At 4:45 am, the first sounds I hear awakening are low murmuring chirps. When I open my eyes, the room is hazy gray with first light before sunrise. A breeze sighs through the open windows. I close my eyes, pat the dog, and snuggle deeper into the covers.
[Red-winged blackbird.]
A vehicle whines over the hill on the highway, tires thumping as the driver accidentally veers into the rumble strips. I open my eyes and look toward the west windows. Over the deep blue Black Hills, a wispy cirrus cloud turns pink, reflecting the coming sunrise. While I dress, I look out the west windows at the blackbirds stomping through the tall grass, beaks stabbing as they gobble insects. The redwing blackbirds may be my favorite prairie birds. I love the bright audacity of their red and yellow epaulets in our tawny, grassy world, and their melodious songs.
Near a south window, a young robin lands on the deck railing and squawks.
[Robin feeding young in a nest under the deck.]
The demanding youngster is one of three that fledged a day or two ago. I know that, under the deck, another pair of robins has built a nest six joists over from the first, and furnished it with three eggs the color of the sky. One of these robins zings out from under the deck just as an adult arrives, beak carrying a wiggly worm to feed the loud teenager. Apparently one set of parents are still taking care of the food bills while another is looking forward to the hatch.
Looking to the south, I see that the water held behind the small dam is sprouting a layer of water weeds. The dam was incorrectly built, so that no seal was created on the bottom of the pond. Even if it fills early in spring, the water leaks so steadily that before summer it is dangerous for cattle, who could become stuck in the soggy gumbo. When I mentioned to a neighbor that we jokingly call the pond Lake Linda, she said, “Oh, you mean the mud hole?”
[Great blue heron at the stock dam.]
But today the dark water ripples in the breeze. On the edge stands a Great Blue heron, hunched so that it resembles a cloaked and brooding figure out of the mythical East. While I eat breakfast, I periodically go to the window to look at the heron, hoping to see it stalking through the shallow water, hunting. Sometimes it stands immobile for long minutes, head tilted as it waits for prey. Then the great beak stabs down. The heron throws its head back and I might see a quick wriggling flash as it swallows a fish or frog. Gulp. The bird shakes itself, and begins to prowl again.
When we first spotted a heron here, several years ago, neither of us believed it could possibly be a Great Blue. But the bird’s size, and the long feathers trailing behind its head sent us to our bird identification guides. And when we saw it fly—lifting off with the great wings, tucking its neck into an S-shape, incredibly graceful and imposing—we had no doubt.
[Family of mallard ducks at the stock dam.]
A long tongue of nearly stagnant water reaches into a gully in the hayfield, and a bulky bird, bright white and shoe-polish brown, squats at the gravelly edge. Through the binoculars, we can see its head is green, and it seems to be poking its long bill deep into the water. Though a dozen ordinary mallard ducks float on the pond or parade its edges, this bird is new to us; so far as we know, we’ve never seen it before. With help from various authorities, we discover it’s a Northern Shoveler, another long-distance migrant from Europe which has become Americanized.
Whoosh! A blackbird rockets past the window, and I realize that to the birds, this house is just a lump, an obstacle that keeps them from flying straight from one spot to another.
[Brown thrasher.]
The grass in the yard outside the basement door parts and I recognize from its bright bronzy back and tail feathers that it’s a brown thrasher. Suddenly it leaps into the air and zooms into one of the cedars on the south side of the yard.
I wish I could identify birds by sound the way real “birders” do. The first time I hosted a group of these folks at the retreat house, I expected them to be wearing sturdy boots and binoculars strung around their necks. Surely they would fan out over the prairie, striding and stalking the resident birds.
Instead, they all got comfortable and started listening. They explained that they seldom SEE the birds they list in their identifications. They hear them, and that’s proof enough. I’ll never be a successful birder; I want to see the birds!
[Snipe.]
The next sound I hear is a hooting vibration of high notes; I know it is not a call, but it is evidence that a particular bird is flying near. The winnowing snipe has a rather ordinary chirp, but its distinctive, haunting sound is created by its flight: looping and soaring through the air. This remarkable bird can also swallow prey like small crustaceans and insects without pulling its long, flexible beak from the soil.
[Tree swallow on the birdhouse Jerry made for our south yard.]
