Spirit Light

I wish I could convey to you the richness of having this audience of readers, of all that you bring to me. You might think that I'm just dishing out the content and you're taking it in without giving back, but oh, you do give back in so many ways. Lucy from Minnesota has helped me figure something out that has been puzzling me. Well, I'll never truly figure it out. At least I hope I don't. There should be things that pass understanding.

I remember a long time ago a reader wrote me to suggest that I take Free Will Astrology off my list of Useful Links. He thought it made me look kind of wifty, and he preferred not to see me as such. Hmm. I do believe there's something in astrology, however they've recalibrated the calendar. I feel like a Leo. I know Bill's a Pisces through and through. Liam's a card-carrying Scorpio. I love to guess people's signs based on what I've observed. I believe there are compatibilities and dysfunctions that can only be explained by the stars.  And what's wrong with any tool we might employ that helps us better understand our fellow human? Just because it's nothing anyone can prove doesn't mean it lacks validity.

The older I get, the more willing I am to believe that there are Unexplainables in this world. Things that no one can quantify or predict, results that can't be reproduced. Phenomena. For me, it's all part and parcel of listening to the little voice inside me, the one that tells me to look there right now! or get out that door before I miss my appointment with the merlin who's perched, waiting for me just around the bend. The one that tells me what a baby bird might need in its diet to thrive, or what might be going through someone else's head at any given moment. The voice that tells me what I need and how to get it, whether it happens to be a missing mineral or inner peace that I'm lacking. The more I dampen the big voices all around me, the ones that tell me what I should be doing, the better I hear the little voice, the one that connects me to the Universe.

So this churchyard has been calling to me, this building high atop a hill, one that's suffered the indignity of having a water tower plopped right in its front yard, and magnificently survived it. It stands, unheated and alone and miraculously unvandalized, year after year as unseen hands sweep it and let the birds out and mow its little cemetery and stack the unknown headstones when frost heave and mowers displace them.

I think Waxler Church has never been more beautiful than the morning of December 28, when the sun finally burned through our permacloud and set it in stark relief against a turquoise sky.

I prefer to photograph it from angles where the water tower doesn't show, but I see it bombed the photo above, sticking its face into the right margin.

The oldest stones you can read date from about 1840, and most of those are auf Deutsch.

I wander about, finding children, like six-year-old Earnest. Someone still puts flowers on his grave. Who?

I find my neighbors, who are both still alive, and am comforted that they will rest here eventually. 1974 doesn't seem that long ago. Married on DeLoris' birthday. Sweet.

I stand amazed before the stone of Lester and Linda, at the scene of bucolic (ox-filled) fields, Linda watching Lester atop his tractor, a dog by her side. I knew them both, slightly, the way one knows country neighbors, to wave to and sometimes stop and chat with. I'm touched by the intricate engraving on the stone, the way the tractor's clearly identified as a Deere. 

Linda told my neighbor Beth that Lester came home one day from working in the field, sat down in his recliner, and "his heart blew up." She lived in the little house for 14 more years, selling fresh brown eggs from the hens in the big pen beside it. I remember once when her Hereford bull got out and allegedly knocked down a mailbox on our road, and its owner brought a frivolous lawsuit against her, the way some people will, defying all logic and decency, just wanting a fight for its own sake. Yep, go after the widow who's trying to run 30 head of cattle by herself, atta boy.  Linda went, head hanging, door-to-door, asking for character witnesses. I helped as much as I could, writing a letter to the judge in her defense. None of that's on the stone, but it's inside me, and I think about it as I kneel by their stone. None of it matters now, but it mattered then, the case of the Errant Bull, the Widow and the Litigious Neighbor.

Someone has planted a landscape rose next to a stone. Wisely behind it, because those roses have growth power to burn and would soon overtake and cover the stone. Looking closely, I see the tattered remnants of last summer's nest in the upper right branch of the bush. From the materials and placement, I surmise that this nest belonged to indigo buntings. It's a classic bunting site. They usually choose a shrub so small and spindly that no predator would think to look in it for a nest. The other choice would be field sparrow, but the materials suggest bunting. Perfect. I want to come back in spring and listen for their song, confirm my hunch that a cocoa-brown female bunting sat her speckled blue eggs in this nest.

I wonder whose stone it might be, so I move around to take a photo.

Ada Louise Hune. She passed in 1947 at the tender age of 15. This bit of information hits me with a wallop, I with my grace-filled 17-year-old daughter still sleeping in her bed at home. I photograph the stone and linger, thinking about how perfect it is that an indigo bunting would raise its family here, with Ada below.

