Laurie Klein, Scribe

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A Respect for Emergence

by Laurie Klein 14 Chiming In

Of all the nerve. A moose plunged through our snowy wonderland.

The neighborhood Bullwinkle gouged the back forty trail. My trail. I have slogged a reliable floor on snow shoes by compressing numberless, nearly weightless flakes — bound together by weather and gumption.

Moose tracks boggle my sense of proportion. Those hoof prints could be family-size canned hams.

And those gouges compromise balance: a boot teeters, an ankle gives way. No wonder my usually mellow soul bristles.

Overnight, the gentle herbivore collapsed whole sections of trail I have carved and re-carved, daily, over four months. Through sleet and sunlight and once, near whiteout.

Come spring, I mean to jog again. A gear junkie would buy snow shoes designed for running. I’m too cheap. For now, dogged phlogg-ing fuels my training regimen:

  • pitch body forward
  • trust metal claws
  • let poles swing, plant, propel

Rhythm cuts the trail.

Most days something pent up inside hollers, Move it! Make your way through this booby-trapped world.

But what about the wilderness carried within? Some of us crave drama. Others dodge it. How to navigate those unexpected sinkholes that compromise footing?

Weight wise, a bull moose is the equivalent of a grand piano. In the midst of deep drifts, the toes splay — akin to snow shoes. Each hoof’s surface area increases, which minimizes how far those long legs can sink.

The hoof is a hardworking trinity. There are compacted shock absorbers. Two cloven toes function like our middle and ring finger. A dew claw becomes weight bearing and enhances agility, like our pointer and pinky.

Ingenious.

And . . . almost heart-shaped. A terrible magnificence has cratered my sacred aisle, through bowed-over knapweed, through powder and windswept ripples and hummocks of ice.

Caprice? Necessity? Irreversible ruin?

Poet Molly Peacock writes about sustaining “a respect for emergence.” Bound to be awkward. Guaranteed to counter preferred rhythms.

Ideally, perhaps we navigate the intrusive by remaining attentive. Patient.

What if we welcome unwanted traffic on our perceived turf? What if something gentle yet powerful we’ve yet to identify calls to us now, from below the surface?

Lord, be our balance, our surefooted joy.

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Friends, what keeps you nimble in challenging times?

P.S. You might enjoy this poem I wrote (many thanks to publisher Katie Manning, Whale Road Review)

Tracks

1
Loneliness moves by stab
and creak over winter hills—

crossbite of straps,
cunning hoops with teeth. Like prayer,

snowshoes re-float the body,
distribute its burden.

Wood or aluminum,
baskets-and-poles —

be our wings. Our boats.
Surrogate bones.

2
Fences run with the hills.
Snow fleas pepper the snow

beneath spruce. Skitter of mice
in whiskery lines, strut

and splay of the wild turkey.
Beneath my flat blue shadow

and, deeper down, the memory
of bared soles, mingled

with fossils. Today:
practice not sinking.

*****

“. . . yet I will rejoice in the LORD . . . my strength . . . he enables me to tread on the heights” (Habakkuk 3:18, 19a, NIV).

From the archives, you might also enjoy: Lessons from a Moose

*Quote, Molly Peacock, A Friend Sails in on a Poem.

Photo by Ivars Krutainis on Unsplash

Filed Under: Immersions Tagged With: Bullwinkle, emergence, hoof, moose, snow shoeing, tracks March 7, 2023

Lessons from a Moose

by Laurie Klein 30 Chiming In

Heartsick and hunkered under a lap quilt, I light my prayer candle. The votive flickers within its chunky glass holder, a treasured, fire-in-ice gift from my lifelong friend. Yesterday, she was diagnosed with cancer.

Oh, friend. Oh shit. Merciful God, please intervene!

I yearn to help. And I want to bolt, escape to the woods, outrun heartbreak.

Beyond my window Indian Summer burnishes the aspen’s heart-shaped leaves to quavering gold.

Hold on. Those movements exceed a passing breeze. Branches thrash.

Camera in hand, I edge onto our deck: grunts … rustles … CRACK! — massive jaws are tearing off limbs.

I inch nearer. A dark, unblinking eye slues in its socket, meeting mine. Abashed, I shift my gaze. Behold, 800 swayback pounds of fur quixotically arranged atop legs like stilts: a moose.

moose, caught in the act

AND her twins.

Moose family

I study their commandeered buffet — this time, the crab apple.

Does the cow scent human? Have her calves ever seen one?

Stilling breath / bones / muscles … I try to communicate: No threat here and No greens for me today, thanks. After all, a mature moose weighs as much as a car, can charge at 35 miles per hour, and possesses front hooves designed to lash out in any direction.

So, I stay put, snapping breathless photos.

Then … simply watch, rapt. Only God could imagine into bone / joint / sinew-and-hide these stoic, browsing eccentrics. How effortlessly they radiate wildness.

Moose are focused. Adept. Insouciantly unafraid.

Moose: literally, “Eater of Twigs.” De-nuder of trees. And these three are thorough. The ornamentals will soon be whittled to nubs!

Stamping my feet, I shout. Flail. Make noises, mostly unintelligible.

It’s a lot like praying for someone with cancer.

Are such cries disrespectful? Do they communicate? Are they vacant gestures against a disease all-consuming in its hunger?

I mutter prayers anyway, writes author Brian Doyle.

Did they have any weight as they flew?

I don’t know.

But I believe with all my heart that they mattered because I was moved to make them. … believe that the impulse to pray is the prayer, and that the words we use are only envelopes in which to mail pain and joy …

It’s the urge that matters — the sudden Save us that rises against horror, the silent Thank you for joy.

Even the wrenched-out gutterals — ?!#%?&?! — all that is ornamental pared back to the raw shoot.

So, I pray for my friend with cancer. And for others I know, also gravely afflicted with different versions.

I pray for all of us. That we remain focused. Adept in grace. Insouciantly unafraid.

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What’s staring you down, eyeball-to-eyeball? I’d gladly add my prayers to yours.

Brian Doyle, Leaping: Revelations and Epiphanies

Moose calf by the deck

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Immersions Tagged With: cancer, focus, grace, moose, new eyes, prayer, see, sight October 11, 2020

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Where the Sky Opens, a Partial Cosmography

Where the Sky Opens, a Partial Cosmography
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