Shared experiences

Our deck view last week

When I was a kid, my dad designed and built a lake cabin about an hour's drive from our home in northern Minnesota. I learned to love fishing, picking blueberries, listening for loons, and just being in the woods and close to nature.

I discovered, or developed, an important part of myself there; I was relaxed, grounded, in the moment. I felt healthy. As an adult, I lived and worked hundreds of miles away, but I headed to that plain little cabin for summer vacations and left behind all the tensions and frustrations of my job. Peter, who had grown up in New York and spent family time at the ocean, came to love the north woods as well.

The cabin was sold in 1993, and that summer Peter and I became regulars at St. Paul Saints baseball games. We never revisited the lake experience until last summer, when I rented a cabin at a great little resort on Star Lake in north-central Minnesota. We loved the place, and I realized how much I had missed the part of me that spent hours and hours attuned to the gently lapping waves, the sound of wind in the trees, and the constant presence of birds and other critters, seen and unseen.

Knowing how our grandkids enjoy nature, we immediately wanted to share this lovely experience with them and their parents. So this year, we had a two-part vacation. The first three days Peter and I rested, fished, took a couple of hikes to check out potential kid activities, and entertained our friends Carol and Michael, who have retired to a lake home about 50 miles from "our" resort. It was wonderful to see them, and really fun showing them around our new favorite place.

On Wednesday, Abby arrived with the kids (their dad had a prior engagement, the week-long bicycle ride across Iowa). In short, they LOVED everything about it. Among the highlights: fishing, swimming, playing on the beach and at the little playground, hiking, helping row a boat, spotting an eagle and some deer, hearing loons day and night, sitting on the deck among the treetops, playing in the screened porch that Augie calls the Game Room, eating fresh-caught fish, and having sleepovers with Pa and Grandma. Oh, and playing with the computer and iPad. Hey, we all needed some down time. This is not my childhood no-water-no-electricity cabin.

Vi and I were lying on beach towels one afternoon, warming in the sun after swimming. "Grandma," she said, "Your cabin is better than your house." Why is that, ViolaMae? "Because it has bedrooms and a bathroom downstairs for me and my family to sleep."

I have more stories that will wait for another post. Suffice it to say that as we drove home, Peter and I were wearing broad smiles, enjoying our north woods experience doubly because we were able to share it with the youngsters and because they embraced it with so much enthusiasm.

When they visit Daddy's family in Montana, they love to visit a working farm. This year they also went to Yellowstone, where they learned to identify the scat and tracks of bison and other animals. They can't wait to go again, and Augie knows exactly which animals to look for out west. He knows his list of Minnesota animals (and birds), too, and we look forward to years of discovery and fun ahead.  

Visiting the nature center

Listening to Pa's heart

"Pa! Grandma! Look, it's two prairie chickens! And over here, two mallards and two woodducks!"

Today we made our first visit to the Harriet Alexander Nature Center in Roseville, Minnesota, and it was a big hit. The interpretive center is set up to engage the interest and imagination of kids. Augie and Vi, as well as five or six others who came in, clearly felt right at home.

Wearing anlers

It helps that our kids already love nature. For example, Augie knew nearly every bird on display in the interpretive center. He pointed out the great blue heron, the horned owl, the raven. By this time three other families had come in. "Is he right?" someone asked. "I don't know; he's the expert," Peter said. "How did he learn all that?" "He read his bird book." In fact, he has memorized his bird book, and he was thrilled to see so many specimens that we haven't spotted in nature yet.

He saw what he thought was a Cooper's Hawk. A mom said, "I don't think the Cooper's Hawk is so mottled." Peter found a tag that identified it as a red-tailed hawk. Instant group learning experience.

Figuring out a tricky toy

Vi made herself right at home playing a game with another child and his grandma, and both kids loved the medical kit which included a working stethoscope. We tried on various antlers, identified different fur pelts (is it wrong to want a coyote coat?), made hoof and paw prints in a sandbox, admired the delicacy of a small snake skeleton, looked at books in the nature library, watched birds at the feeders just outside the windows, and saw bright blue bags hanging from maple trees to collect sap.