On the south side of the deck, a small table sits upside down over a floor mat: the protection we have devised for the robins’ nests. One spring several years ago, through a crack in the deck, I saw a robin sitting on the nest with a cape of snow over its back. We put the welcome mat over the area, and upended the table to hold it down. Now we provide the cover every year, moving it from nest to nest as families grow and depart.
Below the deck, on the south side of the yard, a tree swallow emerges from a tiny house Jerry built hoping to attract bluebirds. The sleek bird perches on a post and begins to preen itself. One spring, after we’d seen bluebirds clinging to electric wires in a snowstorm, Jerry built the nest boxes and installed them on the north and south sides of the house. A pair of bluebirds dropped by the next spring. The smaller one went inside, emerged a few minutes later, and they flew away. Apparently the home was not up to her standards.
[Tree swallows have shiny blue-black feathers on their backs.]
Soon after, a pair of tree swallows arrived, their backs glowing blueblack in the sun. Both inspected the quarters on the north and moved right in. Almost the next day, another pair occupied the southern mansion. We haven’t seen the bluebirds since, but the tree swallows are so active and so graceful, we don’t mind.
When we sit under the deck in the evening, we have plenty of activity to watch as we listen to the surprising range of sound the birds display as they communicate.
Besides the robins’ singing and the tree swallows bickering before whizzing to forage for food, we often entertain other visitors. In years past, the barn was occupied every spring by barn swallows who built their mud nests under the eaves.
In the grove of trees, mourning doves lived, cooing softly and harmoniously all day.
[Eurasian collared dove. They chase away the native mourning doves.]
Then the collared doves arrived, invasive birds with cawing voices and the nasty habit of driving out native species all over the world. Our mourning doves vanished, and now the collared doves arrive every spring.
The barn swallows have moved inside the roof of a loafing shed, and to the eaves of several other ranch buildings. I noticed fresh mud on the porch of the Writing Retreat house yesterday, and discovered one courageous pair has built a nest in the roof, a fine shelter, but besides mud and feathers, the porch will now be festooned with bird droppings.
As we read and sip our drinks under the deck, we comment on how tall the bachelor buttons are, and wonder when the Maltese cross will bloom. For a month, we’ve been eating radishes from tiny plots scattered among the tomatoes, peppers, and flowers. No matter what we’re discussing or reading, though, we’re always happy to watch the evening ballet of the barn swallows. I suppose they are flying for exercise and entertainment, but they always seem to visit us, gliding under the deck only a foot or two above our heads, sailing around the deck posts and between the house, garage, and greenhouse, chirping madly. Sunlight glows on their russet breasts; their pointed wings, curved like tiny scimitars, slice the air. Yesterday, as I drove my car up the slope toward the house, one barn swallow flew straight at my windshield as though it was going to attack the monster, veering overhead at the last possible second.
Prairie birds, all of these. Surely I’ve missed some that are familiar to other folks, or in other parts of the Great Plains. Look around; they may be where you are.
Linda M. Hasselstrom Windbreak House Hermosa, South Dakota
Some of these bird comments originally appeared on my Facebook page in June of 2020, before my husband, Jerry, died in an automobile accident. When I chose to post this for the summer solstice, I decided it would be too awkward to edit all the references to “we” into “I.”
Nearly all the bird photos were taken at my ranch, most using a telephoto lens, with the exception of the snipe photo (from iStock) and brown thrasher photo (from Public Domain).
Kneading, I could see my grandmother’s strong arms working the dough on the bread board by the wood stove. Bread dough, she’d say, is as independent as a 2-year-old. Both require hard work if they are to develop properly.
I fold outside to inside and push with the heels of my hands, rotate the globe a quarter turn, crease and push, again and again while my brain replays a conversation with a young friend about Western problems: subdivisions, zoning, water.
“But what can one person doooooo?” she wailed.
Kneading, I consider that universal question. When the warm mass sticks to my fingers, I dip a bit of home-ground wheat flour to scatter across the board. Turn, fold, PUSH; turn, fold, WHACK; turn, bend, SHOVE. My muscles hum in harmony as natural as the bread’s ingredients.
Linda with a freshly baked loaf, 2009.
Baking bread is cheaper and more consistent than other forms of therapy, and the results are edible. One can’t nibble a human therapist, any more than one can successfully treat tension with alcohol or drugs.