When I get home and upload the photos, I'm startled by what I see. Yes, I was facing into the light, and it was low early morning light, but I've taken probably 4,000 photos with this little gizmo and have never had my iPhone react to light in this way. A shimmering rainbow orb hovers before Ada's stone. I haven't Photoshopped it. I don't even own the program. This is it, just what the camera saw. As I look at it, I'm filled with wonder and joy and peace, as if Ada has somehow managed to send a message from beyond, as if she's thrilled I noticed her and her bunting nest and stopped to linger and think about her, wonder who she was. My nose starts to sting and my eyes well up at the thought. Something has happened here, but I don't know, can't say what. Something. The little voice is speaking.

And then just a few days later I get a letter from a reader, Lucy from Minnesota, who lost her husband in the last year and as it was happening wrote to tell me how much this blog and especially the antics and voice of Chet Baker meant to her and her family. She'd read his Facebook status updates to her husband Arch, and even after he lost his ability to speak, she could tell how much they brightened his day. Cavendish, their Boston terrier, still looks for Arch in his office each night before they go to bed. That's how we met, through Lucy's letter of gratitude those months ago. I was deeply moved that Chet and I, with my silly way of channeling his thoughts and desires, had had a small part in making Arch's passing a little gentler for Lucy and their two beautiful kids. You never know who you touch when you reach out. It's invisible, but it's there nonetheless. I feel it.

I hadn't shared this photo with anyone yet. I hadn't written about it, either. It was locked up in my mind. In her letter, Lucy unwittingly gave me a key to understanding what might be happening here. I'll quote  her.

" I don't share this with a lot of people, but I see "spirit lights", and sounds like you do too. (Well, I am not aware that I do, but my camera seems to!) We really miss Arch's human energy and being the family of 4 our kids have always known. Seeing lights is not the same as a warm hug or a heart to heart conversation or a shared laugh but at least you have some reassurances. 

"When you and Chet posted the blog about visiting the country church I kept re-reading it. Not only because it was so perfect, but because I saw so many sparkles and orbs on and around my phone I couldn't clearly see the words. You really woke the dead on that one. Your thoughts were wise, and sometimes funny, and the parishioners must have been delighted by Chet's return(?). Lord knows where that fella was before he chose the ZT family. I wanted to message you right away, but it was our last day on the island when I read it and we were busy still taking things in. Anyway you probably were aware you stirred things up a bit and I think they all got a kick out of it. I look forward to future visits you and Chet might make to that lovely cemetery and church and really hope the RainCrows get to play there. I think the spirits do too. "

Wow. Could those be spirit lights around Ada Louise's stone? I never even knew there was a name for them. Perhaps someone with experience in the paranormal can look at this and tell me. Lucy?? I just know that there's got to be a reason burial grounds are sacred across cultures and centuries. Something's happening here. I feel the Waxler Church and the people I know there calling out to me. Not in a spooky weird way, just in a "come see us" way. A good way. Like they enjoy the new living energy I bring to their resting place. Like they like to hear me sing in what was once their church, and just maybe still is.

Turkey vulture totem feather, mystery message from above, lit now by the morning sun. I have come here to see this, the light of this hour.

Whatcha lookin' for, little man?

Seeing With New Eyes

Sunny day. Meeting two bluebirds who know us. That's about as good as it gets here in winter. Chet and I forge on. I can tell it's going to be an epic run. It already has been.

This landscape sets me free. We climb atop what I call Butterflyweed Hill and look back up the road toward home. I like getting different perspectives on this land I think I know. What does it look like from there? What about from there?  Let's see. I like living in a place where nobody seems to mind my doing that. If they asked, I'd tell them I was working. This is my work, noticing what's here, appreciating it, sharing it. It's just that it isn't a paying job in the conventional sense.

They've all seen me dozens of times, and know I'm harmless. Most people probably think I'm nuts, being out in all kinds of weather with my little dog. There's that crazy lady who jogs, climbs hills, looks around, takes pictures. Wonder what she does with all those pictures?

Nuffin'. 

We pass a car which turns out to be a 1968 Chevelle (Chevy Malibu with a different trim package). I learn all this from my friends Paul and Dirk, and confirm it with a look at the nameplate on the back. Truth told, I just like its lines, and the way the rust works with the white and the colors of the field around. It reminds me of an impala, not a Chevy Impala, but the African animal, with its rust to white countershading.

We move on, and the next person we meet is Coco. 