The people at the nature center offer programs for preschool-age kids, and I had thought about signing up for one or two. But everything was so inviting and we had so much fun that I think we'll just continue on our own.

We'll be back soon to explore the walking trails and revisit our new friends, including the prairie chicken and the red-tailed hawk. 

Will the real Mother Nature please stand up?

When you Google "Mother Nature images" you find things like this--bountiful, rounded women wrapped in flowers and creatures, looking sexy (procreation and all that). When I look out my window I'm tempted to think of her that way, given the proliferation of flowers and winged things just now. But nature can be harsh. Roaming neighbor cats kill songbirds. Bees are disappearing for reasons we don't even understand, and their absence will play havoc with our food supply. Oil set loose in the ocean is killing birds and fish that we can see, and thousands of lifeforms we don't see, all of them part of nature's interdependent system.

I've had this poster by Amado Maurilio Pena Jr.for 25 years. I bought it because I love Southwest Indian pottery (and, I admit, because the colors matched our bathroom decor at the time). I came to see these women as Pena's version of Mother Nature. The black earthen pot is taking on life in utero; a birth canal opens beneath it. The women's faces are lined, and they turn away. Their angular figures resemble the topography of the desert Southwest. In this view, nature appears dry and harsh...because it is.

Children's stories are full of the give and take of nature. Suki, the Saggy-Baggy Elephant, escapes a tiger and a crocodile, and a herd of adult elephants rescues him from a lion. Augie was only two when he fell in love with that story. His mommy cringed, hating for him to know that dangers lurk. But he insisted on reading it. So every day we talked about Mommy and Daddy and grandparents being the "big elephants" who are there to protect Augie and Vi.

Little Cottontail's mother teaches him to evade the fox. But Henny Penny and her foolish, unthinking friends are outwitted, and eaten, by Foxy Loxy. We talk about it with Augie and Vi, but not in detail. Death is not yet in their vocabulary. A month or two ago, we took them to see tiny baby birds in a nest. A few days later the birds were gone. Too young to have fledged; they were probably grabbed up by a crow.The kids never asked and we never mentioned it.

Phoenix newly hatched

Instead, I began showing them an eagle cam. An eaglet called Phoenix was growing up on camera on Hornby Island in British Columbia. We were charmed by the tiny white fuzzball, and the kids were mildly interested in new feathers and rapid growth. In truth, I was the one who became fascinated, checking in every day to watch Phoenix learn to feed herself and begin to stretch ever-longer wings. Reading comments of the chatroom regulars, I learned more about eagles than I'd ever known, and I started to take a certain pride in the spunky eaglet who seemed ready to fly any day.

On Wednesday evening, Phoenix died in the nest. She was seen having trouble breathing, and rescuers with special equipment were on the way but she died before they could reach her. Instead, they brought Phoenix's body down from the nest and flew it to Vancouver, where tests are being done to determine cause of death. Thousands of people around the world had watched Phoenix, and there is great sadness, as you may imagine. To honor Phoenix, people are leaving Facebook tributes, sending contributions to the organization that helped in the rescue-recovery effort and volunteering with avian rescue around the world.

Phoenix

Watching Phoenix was somewhere in the continuum between bountiful Nature and harsh Nature. It was fun, enriching, satisfying, but realities came into view...locals talked about the diminished fish population, noise pollution, other dangers to wildlife. Phoenix's sibling egg never hatched. One of the two eaglets born last year had died in a freak accident (it was caught in Mom's tailfeathers and fell when she left the nest).

It is certain that every living thing will die. Most species survive at the expense of other species, keeping things in balance. And Nature is served when the less fit do not breed...hence the expression "survival of the fittest." When humans, with amazing hubris, poison and pollute and otherwise interfere, Nature produces consequences that we didn't predict and often don't like. We are diminished, whether we know it or not.

We don't yet know what killed the 11-week-old Phoenix. The vet has reported that outwardly, her body was thin but otherwise perfect (and that she probably was female). We speculate...did she eat something poisoned? Were there internal problems? Whatever the reason, I'm sad. Nature is bountiful, and harsh.