Listening for the land to speak

The November section of our Minnesota Weatherguide Calendar and Almanac has a timely epigram from Linda Hogan:

There is a way that nature
speaks, that land speaks.
Most of the time we are 
simply not patient enough,
quiet enough, to pay
attention to the story.

November is Native American Heritage month but, with the federal government shut down since the beginning of October, most .gov websites haven't been updated. November is also the month when the North Country begins to accelerate its slide from autumn into winter. As I was poking about the corners of the internet yesterday, looking for some North Country phenology material, I came across the University of Minnesota's Center for Community-Engaged Learning's Sites of Resistance and Resilience in the Twin Cities on the UMN's Season Watch Resources page. The fortuitous discoveries above remind me of the old dictum: "No amount of planning will ever replace dumb luck."

early November North Country snow [2013]

Photo by J. Harrington

Winter, among those who live close to nature and her seasons, is often a time for quiet hunkering down and storytelling. We're headed in that direction. Summer's ants are disappearing and winter's mice are looking for warm places to nest. If this year is near typical, our "permanent" snow cover will begin about a week before Thanksgiving. If you haven't yet come across a copy of National Geographic's 1621 A New Look at Thanksgiving, I suggest you try to order a copy from Birchbark Books. I'm going to start this year's (re)reading later today.

Harvested cornfields are being gleaned by growing flocks of swans and Canada geese. A few of those waterfowl may winter over on the St. Croix river near Hudson WI. Most will migrate south as open water grows ice cover and harvested fields are covered by more and more snow. Since we lack a snow bird's cottage in the warm south, we'll practice a lethargic, hibernation-approximating existence, as much as we can get away with, until the seasons change again and spring returns.

Map

Linda Hogan

This is the world
so vast and lonely
without end, with mountains
named for men
who brought hunger
from other lands,
and fear
of the thick, dark forest of trees
that held each other up,
knowing fire dreamed of swallowing them
and spoke an older tongue,
and the tongue of the nation of wolves
was the wind around them.
Even ice was not silent.
It cried its broken self
back to warmth.
But they called it
ice, wolf, forest of sticks,
as if words would make it something
they could hold in gloved hands,
open, plot a way
and follow.

This is the map of the forsaken world.
This is the world without end
where forests have been cut away from their trees.
These are the lines wolf could not pass over.
This is what I know from science:
that a grain of dust dwells at the center
of every flake of snow,
that ice can have its way with land,
that wolves live inside a circle
of their own beginning.
This is what I know from blood:
the first language is not our own.

There are names each thing has for itself,
and beneath us the other order already moves.
It is burning.
It is dreaming.
It is waking up.

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