She is a perfect lady. She's the dog I told you about, who was abandoned on our county road. Mr. G. took her in and she's had three litters and made him $3,000 by his account. But he says he wouldn't take a million dollars for her. She is a wonderful dog. Also a member of the No Collar Club, I see. She lives on a busy county road where the cars fly, and she's got the sense to avoid them.  That right there tells you a lot about her.

Chet behaves himself around her, which speaks volumes about her manners and dignity.  An intact female, and he doesn't even get fresh with her. Go figure. She commands respect.

His shaved patch from the run-in with the German shepherd shines, and I wonder if he barged into her and surprised her on one of his conquests, if Coco would bite him, too. These are the chances we take when we live our lives and run the roads. We could sit home, growing plumper by the day, but we choose to move instead, to vary our view as we grow plumper by the day anyway. In a flurry of weirdness on Chet's birthday post, the one where he gets beat up by a German shepherd, one commenter wrote that she felt "very sorry for Chet," having a careless owner like me. Well, please don't waste any time feeling very sorry for this dog. He lives a fully interactive life as an athlete who gets to explore and run miles every day over new terrain. He is not a piece of inert animal furniture, leashed, fenced, overfed and cosseted like so many house pets.  Every day he has a choice as to whether to accompany me, and he gives me two paws up.

I love him for that. I wonder what I would do if I had a dog who could say no to a good run. And then I remember that we make our dogs who they are, and I feel better.

Done with Chet, Coco comes over to get some kisses on her sweet fuzzy nose from me.  I like Chet's pugnacious little bunnyface shadow, cast on Coco's satiny mocha-latte flank. Her skin slides all around on her ample frame, quite a contrast to tight-muscled, tight-coupled, drumlike little Chet.

We are in a hurry to get to the Waxler Church before the morning rays of sun get too high. I cannot wait to see it on a sunny day. I've never been there on a sunny day.

Ohhh. Even better than I'd dreamt. I'm so glad I've hurried and gotten here by 8 AM. The bounce light from the ground warmly illuminating the belfry, the sun coming through its windows, the way the skylight blues its shadowed side. Wow. Talk about being in the right place at the right time. This church calls me, all its people call to me across the miles. I find myself wondering how it looks in every light regime, and wanting to be there for each one. 

I love how someone has decorated the Booths' stone for Christmas, and I wonder if the little toy trucks were there before. There is so much I notice each time I come here, and wonder how I missed before. 

I find our neighbor Gayle's stone, realizing with a start that the recently turned ground where I stand (and instinctively jump aside) has yet to cover over with grass. The crabgrass covers first, of course, followed by the perennial grass. I should have noticed that. I used to talk with him as he mowed the fields, and I was at his funeral. It was there I first heard a recording of Vince Gill singing "Go Rest High On That Mountain." How had I never heard that song? How had I never seen this fresh-turned earth or Gayle's stone before?

Visiting this quiet churchyard is so much like entering the woods, picking up on things you've never seen or, more correctly, have never noticed.  It's like hearing a beautiful song that everyone else seems to know and love for the very first time, and wondering how it eluded you. 

I walk around in a state of wonder at all I've missed.

In a Country Churchyard

I'm amused by the shape of a high-hanging white-faced hornet's nest, echoing that of our enormous light blue watertower behind the scrim of trees. I guess they paint them blue to blend with the sky?

Which they sort of do. White would probably work better for most of the year...these white-sky winters seem to last forever.

We approach the Waxler Church, which sits high atop a hill outside Whipple, Ohio.

When the belltower started to fall down, the community's caretakers (a little band of former parishoners and their descendents) put the bell in a plexi box down front.

A way to keep it from falling through the roof, a way to keep it in memoriam.

To me, it looks like the church's head, displaced.

 The only spots of color are from a little American flag and a blue plastic bucket by the front door.

I know what that bucket is for. It's for spent plastic and silk flowers, which are about the only kind you ever see in these seldom-visited country church burial grounds. 

I circle the graveyard, looking for people I know. The longer I live here the more people I know. I see a former town selectman, and remember the three times he came to visit, once to greet us, once to get our vote, and once to investigate when our neighbor set his natural gas line afire. WHOOOOOMP!!!

Irene walks the roads I run on nice days. She usually has her hands behind her back, and never waves, but she might give me a chin throw sometimes. I don't see her in the winter, but I see her out walking most nice days the rest of the year. She lives alone down a dirt road in a tidy white single-wide. Doesn't have a car, has probably never driven. She used to live in a farmhouse after her husband died, but it burned down. The neighbors take care of her every need. This simple fact amazes me. She has no one else, so they bring her food and check on her every day. She's six years younger than my mother. Phoebe and I decide to bring her something on her birthday, which is coming right up. Her stone awaits.

