January | In Hindsight

Posted on February 17, 2016 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

The new year has already been flying by! We’re 17 days into February and I haven’t even taken the time to write a review of the month of January. Time flies too quickly. The month of January was a quiet month. That really is nice sometimes. The quiet and the mundane are appreciated after the hurry and bustle of the Christmas holidays.

The Christmas bustle was just sifting away, like a breath of snow, when Jess and her fiance Nick came to visit. For a week, I enjoyed some time off spent with them and the rest of the family. We enjoyed the typical tourist activities, like Mt. Rushmore and the Wildlife Loop in Custer State Park, as well as some less-frequented gems, like Spokane. We were also able to take a day to drive down to our property in Pringle. Since it is an hour and a half south of us and it isn’t even remotely “on our way” anywhere, we don’t get down there very often. When we do, it is a joy! Such beautiful country it is down there. So remote and wild and untouched.

When I was able, I spent time working in the Miner’s Cabin to get it closer to being livable – Dad and Sarah got a lot done, working on the wiring, getting the wood stove usable, and sorting through years of keepsakes and books and artifacts. With the wood stove going, the Miner’s Cabin is now a wonderful haven even in the coldest weather. The stove is rather too big for the cabin, but it sure heats it up quickly! I spent hours out there in January enjoying the quiet, sewing some new skirts, listening to “Adventures in Odyssey” and Zane Grey, and enjoying feeling the warmth slowly take over the little house. I am really looking forward to being able to move out there.

January was sprinkled throughout with ideal weather – Anything from 50 degrees and sunny to 15 degrees and snowing. A beautiful snow storm or two afforded some lovely hiking – One hike in particular through the heavily falling snow was like walking through a fairyland. Time after time, I wished I had my camera, but I’m sure I would have dropped it multiple times as we all slipped and slid through ravines and creek beds.

So January rolled by quietly and unobtrusively, punctuated at last with the romp of rodeo at the Black Hills Stock Show. Great times. It is always encouraging to see such a crowd come together for some good, clean fun, for a sport that is so steeped in hard work, sweat, and Western dust and dirt.

The months keep breezing by – Each with their own flavor and their own set of memories. The first month of the year is past. And there are 11 more months to go in 2016!

Hidden Treasure

Posted on January 17, 2016 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

The beauty of winter is of an entirely different character than the beauty of spring, summer, and autumn. If the beauty of the seasons could be described in terms of music, spring, summer, and autumn would be various moods of an orchestral masterpiece. But the beauty of winter would be akin to a wistful flute solo, soaring airy just out of reach of complete comprehension. At the heart of winter is simplicity.

The beauty of winter is in the illumination of those things which, in the green and growing months, are often obscured by the glorious and gaudy, the lush and lavish, the bright and boisterous. Those little things, those hidden treasures, suddenly come to light. When there is nothing else more eye-catching to marvel at, then the colors in a curl of white bark, or the mysterious shimmer of falling snow, or the patterns of frost on a pane of glass can be appreciated for their otherworldly, exquisite simplicity.

A winter hike is a like a search for hidden treasure. Instead of tangible, quantifiable beauty, like a flower, or a green, green landscape, it is the intangible, the play of lights and shadows that make the beauty of winter. To see the beauty of winter, it is necessary oftentimes to look closer, to look deeper into the well of beauty.

When I find something in summer that catches my eye, it is often something unmistakable like a blooming flower, or a certain cluster of trees, or a gold-lined autumn path, or the way the landscape shimmers in evening. But in winter, those things that catch my eye are often the things that grow deep in the underbrush, or which nestle close at the base of a tree, or which cling to bare branches, or the way the snow outlines the hillside or the tree or the fenceline, or those moments which I cannot duplicate, like light streaming through a broken jar, or glowing through husks of flowers, or the specific way the snow fell heavy and silent for five minutes during that one snowfall, or footprints in a freshly fallen snow.

Hiking yesterday with Roy and Reagan and Anna, the trees were covered over with snow. The beauty was breathtaking. Snow fell from the branches as we walked beneath them in their silence. Snow fell from the sky as we walked beneath the peace and serenity of the clouds. We tried to catch snowflakes on our tongues. The beauty was in seeing the normally unseen, the giant dead pine with pine cones squirreled away inside of it, on a steep hillside we’ve never hiked before, or the rock overhang with crystals as thick as my little finger, or scrambling over, though, under, and between snowy branches, slipping and falling in the snow, crawling through brush that would normally be all but impassible in the summer, shaking snow from branches and sending it showering down all around.

The treasure of winter is the subtlety of its gifts.

Findings | Treasures in the Snow

Posted on January 6, 2016 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

Even in the dead of winter, some color hasn’t faded.

These little gems have captured my imagination since I first saw them back in October, I think it was. They’re tenacious, in more than one way.