Up to my elbows in bread dough, I WALLOP an irrational argument, POUND my point home. Decisions I’ve avoided for weeks make themselves as I poke a finger into the shiny dome to check the tension. When I plop the dough into my grandmother’s green porcelain bowl to rise, we’re both bouncy and full of vitality.
Until lately, I’ve baked mostly for my own well-being, but my friend Marty taught me a better way.
What can one person doooooo?
In January, Marty baked and handed out 15 loaves: to the wife of the neighbor who has been accused of a crime. To the woman suffering from cancer. In February, 45 loaves.
At 81, Marty is active in church activities, busy with children, grandchildren and interests so varied I’m always discovering new ones despite a decade of correspondence. She travels, teaches morning and evening classes, takes part in a book club, writes letters.
In March, she gave away 53 loaves; April, 46. In her kitchen, young women learn the art of mixing, kneading, shaping the loaves they’ll take to their own kitchens to bake. Marty’s prayer ingredient is optional, but the smell of fresh-made bread blesses each home.
May, 40 loaves, including bread for a family mourning the death of their mother. “This somehow gives me a gift,” she explains, “and I guess the only thing I can name this gift is ‘peace.’” She maintains a large home, dozens of plants inside and around it; she sends me pictures of her cats. She’s kept baking bread throughout the ugly incidents life can provide, including cancer.
Marty Mather (1927-2020)
June, 55 loaves, and July — in Kansas! — 72. She sends me clippings about Kansas politics along with her opinions and obituaries of people who lived with good humor and good works.
August, 46 loaves. “When I was a child and my mother made bread she would cut off a slice when it came out of the oven hot, slather it with butter, cover it with brown sugar, fold it together and give us a “love” sandwich.” Her grandchildren, learning to knead dough at ages 2 and 4, gobbled love sandwiches.
September, 35; October, 47. Last year during Lent, instead of giving up coffee or chocolate, she gave bread to the workers in her church, and to others in the community. “This brings me joy,” she says, adding, “which in a sense is a selfish way of looking at it.”
The gift of bread carries with it history ancient beyond reckoning, symbolism that applies equally to every homeland, every religion. November, 60 loaves. Marty admits enjoying the fragrance of baking bread, “filling the house like a lovely incense.” And more: “Making homemade bread is not a talent or really a skill . . . It only takes planning, time, energy and love.”
In December, while headlines screamed about stress, Marty gave away 51 loaves. I bite into butter-slathered hot bread. The universe wobbles and then settles into an age-old throb of grace. Homemade bread. Homemade love.
Linda M. Hasselstrom Windbreak House Retreats Hermosa, South Dakota
In the yard at 5:43 on a dark morning, the sky is covered with clouds behind which a glorious sunrise has just vanished. Yet the evening primrose are blooming vivid yellow, like tall candles.
Ours is Oenothera biennis, Common evening primrose, a tall plant with large yellow blooms arranged most of the length of the stem. The “goblet-like” flowers in yellow, white or pink, each with four petals, are said to be lemon-scented, but they seem sweeter than that to me.
I’m not sure where mine originated, but they have scattered naturally. Night-blooming plants are said to attract moths for pollination, so we wonder if the gorgeous hummingbird moths we’ve been seeing are responsible for pollinating ours.
The plants reappear every year, but they don’t spread wildly as some do. I’ve recently learned that the plant takes 2 years to complete its life cycle, with basal leaves becoming established the first year, and flowering occurring the second. Ours have been blooming several years, in the same locations.
Experts say they do well in either sun or shade, and ours manage to survive even on the north and west sides of the house, which sometimes get punishingly hot in summer.
[Evening Primrose spreading in the yard by the bottle tree]
Once I started looking for information about Oenothera, I became fascinated by the details. It was apparently once cultivated for its “delectable roots,” which were said to have a light, peppery taste similar to salsify, and could be eaten raw or cooked like any other root vegetable. The one I tried, from a tiny plant, was so tough and fibrous as to be impossible to chew, and had no particular flavor. The plant is now often grown for its omega-6-containing seeds. I’ll try those later in the summer.