Behind her rests Bessie Morganstern. She used to live in a white farmhouse on the corner of our road. I never knew her, but I knew her grandson Gary. Gary hunted everything, ate everything that walked, crawled or flew through these woods and fields. I wrote about Gary, even recorded an NPR commentary about him. The farmhouse is gone now, but daffodils push up through the smooth haymeadow each spring where it was.

I peer in, and the ghostly outline of the graveyard is overlain on the pews within.

I'm surprised to find the door secured only by a rubber bungee cord. I help myself inside.

These were German immigrants who built and attended this little church, which later became a schoolhouse, as many of them did.

Photos hang on the walls, undisturbed in the frigid cold. My dad would have been three years old when this photo was taken in 1915.

I roll the old-fashioned names around in my mouth. Gertrude, Bessie, Gladys, Luvada, Erma, Elver, Clessent. Names you don't hear any more. I wonder if they will ever come back. I somehow can't see them fighting their way past the Kaylas and Klaceys, the Briannas and Baileys of today. 

We make our way to the front, to what amounts to an altar.

There is a bouquet of silk flowers there, and in the bouquet someone has stuck a dark feather.

I am happy to inform you that it once rode the thermals in the wing of a turkey vulture, my totem bird. 

O person who put it here, thank you, for whoever you are, with your simple gesture you have made my day.

 I wonder if you knew it was a vulture's plume. 

Doubting it, but shivering with the perfection of it all anyway. 

Country Churchyard

It's warming up. A little bit. It's in the low 40's lately. And there have been peeks of sun. The peas I planted so hopefully in mid-March are six inches tall,  growing in a strangle in their planters in the greenhouse. It's still too cold to set them out. It's going to be a thing, untangling their roots and trying to set them out. I've never started peas in the greenhouse before. Maybe it's simply not done. I'll find out soon enough. It'll work or it won't.

I have some nice snow pictures and I'd better hurry up and get them posted before, you know, daffodils burst forth and birds start building their nests in the freezing cold, because they can't wait any longer.

Lately when it snows I take off with  my camera. It may just be on the way to town, but I'll take the back roads and shoot. These spring snows don't last long and I love them for that, and for the sudden lace they throw over everything.

I wonder if anyone is still planting catalpa trees. They seem like relicts of a bygone time. Does anyone say,  hmm, I'd like to have a catalpa in my yard?

There's a little church perched high above Stanleyville that I've always wanted to peek into. I can think of only one of these tiny country churches that's still used, and that's Lower PawPaw Methodist farther up the road. Sometimes you can hear the bells from our house on Sunday morning. This one's sitting silent. Such a nice building, it's a shame someone doesn't use it. Such churches stand witness to the old graves all around them. Nobody tears them down until they literally fall apart, but even then the graveyards are sacred and left untouched. I'm glad for that. They have a purpose, even if all their inhabitants are forgotten by most.

What a view these people have. I wonder if they rise like smoke up out of their graves and sit and look at it just before sunrise and sunset. I would. 

The older cemeteries are full of Germans from the Old Country, their inscriptions auf Deutsch.

In the mowing and the frost heaves, some stones inevitably get dislodged, displaced, orphaned. What you do then is lean them up against the church.

There's a moment of blue before the clouds close in again.

I snatch it

and peek in the window to see the cold still pews, waiting. These are nicer than most, with the curved sides.

I watch the winter light play across the landscape.

This would be nice to paint, with its limited palette. I forget how much country there is around here, how it just goes on forever, and how little of it I've explored. There's always something nice waiting when I do.

I peek in the trash can and find used lilies. So someone remembers and puts fake flowers out, and thinks to throw them away when they fade.

I turn for home and pass the dairy farm, little plastic igloos waiting for the calves who are separated from their mothers and fed from bottles as soon as they're born. Sigh. What a weird way to raise a calf, with a plastic outhouse and a bottle for a mother, never to know the loving scrub of her rough tongue on its skin. Imagine carrying a baby to term and then having it taken from you so you can keep being milked. It's a wonder they don't lose their minds, both mother and calf. Maybe they do.

 I'm thankful for fields and broken skies to look out over.

At home that morning, I couldn't see past the bird screen on my studio windows.

but out here, everything's lace.

My favorite shot of the day, an old truck and a redtail. You can hardly see him, but he's the black dot in the leftmost tree.

I've decided spring isn't coming this year. That way, it'll feel like a bonus when it does.