Life of Light

Posted on November 28, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

In the spring and summer, Creation is simply bursting at the seams with new life, overflowing, like a too-filled glass – On any given day, the fragrance of green things, growing life, blooming flowers, the songs of love-struck birds and their birdlings, the murmur of the trees, all these combine to create an unmistakable portrait of freshness and life.

IMG_4840.1lowrez In the winter, though, when the snow flies and the drab brown of late fall is buried, a new sort of life appears. It is found in the subtle play of lights and shadows, the flicker and glint of ice, the sifting magic of the falling snow, the bewildering and enchanting shades of color found in a drift of snow or in the shadows beneath the trees, the lavender and pale blue and silver and grey and amethyst. The few hours of warm light call out what hardy animals remain above the earth, and they bask while they can in what warmth they can find.

The moonlit night is the most alive, when the snow-covered hillsides stretch out further than they do in the daylight, brighter than day, when the edge of the woods looms up dark and strangely welcoming, and when the light of the moon drowns out all but the brightest of the stars. The stars seem to shine instead from the glinting snow, flickering, changing, sparking, and it dazzles the eyes, the play of dark and light. It is entirely otherworldly, and it is sublime. Frost settles into the branches of the trees and onto the hip-high grasses, and then they, too, glint and flicker and take on an enchantment of their own. The moon of summer doesn’t compare with the moon of winter.

IMG_4827.1lowrez And then, at the end of the day, when the light is just right, the memory of fall is recalled, the memory of the end of the summer – gold and red and rich brown and the sagey green of lichen. That lasts only minutes before the sun disappears behind the hills and a deep blue shadow spreads out over the valleys.

Spring and summer are alive with breathing life, growing life, and blooming life. Winter is alive with sunlight and moonlight and starlight, reflecting off ice and snow and filtering through the bare branches of trees.

The life of winter is the changing, mystifying life of light.

Laura Elizabeth

Autumn waking

Posted on October 19, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

Sometimes all it takes to clear the mind of distraction, sorrow, worry, weariness, and pessimism is the feeling of dew on my jeans, the sound of brown leaves folding beneath my feet, the rush of a scramble into a dry creek bed, and the glint of the sun through and in the trees.

It is impossible to capture the flicker of dew in the long grass, or to describe the captivating fragrance of the wet earth, a draught stronger than wine, the musk of earth, the sweet of grass, subtle and fresh and intangible. The flicker of scarlet and orange of berries clinging in the twigs of trees, the yellow of a fallen leaf. I wish I could put words to the changing touch of the air from shadowed ravine to sunny hillside – The chill kiss and the warm caress. Sometimes they blend – The warm caress of a breeze wafting into the cool of the ravine, or the chill wind curling and streaming into the warmth of a fragrant open trail.

The hum of bees blends with the whisper of wind in the pines, and the trail curves ahead and disappears from sight. The ground is dark with heavy dew and the green is greener, the gold golder, the brown browner, the red redder in the rich, warm light.

What a mystery, to be walking straight into the sun, which seems hardly to hover above the tops of the trees, the sky brilliant with light, but to be enveloped in cool, moist valley air, walking briskly and without effort – the mystery of autumn in the morning. Or to top a small rise, emerging from a twilight-shadowed creek bed, and find ahead a glowing warmly bank of red-gold brush and sheer wall of golden rock, the pine trees standing like sentinels against the line of sky – the mystery of autumn at dusk.

“The Heavens declare the glory of God,” the Bible says. “Man’s heart away from nature becomes hard,” said Standing Bear. Who can help but marvel at the silhouettes of trees against a lavender sky, the moon tangled in the evening branches of the reaching oaks? Who can harden the heart when the world around is glowing with life, and the air is ripe with sunshine and piney resin and heavy with the damp of morning? The clouds glow like gold in the fading sun, just dipped below the horizon, then turn to the dark of steel and sit heavy in the trees. The sky releases the last of its light with a sigh, a slumbering, sleepy, lazy breeze that quietly stirs the trees, and a few leaves drop.

How can I tame the wildness of the eerie howls of coyotes just over the hill, or calm the unbidden racing of my heart, relishing the delicious thrill of the woods at evening? How can I keep forever the ghostly beauty of the birch trees at twilight, and call to mind their silver glow? It is all too much, too beautiful.

What a glorious way to fire the imagination, to calm and awaken the soul, to revive the weary body. What a refreshing, reviving cup to drink from – The cup of God’s creation, the cup of the green earth. “God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone,” a man once said, thought to be Martin Luther, “but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars.” The dew in the morning, the bees flying low in the grass, the heavens and trees, the moon and lavender sky, the stones underfoot and the dying red of the cliffs in sunset all make it impossible for me to believe anything other than that this world was created by a loving, awesome, infinite God who is worthy of my worship and adoration.

“To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.” said Helen Keller.

I agree.

Findings | Here and there

Posted on September 30, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

Had to stop on the way to work to snap a picture of this side road underneath a layer of cloud…Not for the first time, I was awestruck by the views on my way to work. So thankful to be here. God is good.