved to stop making resolutions.

​Still, a new year seems to warrant some kind of intention-setting ritual, even if it’s nothing more than a mental exercise. In that spirit, I’m making a new kind of list, a modest tally of five things I want to carry forward with me from last year into this year and five things I want to let go because they no longer serve me (if they ever did).

​Here goes . . . 

What do you want to hold onto and get rid of in 2019?
Do you have your own year-end or year-beginning rituals? 

​When was the last time you wrote a letter? Not an email, not a text, but an honest-to-goodness, pen-on-paper missive of a full page or more, folded, sealed, stamped, and placed in an actual—not virtual—mailbox. When, for that matter, was the last time you received a letter?

​
​That old-fashioned mode of communication seems to be a vanishing species these days. The average American household receives only ten pieces of personal mail per year (not counting holiday cards and invitations), according to a New York Times article by Susan Shain. 

​That's a pity. Letters have worth far beyond the paper they're written on, offering intimate musings and glimpses of everyday life that can't be found in brief dispatches or even impassioned Facebook posts.

​"A letter is, after all, a piece of writing in which we give ourselves the space to reflect—to distill our emotions and reactions, to choose the things that are important and flesh them out in detail," writes Cristen Hemingway Jaynes in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers magazine. "Without the more intimate form of writing letters, I drift apart from those who are not in my daily life."

​Reflecting on her communications with one friend who still writes letters but never sends emails, Jaynes observes, "I know more about her thoughts and her relationship with the world—how she is actually doing—than I do about most of my other friends."

​​I thought about that kind of connection recently, when my friend Laurel gave me a packet of letters I'd written to her in the 1970s and '80s. Reading through them, I found verbal snapshots of that period of my life: vivid descriptions of my friends, amusing anecdotes about everyday incidents, accounts of the books I was reading, ramblings on romances, ruminations on my college and grad school anxieties. 

​For instance: "I'm feeling very anxious about my entomology project and I want to make sure I have something done before Dr. Hurley gets back. I'm trying to get my equipment together this week so I can start the project next week. So far my equipment is a cake pan with the bottom cut out of it and a sieve. I have fears that the whole project is going to be about that sophisticated. I'm very nervous about it. I will enclose some of my bitten off fingernails if I remember."

​Segues were seemingly unnecessary. I followed a discussion of travel plans with this news flash about my cat: "Ooooh, the most creepy thing just happened. Zeke has been sitting next to me on the couch, watching the birds outside and chattering his teeth at them. Then he lay down and went to sleep and chattered his teeth in his sleep. I CAN'T STAND IT!!!"

​Some letters included funny drawings; others carried silly variations of my return address: "Sunset Avenue Circus Museum," "Sunset Avenue Center for the Development of Better Sleep Habits."

​Reading the Laurel letters inspired me to haul out a box of letters that friends and family members had written to me over the years. Just the act of taking the letters out of the box gave me a deeper satisfaction than I've ever gotten from an email popping into my inbox. Seeing my brother's artsy, backhand cursive trailing across an envelope; recognizing a friend's old return address, noticing the stamp she selected, the kind of paper she wrote on, all felt like little homecomings. And the contents of those letters took me to times, places, and crannies of my friends' hearts and souls I couldn't have visited—and revisited—any other way.

​Among those treasures was a note written on a Buckaroo Club napkin by my friend Darwin in 1981, shortly after he'd completed a 300-mile kayaking odyssey on the Yukon, Porcupine, Sheenjek, and Kongakut rivers, culminating at the Beaufort Sea. 

​"Though very maladjusted and in a state totally unfit for normal upright society except for that of Alaska, which I hate the city part of, I'm alive and back in Anchorage," he wrote. He went on to recount seeing hundreds of caribou, five grizzlies, two moose, and one gyrfalcon; tipping over twice, but righting himself before swamping his kayak; and sharing bowhead whale meat and blubber with local indigenous people on Barter Island.  

​Even accounts of my correspondents' less adventurous experiences were a treat to read. My friend Barry's dispatch from college in 1969 was just as keenly observed:

​​"Right here you have a prime example of a Communications 301 class," he wrote. "Notice the yawns and the chins propped drowsily on hands. Notice the blank sheets of paper without any notes. Notice the guest speaker getting shook. Notice chair #213 back there writing a letter to some girl in Oklahoma."

​Old letters preserve daily details that now seem quaint. Writing in 1971 about her employment woes, my friend Wendy lamented "I really want to get out of the $1.65/hr range. It's a drag." In the same letter, she included sketches of a denim coat and paisley dress she'd managed to buy on those skimpy wages, and added, "I've ordered rain boots from Sears (pg. 555, Fall-Winter book, item 5, on sale for $8.94 in one of their sale books)."

​Over the years I've sometimes chided myself for holding onto mementos like these old letters. But a single snowy afternoon spent reading them—even if that happens only once a decade—is more than worth the closet space my box of letters occupies. I'm reminded of how long my friendships have endured and how they've sustained me.