I was delighted to learn that Oenothera is native to North America but was taken to Europe in the 1600s, scientists surmise, where it has now naturalized. The plant has also traveled to many other parts of the world. I picture explorers delightedly tucking the plants into a tiny English garden, where its gold blooms lit a brick wall.
And it’s astonishingly adaptable. Depending on the variety, this plant – also known as coffee plant, golden candlestick, and a host of other nicknames – can be biennial, annual, or perennial.
Some of the dozens of varieties have an upright growth habit, reaching heights of 6 feet and a width of 24 inches, where others are used as ground cover or for container plantings, growing no higher than 6 inches. Various varieties, some of which are quite fragrant, do well in zones 3-11.
Native Americans used the whole plant for treating bruises and its roots for treating hemorrhoids. The leaves were made into medicines for minor wounds, gastrointestinal issues, and sore throats. Today, oil pressed from the plant’s seeds is marketed in capsule form to help a number of conditions including eczema, rheumatoid arthritis, premenstrual syndrome, and osteoporosis.
[Evening Primrose with Gaillardia (also known as blanket flower) and Blue Flax]
The gamma linolenic acid — a type of omega-6 fatty acid — contained within the oil is used by the body to regulate blood pressure and to keep the immune system functioning well.
Birds, perhaps seeking a little omega-6 of their own, enjoy eating the plant’s seeds, which is doubtless one way the plant spreads. Some folks use the seeds as one might use poppy seeds.
O. Berlandieri, or Mexican evening primrose, on the other hand, is a spreading perennial. It only grows to a height of about 18 inches. Native to Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Mexico, this plant will grow in infertile soil, with minimum water and full sun.
Evening primrose ‘showy’ (O. speciosa) also thrives in heat and is drought-tolerant. It grows 18 to 24 inches tall and displays pink, pale lavender, or white and pink flowers.
[Evening Primrose about to open at dusk]
O. pallida, or pale evening primrose, is a low-growing biennial native to the western United States. I’ve have spotted some of these in the Great Plains Botanic Garden, located on my ranch. (See their website at www.GPNPS.org or find them on Facebook at Great Plains Native Plant Society Group).
If you are walking in the plains at sunrise or dusk, look for this gorgeous inhabitant.
Linda M. Hasselstrom Windbreak House Retreats Hermosa, South Dakota
This essay appears in my book The Wheel of the Year: A Writer’s Workbook (2017). I posted this book excerpt on my blog in 2020, but am posting again with an update about the book at the end of this piece.
Today’s the day, I promised myself this morning, just as I did yesterday and the day before.
Yes, today’s the day I write an essay about Lammas for my business website Home Page.
Lammas is often marked by rituals emphasizing endings, as well as with the collection and preservation of food. How could I connect this season with writing?
Yesterday, while not coming up with any ideas for the Lammas message, I ambled through the garden mumbling curses on the grasshoppers and admiring the orange blush on a few green pumpkins. I investigated a water stain in the house where I conduct retreats, and filed some papers there.
Then, in a truly desperate avoidance maneuver, I moved my refrigerator out of its niche and cleaned under it before vacuuming its coils and washing spots off the door.
I was still trying to think of what to write for Lammas while I scrubbed the kitchen floor, vacuumed and dusted the house, and hung rugs and bedding on the deck railing to air. After lunch I finished up the plans for a workshop I’m giving tomorrow, including making a decision about what to wear. None of those activities produced an idea for my Lammas home page essay.
By 9 a.m. today, I’d read 50 pages of a mystery novel with my morning coffee after writing a few thoughts– not about Lammas– in my journal. After breakfast I tidied up the kitchen.
The day I originally wrote this Lammas essay, I played a game of Quiddler with my husband. We walked the dogs and then I planted some wildflower seeds, bathed the dogs while deciding what to fix for lunch and chopping vegetables to get started. I cleaned the washer, dryer and utility sink inside and out before I dusted and scrubbed the basement bathroom. I hadn’t done either of those things for months.
Most of my housework gets done while I’m avoiding writing.
I love writing; it has provided some of my greatest joys– in that moment when I’ve finally shuffled the words enough to find the perfect phrase.
But it’s also inspired hours of house-cleaning and staring into space, activities suited to trying to think what words need to come next. So, my subconscious and sneaky brain can find all kinds of logical ways to avoid it.
