Rising to a challenge

Windy, cloudy, occasional snow showers, and the last day of local deer season for firearms hunters. In view of the weather the past couple of weeks, we're glad we decided not to partake this year. We're going to file it under the heading of "just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should do it."

Today we're working on a draft Christmas list. That means it's time to think about next year's fly fishing opener and toy with  the possibility of a Winter trip to one of the streams where the season runs all Winter. Then again, we're forecast to be in for a "La Nina" Winter, snowier and colder than usual. Combine that with COVID-19 restrictions and we foresee a multitude of cases of very serious cabin fever and seasonal affective disorder. Fortunately, at least for us, we have lists and stacks of books that need reading, many of which are intended to help us mellow out.

this chickadee looks like it knows something

Photo by J. Harrington

We recently received from Birchbark Books a package containing:

• What the Chickadee Knows by Margaret Noodin (poems in Anishiinaabemowin and English)


• Dwellings by Linda Hogan, a Spiritual History of the Living World; and


• A History of Kindness, Poems by Linda Hogan

From the brief sampling we've done in each of these books, we believe reading them will help put us in the spirit of the upcoming holiday season and do wonders to help us shed the accumulated bitterness we've acquired trying to cope with four years of the Trump regime and the extended and continuing COVID-19 pandemic.

In that vein, we recently finished reading Jackie Morris' magical The Unwinding and other dreamings and are in the midst of Robert Macfarlane' and Jackie Morris' the lost spells, their sequel to The Lost Words bestseller.

All of this, and other related activities, are part of our continuing venture to recover from the hardening of the heart we've suffered since our country displayed signs of political dementia in November 2016. We think we'll be successful but realize there's still much challenging but rewarding work ahead. We wish those of you reading this a safe and healthy and properly challenging holiday season. As an unrepentant and unrecovering fly-fisher, we know that, if there were no challenges, to what would we rise?

Still I Rise

By Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

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