Evolution or Revolution?

The snow is melting!!! It will take a few days to get gone. Fortunately, we’re in for a string of 40+℉ all week. Can you tell that I’m not one of those who has to have their ice house removed by a week from tomorrow? I have two objectives for next week: 1) finish organizing the tax information, and 2) get much of the dog droppings cleaned up as melting continues. If I succeed at both, I’ll reward myself with a trip to one of the local fly-fishing shops.

February hoar frost on the trees

Photo by J. Harrington

The dogs are much happier now that the temperatures have gone to positive numbers. The warmer, moister, air seems to hold more enticing aromas (smells if you’re a dog) so they enjoy that too. We’ve come into hoar frost and rime ice season. If we get some it’ll be beautiful, as usual. Soon the song birds will be singing their spring songs and tom turkeys will be gobbling to impress hens.

I’m rarely sorry to see February go. In Minnesota, winter is usually three or four weeks longer than I’d like. I’m crossing my fingers that this spring may actually be like a springtime, instead of just a jumbled-up change from winter to summer. Next month we’ll get this year’s fishing licenses and start planning some trips. The older I get, especially since last November, the more I’m taking to heart John Voellker’s Testament of a Fisherman.

I’m also looking forward to digging out one of the presents I got last Christmas and doing more local exploring based on Angie Hong’s Exploring the St. Croix River Valley. The best part of the year is ahead of us and we need to enjoy as much of it as we can.

We’ll close out Black History Month this year and respond to a wannabe king with an all too fitting

Declaration 

Tracy K. Smith
1972 – 

He has 

              sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people



He has plundered our—



                                             ravaged our—



                                                                   destroyed the lives of our—



taking away our­—



                                 abolishing our most valuable—



and altering fundamentally the Forms of our—



In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for

Redress in the most humble terms:

                                                                Our repeated 

Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.



We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration

and settlement here.



                                    —taken Captive



                                                              on the high Seas



                                                                                             to bear—

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

‘Twixt Valentines and Spring

We hope you had a warm Valentine’s Day full of hugs, kisses and loves. Ours did and added too much candy to be good for us since we were just finishing off the Christmas stash. Time to start practicing self control again. Wish me luck!!

Over the past few days we’ve watched a flock of a baker’s dozen turkey hens scratch the daylights out of our back yard. Where there had been a couple of inches of snow cover, after the birds’ visits, oak leaves cover the ground. They no doubt found most of the acorns they were looking for or they’d still be scratching for them. Yesterday, as they trod downhill, they looked like a division of miniature tanks coming toward the house. By sometime next month, toms may start to gobble as mating season begins.

red osier dogwood brightening

Photo by J. Harrington

At the moment, we’re under an “Extreme Cold Watch” with wind chills from minus 33 to minus 39 forecast for tomorrow and Tuesday. By next weekend, daytime highs are forecast to reach above freezing. Remember the old saying “If winter’s here, can spring be far behind?” Let’s hope it’s right (behind)!! Meteorologically we’re now less than two weeks from the beginning of spring on March 1.

It’s about that time of year when red osier dogwood begins to brighten tamarack swamps. Soon we’ll be hearing the tinkles and tunks of snowmelt dripping and flowing as nature begins to climb out from under her winter blanket. Spring is a season the Minnesota does not usually do well. The pattern is too often cold, cold, cool, warm, hot, over about that many days. Maybe this year will be an exception to the usual and we’ll get to enjoy an extended, gradual warming over weeks to come. Maybe some year the Vikings will win the Superbowl, too. Lots of natural, and naturalized, Minnesotans have become quite good at saying “Wait ’til next year.”

Here in the North Country, by the time we leave Black History Month, we will be entering the

Country of Water

Mahogany L. Browne

I know who I am because I believe it

The breath in my chest
Insistent in its choice

The skin that I’m in
The bones and blood and veins
It carries like a promise

          Have you witnessed the ocean

Moving with so much gust and life
Have you witnessed the river
Still waters bubbling the rebirth of school

           Have you witnessed your body

Its own country of water
Moving against the tide of a world
So heartbreaking      it’s forgotten its own voice

Be still friend
Be still
Be kind to yourself in the gift of stillness

I know who I am because I believe it
I know
I know
Who I
Who I
Believe
Believe
Believe
In three’s we will come
A drip of water moving against a boulder
Water slow and steady can turn rock
Into a pebble
Like anxiety
Like self-doubt
Smaller
Smaller
Until gone
Let your love for yourself be the water
Be the rise
Be the mist
Let you be

I know who I am because I believe it
I believe I am my mother’s daughter
I believe I am my grandmother’s prayers
I believe I am my great-grandmother’s backbone revealed

I am I am because I believe so
I am because a woman believed in me
What a continent I became
What a country of water I be
I flow and fluid and rise and ebb and I believe in me

           I am not wrong
I am wronged

In this skin I’ve reclaimed
From this trap of this country’s tourniquet
Only to find the sweet solace is a river bed
Its mud beckons me closer to its silt
Small fish and forgotten glass unearth themselves
Like baby teeth
Only one can cut into flesh purposely
Only one does not know what it is capable of

I believe in the air as much as I believe in the fire
I believe in the fire as much as the water consumes
I believe in a higher source
Energetic and wise
I believe in my ability to thrive

This body
        This body is a good thing

Turning two miles walked over a bridge into a family’s meal
Creating poems that become cashier’s checks
Dentist bills and rent
I’ve three holes in my teeth
And a nation that pretends I didn’t almost die for it to survive

I am I am still here still here
I am still here and like the ocean, full of salt and shells
Full of ship remnants and noble ones
I bleed and the sand grieves
I be because someone survived for me to be here
Today

Breathing this almost air
Marching for cleaner belongings
My front seat beneath the deadening stars
Is still a seat
Is still a ground
Is still a home that I can pronounce my given name
To write amongst the forgotten names
The taken and the ignored
But today

            There are no tombstones

Today
There is no true death

Only life
Only life
Only a song of the living
Maybe even a belief system
With water as its minister

            I am water

I dive into my own currents
I dress my dreams in the satin breath
Of my ancestors

I know
I know
I know who I am
I know who I am because I believe it

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.