Roseberries

Posted on September 15, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

The roses that bloomed profusely this summer faded long ago, and in their place is a bounty of red rose hips. A friend, Hannah, and I found them a week ago while we were hiking on a logging trail on forest service land. I immediately started making plans to harvest some, which Anna and I did yesterday afternoon.

Rose hips, if you didn’t know this already, are the fruit of the rose plant. The hips are edible, but not raw–they have large seeds and a hairy pulp that need to be removed before the fruit can be consumed. But they can be made into jelly, or dried for use in teas. I’ve never harvested them before, since wild roses weren’t profuse enough in Illinois for any sort of meaningful gathering. Like with any small fruit, it takes a lot of plant to produce enough to logically and practically harvest from it!

But here, wild roses grow with abandon, as do raspberries, sunflowers, and any other number of wildflowers which lavish their abundant color and life onto an otherwise often hash landscape. There is a beautiful paradox in the presence of a fragile flower beneath the shadow of a towering granite peak. The delicacy of a flower or the perfection of its fruit highlight the grandeur and power of towering peaks and granite spires, just as their magnificence highlights the delicate beauty and diminutive intricacy of the wildflowers. Can they really belong to the same world? Yes, and the same God created them all! What goodness.

Anna and I spent two hours out on that forest service trail. A lot of it we spent walking, but the weather was perfect and the 5:00 sun soon hid itself behind trees and hills. We found one particularly good patch of rose hips, and gleaned from there for quite some time before moving on. Next summer, I’ll have to remember that rose hips come into season earlier. There were a few places where the rose hips were much overripe, considerably past pickable ripeness. Notes for next year. But we ended up with enough hips to make some jelly (I’m thinking rose-rhubarb sounds good…) and dry some for tea. Not as much as we’d like, but enough for the first year.

Birch and aspen trees have been catching my eye lately, and more yesterday, it would seem. There is something haunting and sylph-like about their white trunks and branching limbs, more noticeable against a backdrop of ponderosa pine and grey granite than perhaps they would be otherwise. Perhaps it is C.S. Lewis’ references to birch trees and dryads in his wonderful Narnia series that have haunted my imagination and still do. They’ve always seemed different to me, otherworldly, enchanted. Along the forest service road, they clustered in hollows and lined meadowland, stark and beautiful and dreamlike.

Little things can be so profound–The gentle cup of a harebell, or the golden glow of a head of grass. Profound and captivating, if you let yourself look hard enough and without any other expectation than to see something beautiful. How common a harebell is! How common a head of grass is! Yet how uncommon, how wonderful, how full of meaning. And how temporal, how fragile, how short-lived, soon to be struck away by the first hard frosts and the winter snow.

What a joy it is to have the sense of sight, the sense of smell, of touch, taste, of perception, the ability to recognize color, the permission to experience the joys of this world. Sometimes we go so quickly through life that we miss much, we miss the meaning in a harebell, or in ripe and golden grass. We miss the meaning in a towering peak, or in the racing openness of a prairie, open to the skyline. We look right past everything, missing those gifts that God has given us, the gifts we never had to work for, the gifts that demand nothing of us except the expectation of joy.

Some gifts we do have to work for, and those give even greater pleasure. One of those would be the joy of family, whether it be spiritual family or earthly. Yesterday, I got to experience some of the joy that comes from earthly family, the joy of cultivating healthy and loving relationships before God. I’ve got some pretty wonderful sisters. And hopefully they’ll help me with the rose-rhubarb jelly.

September sky

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

What better way to end a Sunday than by marveling at the glories of God’s creation? I could have sat there for hours, just staring at the sky, watching the occasional meteor come flaming into sight, basking in the silver light of a thousand million stars.

He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names. ~Psalm 147:4

Is not God high in the heavens? See the highest stars, how lofty they are! ~Job 22:12

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:

²“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
³Dress for action like a man;
    I will question you, and you make it known to me.
⁴“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
    Tell me, if you have understanding.
⁵Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
    Or who stretched the line upon it?
⁶On what were its bases sunk,
    or who laid its cornerstone,
⁷when the morning stars sang together
    and all the sons of God shouted for joy? ~Job 38:1-7

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork. ~Psalm 19:1

God is good.

Keeping focused

Posted on September 1, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

Started work officially as a scribe at a family practice clinic in Rapid City today. What a learning experience this will be! In spite of only four hours of sleep last night, the day went well and I think I’m learning. A lot.

For those of my readers who don’t know, I have absolutely no medical background. I am an artist, of various sorts. But I have a love of learning and a desire for knowledge. As a writer, any new experience, however challenging, can only add to the depth and breadth of my writing! This will be an opportunity to grow as a writer, but more importantly to cultivate a Christlike love for people, to grow in compassion, empathy, and in my desire to serve.

Of course I was exhausted by the end of the day (actually, by 10 a.m.), but tiredness doesn’t extinguish the joy of the art of photography. I found a few pictures just waiting to be taken on the way home this evening…These pictures caught my eye as I was almost home, in an open valley on Hwy. 40. We’ve had a lot of smoke in the Hills from fires further west, and a little fog this evening, too. The haze was illuminated by the evening sun, just as it was disappearing into a bank of cloud on the horizon. The sunlight streamed golden onto neat rows of hay bales, onto the western slopes of the foothills, onto a herd of cattle grazing in the last light of today.

Photography is a way of reminding myself of what a gift life is. Life can be bleak, daunting, or even just tiring. Days are long. I’m realizing September is going to be a very long month (working six days a week). But keeping myself focused on the beauty of life, on God’s goodness as I can express it through photography and writing, is a way of keeping centered on what is really important, lasting, and blessed.

Sunday walks and spiderwebs

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

Sundays always go too quickly–The fellowship, the family time, the blessed enjoyment of the outdoors. We live in such a fast-paced culture, but I’ve been discovering a peace that comes with a quieter life. Sometimes life gets busy and schedules get hectic, but coming home to a quiet life at the end of the day is unbelievably restful and calming. Regrettably, the last week sped by with hardly enough time to breathe deep of the clear, piney air or to ponder flowers in shady corners of the Hills. I tried to make up for it today.

A quiet, solitary walk to scout some good photography locations was restorative, even with temperatures in the 90s. I explored a beautiful little ravine branching off our jeep trail to Hole-in-the-Wall, and enjoyed the sight of birch trees glinting in the 5:00 sunlight. Deadfall and rocks, mossy soil and sandy creekbed–The ravine was like something straight out of a western novel. I love not being able to see what is around the corner–Where might it go? What is just out of sight, waiting to be discovered?

Another ravine, the grass bent from flooding, was scattered with ancient, sun-bleached bones. Some of them were mossy and green, all of them porous with time. Life is so short, so transient. Like the “flower of the grass”, the Bible says, life comes and life fades, just like that. Human life, animal life, plant life. But unlike the flower of the grass, we have a soul that will not die! And God is good to His children. So good.

On the way back through the corrals to get home, which are built with the bare rock as the fourth wall, I nearly walked right through this beauty’s web. I watched as she snagged herself a grasshopper, then scurried back to the center to watch and wait. Ants are examples of industry. Spiders are examples of vigilance.

We were graced with a little thundershower this afternoon, just enough to wet the deck and scare the Dog. She’s a bit of a coward. The clouds rolled up so gradually, they looked like smoke and haze, but soon took command of the whole horizon and the sky above. A little thunder, a little rain, a little wind in the whispering pines. The moisture was pleasant.