​Letters enhance connection and contentment, to be sure, but they're also good for creativity. 

"When I write longhand each pass of the ink on to paper is a physical creation. And as with sculpture, textiles, painting, and furniture, it contains remnants of myself," notes Jaynes, whose great-grandfather Ernest Hemingway was also an inveterate letter writer. "The exercise of writing, whether it be in the form of a letter or a story, is all good practice. As my great-grandfather demonstrated in his colorful letters to friends, there can be just as much creativity in letter writing as in any other form. Similar to freewriting exercises, writing a letter loosens the knots in neural pathways, leading to subjects and characters lying just below the surface."

​I know it did for me. I learned to write largely by crafting letters to everyone from grandparents to pen pals with whom I connected through a kids' magazine.

​After all I've said in praise of letters, you probably think I'm going to end this post with a pledge to write more of them. I could, but I know it would be a hollow promise. Truth is, I've never been that great a correspondent, even when letters were my main form of communication. I wrote tons of them, but I always seemed to have a stack of unanswered ones nagging at me (kind of like my email inbox these days).

​So rather than make a promise I'm not likely to keep, I will resolve to keep writing an occasional letter, and I'll encourage you to do the same. 

​After all, as Hemingway once wrote to F. Scott Fitzgerald, "it's such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you've done something."

Or write a letter to a stranger who could use an encouraging word. Find stories of deserving people, along with where to send letters, at More Love Letters.  

​If you ever find yourself traveling through North Dakota on I-94, wishing for relief from the tedium of driving and the monotony of the plains, just take Exit 72 for a delightful detour through one man's imagination.

​Known as the Enchanted Highway, the 32-mile stretch of two-lane county road from Gladstone to Regent showcases a collection of colossal creations by metal sculptor and retired teacher Gary Greff. Gargantuan grasshoppers, humongous fish, gigantic pheasants, the world's largest tin family—you'll find all of these and more if you venture off the interstate.

​Greff dreamed up the Enchanted Highway nearly three decades ago in an attempt to revitalize his hometown of Regent, then a town of around 200 people. He'd never studied art and didn't know how to weld, but that didn't stop him. Using scrap metal, cast-off oil drums and recycled pipes, Greff just figured things out as he went along, sculpture by sculpture.

"​He envisioned ten mega-sculptures, each with parking lot, picnic area and playground equipment, spaced every few miles along the road. So far, he has completed six on the Gladstone-to-Regent road, plus an additional sculpture, "Geese in Flight," on a ridge overlooking I-94 at the Gladstone exit. 

​Simply funneling travelers into Regent wasn't enough for Greff, though. He wanted to keep them there long enough to eat, drink, sleep, shop, and hang out a while. So he opened a gift shop, and when the town's school—which Greff had attended as a kid—closed, he and his brother converted the building into a hotel.

​But not just an ordinary hotel. No, the brothers Greff wanted a hostelry in keeping with the enchantment theme. So, once again with more inspiration than experience, they turned the school into the Enchanted Castle, a 23-room hotel with waterfall walls, suits of armor, and other medieval touches. The inn even has a bar and a restaurant fittingly named Excalibur Steakhouse. 

Though the hotel, bar, and restaurants have garnered glowing reviews, they haven't yet turned things around for Regent. The population has dwindled to around 170. Yet Greff is undaunted. Ever the optimist, he's working on two new sculptures to grace the hotel grounds and attract more visitors, he told the Dickinson (North Dakota) Press: a 35-foot-tall, sword-wielding knight and a 40-foot tall dragon that will breathe fire every hour.

​Regular readers of HeartWood know I can never pass up roadside oddities, especially the oversized variety. My patient husband and traveling companion, Ray, knows it, too, and never objects my quests for the quirky. So when I read about the Enchanted Highway in a North Dakota tourism magazine and realized it was right on the route of our recent road trip to Seattle, I declared it a must-see. On the way out to Seattle, we had only enough time to stop at "Geese in Flight," which is currently closed to visitors, but can be viewed from the highway exit. On the way back, however, we spent an entire morning visiting the rest of the sculptures.

​I was— of course—enchanted! The sculptures were even more immense and intricate than they appear in photos. It was clear, though, that some could benefit from an infusion of cash to maintain or restore them to their original conditions.

​Greff's project is largely self-funded, and he does all the upkeep, including cutting the grass. He'd hoped gift shop proceeds would cover costs, but so far they haven't, he told the Dickinson Press. Neither, apparently, have the donation stations at the sculpture sites.

​I only hope some kind of magic materializes to provide Greff with the means to continue and care for his work. It's a testament to the vision and perseverance of one big-time dreamer and an inspiration to all who dare to aim high.

​As Greff summed it up in an article on a North Dakota tourism website, "You've got a dream. Live that dream. Don't hesitate. If I can do it, a person who didn't know how to weld and didn't have an art class, if I can go out and build 110-foot metal sculptures, I think you can do whatever you put your mind to."