Tag Archives: hope

A Miracle Hike

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  • The top of Coney Mountain. Breathe it in.

Sometimes, in the midst of chaos, uncertainty, sadness, frustration, stupefaction and anger (much of what this country has been experiencing for quite some time and especially recently) or sometimes in the middle of life stretching out so dull and repetitive and without reprieve (which we have also endured)—something that feels miraculous shows up. What have I learned to do with it?

Take it in fully, knowing there’s plenty more chaos out there and we’ve got to see everything that we have, not just what is difficult. 

Examine it carefully and lovingly, appreciate it from all angles, marvel over it with others. 

Appreciate all the ways it could have been missed and also—wow, there it was.

******

“It” was a hike up Coney Mountain in the Horseshoe Lake Wild Forest north of Long Lake, New York. The rest of my week off from the day job had been catch-up from the holidays (finally making gifts), work on the book (still not available online yet but we’re close), and learning once again to take joy in household projects. 

This hike made “time off” a vacation.

According to local folks we chatted with briefly on the trail, it had snowed a week prior and then a more delicate snow dusted the trees on two other days. Unusually, they’d had no wind the whole week, while the sky stayed full of gray clouds. These specific meteorological conditions (once in a decade? once in a lifetime for an intermittent mountain hiker like me?) combined to create what we found.

Because that day, the sun came out.

Feathery ferns festooned with snow.

Therefore, the snow that clung thickly to every millimeter of the branches, stems and twigs was lit from above. The dry frostiness at fifteen degrees Fahrenheit created jewels of every flake, with flashes and glints of rainbow: literal scintillation. On the hike up, shades of blue-white light filled the deeper woods while frosted glacial erratics (boulders dropped from the movement of ancient ice sheets) slumbered between hemlocks and birches. A red squirrel dashed across our path.

Quiet winter woods.

The sky above curved a flat cornflower blue. We mistook the white in the sky as clouds beyond the canopy when in fact there were no clouds on that side of the mountain. The puffs were full heads of glistening tree hair, crowns of snow in filigree as well as stubby clubs of silver. 

Not clouds up there, nope, not at all. Take a closer look.

What we found at the end of the trail, up at 2,265 feet, was not only the expected 360 degree view of the Adirondack High Peaks we’d experienced in the autumn, but a frosted world that left us wordless and laughing.

I have been trying for days to describe what made it so moving and joyful. Does it help to say it was one of the top ten hikes of my life?

The bright at the top couldn’t be viewed without sunglasses. As we turned in astonished circles, we discerned flowing blankets of white becoming darker in the distance. The most pure white appeared in the close-in trees and bushes, then below us the tops of full grown evergreens arose white-beige; further away the mountain tops full of trees flashed a shade darker of brown-white. Finally between two evergreens, the restful dark blue of Tupper Lake came into view, with its own islands of brown dotted with miniature Christmas trees.

Trees after trees after trees, and distant peaks.

A forest of saguaro cactus snow shapes surrounded us. The heavy buildup of frozen crystals looked like hoarfrost—layer after layer of hoarfrost, fat like a corndog. It wasn’t icy either, just weightless and fluffy and when I touched it with my finger it crumbled away. 

If there had been any wind of note during the previous week, this spectacle would have disintegrated into blobs of snow on the ground, and we would never have known what we missed.

Fingers of glowing frost.

As I snapped image after image, I was afraid of distorting what I was seeing—I had on polarized lenses, could I see through the camera what I was seeing in my eyes, what was really there in front of me? Were the photos all going to be shaky because of the huff-and-puff of the climb and/or because I was so excited about what we saw? 

We stayed up top for a half hour, devouring chicken sandwiches with leaf lettuce that startled in its glowing greenness. As we happily headed down, the woods dimmed and shadowed around us; we had taken in all the light we could. 

I keep returning to what we saw, how we felt. I can’t get it out of my mind.

A last look back.

The world was so bright up there, so fiercely, sweetly bright. Snow sparkled silently, blindingly, rainbows and diamonds in every direction. 

It surprised us but was natural and beautiful even if unexpected, was somehow delicate and yet enduring.

I think it looked like hope.

Winter sun over us, up on Coney Mountain.

