Three Meditations

Tender Winds, Deep Breaths, and the Night Sky

Before I get going, I want to offer a joyful welcome to all the new subscribers. When I started writing A Thin Space two-ish years ago, it received a slow trickle of subscribers, then a more steady stream, but I have never experienced the sudden gush of new readers that has occurred here in the last couple of weeks. I believe many of you have come from

Anne Boyd

and her wonderful Audacious Women. Here, at A Thin Space, I write to record what I notice of my own human journey in hopes that something in that story finds resonance with your own. Thank you to each of you, whether you’ve been here two years or two days (two minutes?), for your presence.

In Nebraska’s Pine Ridge

Poetry

Here’s Twyla Hansen’s “Walk on the Prairie.” Twyla grew up in Nebraska and was its state poet in 2018.

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Journeying

I’m sitting on the stoop outside our small cabin in northwestern Nebraska. The smell of pine, heated in the afternoon sun, fills the air. When we first stepped out of our car after the long cross-state drive, I gulped breaths of that resinous smell. It reminds me of my birth state, Montana, and summers spent camping there with my dad. I filled my lungs with it, trying, as I always do, to save it, store it away for the many months I will spend without it. Now, I sit absorbing the smell and listening to the sound of wind in the tops of the trees. The topography here divides and shapes sound in unfamiliar ways. During yesterday’s rainstorm, the thunder cracked in distinct pitches, articulating sharply against the canyons. Today, I hear the wind as it blows with force across the ridges and bluffs, but I don’t always feel it. When I do notice the wind on my skin, in my hair, the sensation arrives softened, a few seconds after the sound.

My family and I squat around the fire pit, roasting marshmallows on bamboo kebab skewers we’d bought at the local grocery store. We work to cook only the marshmallow and not the skewer. Then we press our toasted marshmallows between cracker and chocolate and devour our s’mores, while we wait for the sky to darken. We can already see several bright stars; my daughter uses a phone app to tell us their names. But we know that when the night sky goes truly black, the lack of light polution in this part of the country will allow us an incredible view of our part of the cosmos. As it does, we all begin to complain of sore necks from craning to look at the sky. I stretch out on one side of the stone picnic table to give my muscles a rest. And the sky becomes a magic cupboard, at first appearing to hold only the familiar contents, but as we gaze longer, the ordinary became the infinite, a continually unfolding world pierced with light. I lie on the bench and breathe. I feel the cold hardness on my spine and watch as the Milky Way brushes the tops of the Ponderosa pines above me. The voices of my children and partner rise and fall as they point out different constellations and track satellites. My body stills, held by a few square feet of concrete and a boundlessness visible only on the darkest of nights.

I stand, finally, at the top of the ridge, my feet on the trail I have tried to find all afternoon. Beyond me, I can see the promised Black Hills marked on the map, and behind me the very unmarked trail I have followed to get here. To be clear, the trail had begun as a wide mown path that moved steadily upward through the sandstone canyon, until it became, abruptly, much less manicured, eventually diminishing to a game trail. By that point in the hike, I’d already startled a mule deer out of the ravine, interupted several ticks in their search for my skin, and had a serious conversation with a snake lying across the path. I wanted to get to the overlook, the view, and if I had to follow the deer, wade through shortgrass prairie, and brave insects seeking my blood to get there, I would. And, now, I’m here. The land falls away in front of me rolling in low hills and ridges past rock formations toward a wider plain and, woven into the blue horizon, the Black Hills. The wind blows with a tenderness that surprises me in such a high, exposed place. Other topographies, mountain ranges, oceans, thick forests do not produce in me the same heightened sense of possibility as does this broad landscape shaped by buttes and bluffs, ravines and coulees. As I stand on the trail, the expanse comes to take up occupancy in my body. My nerves thrum with it. My bones remind me that I am so much more than my story, the words I use to tell me who I am. I take a deep breath, drink in the landscape, let it seep in through my pores, then turn toward the trailhead to meet my ride.

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Gardening and Making/Mending

The front field

In my last newsletter, I wrote about my moveable garden,¹ the cultivated and wild spaces I’ve found during my travels this summer. A couple of weeks ago, this garden included a young wildflower meadow, lily pads with deep pink blossoms, and the thick woods of northeastern Kansas. I’ve just written about the canyons and sandstone bluffs of Nebraska’s Pine Ridge. In a few weeks, I’ll sit with the incredible expanse of the Pacific ocean on the edge of California, and then, just before school begins, my family will travel east to the flat fields and forests of the eastern Midwest. I’ve enjoyed the gift of these gardens I don’t have to tend, especially, during my summer of rest and attention to systemic fatigue. But all of this movement has meant that my home garden has grown unwieldy and a bit feral. In truth, I want a wild garden, one that doesn’t take traditional forms, one that’s a bit absurd, strange. I certainly have it this year. What I also have is weeds. Before our most recent trip, I took a day to weed and mulch the back beds at the Airbnb. I also made a note that the back and front beds at our house would need it next. This morning as I watered, I noted that the cucumbers, beans, and squash need staking and that the weeds in both of these beds are knee high. I also discovered that the resident groundhog has eaten as much of the beans as he could reach from the other side of the fence. Someday I will write a post about my tenuous relationship with this very fat creature who lives under one of our sheds. I’ll write about the deal we’ve struck where he only eats the sunflowers and dill plants, while leaving all else alone, the deal that, in my absence this summer, he’s broken multiple times.

Just looking at these socks makes me sweat.

Ah, knitting. I have one and half socks completed. I knit on our trip out west and have done a bit since we returned. I chatted with my daughter about some clothes patterns she likes, and we planned a visit to an independent fabric store in Columbus, Ohio later this summer. But I need to weed! Eventually, the weather will cool; the weeds will die of their own accord, and my creativity will turn inward. Until then, I’ll be in my garden and those I seem to find freely and everywhere, without effort of my own.

1. Yes, I’m thinking of Hemmingway’s A Moveable Feast, his memoir of life in Paris between the world wars. This my favorite Hemmingway book. Undisputed craft aside, his other books always left me in tears and despairing of life.