Crocuses and Optimism

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IMG_2945 copyright Of-The-Essence Blog 2020

Mid-March crocuses.

I am an optimist. A belt-and-suspenders, prepare for the worst and be glad when it’s not optimist, raised by people only half a generation out from the Great Depression–but nonetheless, an optimist. I look for signs of hope while I choose not to downplay the suffering and unfairness that exist intertwined with that hope. I acknowledge the immensity of so many good things I’ve received, earned or not. 

That’s been helpful during these days of up and down realities and feelings, the strange watchfulness and anxiety—what my fellow writer E.P. Beaumont has described to me as “Big Crisis combined with No Big Motion.” 

All the motion I can do is walk.

***

IMG_2941 copyright Of-The-Essence Blog 2020

Sky over Sage College, Troy NY, March 2020

Six days ago, I set out for the Sage College campus under a rain-brooding sky. I found my first spring flowers–popped up in a corner bed:  crocuses, so perky and open. Some of them relaxed back, complete with raindrop sparkles (like those too-artful portraits with a single tear on the cheek).

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Picture perfect spring crocus

A few nights later it snowed long and steady here in the Hudson Valley. Six inches or so of moist snow sounded like styrofoam squeaking as I shuffled through it. An umbrella protected from the plops and blops, let go from overloaded trees in the dark. 

I thought of my crocuses and found them, as expected, buried and flattened under the snow. 

Such a sadness. Did it portend or just reflect the horrors we are facing?

I noted what I found, felt it, and went on to tromp through the snow some more; I wondered at the thick white frosting on spring budded trees and even smiled at the usual landmarks softened in golden streetlight glow.

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Other spring bulbs weighted by the snow

In daylight, the weather warmed and the snow melted away almost entirely. I went back, concerned at what I might or might not find.

There they were: beaten, torn, down in the mud. MY crocuses; it hurt to see them damaged, some flowers not coming back.

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Flattened and bruised.

However, the mud, often disparaged, is for growing. I found another bunch of bulbs that had sprung back with vigor. 

Some of the flowers will not return. Some will come back next year. Some are already OK.

I hear the message:  appreciate what you can while you can. Feel what you feel, move your body, hold both the optimism and the bad news. 

And dammit, take the precautions, be belt-and-suspenders! Do not weary of what will keep ALL of us vulnerable humans (those tender purple petals, every precious last one!) safe and able to blossom again.

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We’re in the middle of the storm. Keep the lamp on for each other.

 

Bunnies and Hope

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IMG_2184 copyright of-the-essence blog 2020

The hedgerow at sunset

I see them at night, after work, when I pull into a parking spot.

By the hedgerow: round, stone-shaped shadows, but then a fluff tail pops up, a hop gives them away. Sometimes one bunny, often a pair.

They give me hope. 

These creatures are huge, from nibbling the grass and the plants by the farmer’s field.  They pause when caught in my headlights, then scamper back to the safety of the brush. Sometimes they stay until long after I leave, if I don’t make too much noise or movement.

Even in the snow, they are out there. It’s late enough in the day they must not fear the eagles and other hunters in the area.

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Another predator: the Cooper’s hawk that sometimes stalks the bird feeder.

It’s usually at late dusk or already dark, so photos are difficult. In my excitement I end up with pixellated brown and white blobs against gray grass, so I choose instead to observe, breathe, take them into my memory.

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Cardinals and sparrows in the hedgerow by day.

One dusk walk last summer it was a “twelve-bunny night,” with various bucks and does nibbling grapevines and greenery near the apartments. A bevy of bunnies under bushes and bopping in the open field; a score skittering between buildings where small children run themselves, wobbly with bikes and balls. 

Another night we mourned a small rabbit smashed on the road, and wondered if it was the result of deliberate cruelty, or a mistaken dash across the asphalt. 

Could you be more careful? we asked—of drivers and of bunnies. We will be, now.

A dear friend used to say that bunnies were a sign of good luck, or good things to come. She gave us all little charms of smiling bunnies that made me smile in turn. When I see rabbits, I remember to think positively, for all the good in the midst of what can feel like overwhelming bad in our world.

Every chance I get, I look for bunnies on the lawn. Every chance.