Finally, I sat down at the computer– and immediately decided I needed to change the location of the water on the garden. I rode the 4-wheeler down and sat on it with my garden plan, comparing that glorious vision I created while planting seeds this spring to the few plants that the voracious grasshoppers have not eaten. I had used a biological control to try to control their numbers, mixing it fresh daily and spraying everything. Perhaps it worked; I may have killed millions of hoppers. But there were still billions and zillions in the garden.
We’ve had more grasshoppers here this year than I’ve ever seen. Neighbors who drive through have been shocked; I swear some rolled up their windows and sped out of the yard to avoid collecting any. By June the insects had eaten several successive plantings of radishes, lettuce, mesclun and carrots. They’d eaten the leaves from the rhubarb and were chomping down the stems. The kale and turnip leaves were lacy with holes and the hoppers were burrowing into the ground, eating the yellow onions. I replanted beans and peas three times and each time the hoppers ate them off as the seedlings emerged from the ground. They ate the potatoes down to the hay mulch and burrowed into it, still gnawing. By the millions they sliced the leaves from tomato plants, decimated the peonies and herbs– even the culinary sage. They even ate the perennial flowers I’d planted around the retreat house.
A month ago, I moved herb plants like basil, feverfew, rosemary, lavender, oregano and rue into the greenhouse. Despite tight screens, the grasshoppers invaded and dined until I moved the surviving plants into the house. Inside the cold frames, the hoppers stripped the peppers of all their leaves in one night.
In the prairie closest to my house, I’ve studied which of the native plants and the invasive nasty ones have survived the hopper onslaught. Natives like buffalo grass, sideoats grama, mullein, and gumweeds haven’t been nibbled at all. The Non-Native Nasties– introduced plants like brome, alfalfa and clover– have been stripped of their leaves and then their stems, though the plants survived. Unfortunately, non-natives that I cultivate, like columbine, peony, chamomile, arugula, marjoram, thyme and dill were decimated as well, though the bergamot and spearmint survived. Apparently even grasshoppers don’t eat creeping jenny, definitely one of the Nasty plants.
While I looked over the garden, I kept thinking of Lammas. How could I write about harvest with no produce? My summer had already been seriously unpoetic, with a variety of activities and responsibilities disrupting my writing.
Today, walking among the plants, I noticed that only a few hoppers leapt away from me, instead of the moving blanket of three weeks ago. Pulling bristly foxtail from the leek row and stuffing it into the burn barrel, I saw that the tomatoes are strong and blooming. The pumpkin vines sprawl and blossom, leaves shivering as entire rabbit families lounge in their shade. The kale and turnips are getting taller.
Back home, I examined the raised beds of my kitchen garden where the leafless tomato plants are bringing forth yellow Taxi tomatoes and tasty Early Girls. A couple of pots of basil and parsley so big I couldn’t move them inside are putting out new leaves.
Rather than focusing on its losses, the garden is working hard to recover from the failures of the summer. Maybe I can give thanks for some growth and this inspiration; maybe I have a subject for the harvest essay.
Sitting with my fingers on the keyboard, I glanced through the window in front of my desk and saw a bird I’d never seen before. I grabbed one of my bird books and tracked him down: a male orchard oriole. He landed in the raised tomato bed and then hopped to a tomato cage, tilting his head this way and that. He hopped. Hopped. Hopped again and snatched a grasshopper. Gobbled it and hopped some more– following and gulping hoppers as they tried to evade him.
Suddenly I understood. I’d been waiting for ideas for my Lammas essay to find me. Yet I’ve always known that writers sometimes have to chase ideas. We must be persistent; we must leap and snap and gobble— and sometimes fail to catch a tasty morsel. The oriole, by appearing outside my window, reminded me just how active a writer may have to be in chasing her ideas.
Later, I stepped outside and into a maelstrom of clucking and fluttering: two grown grouse and eleven teenagers were all scrambling around the dogs’ fenced yard, eating grasshoppers and chattering to one another. I went back to the computer.
My friends kindly say that I accomplish a lot, but they don’t see how much of what I do is part of avoiding this writing job I both love and find frustrating. Two big writing projects have been simmering in my brain all summer, but I’ve been able to work on them only in short bursts.
Naturally, yesterday and today I have spent considerable time answering email both urgent and frivolous, fixing and cleaning up after meals, cleaning bathrooms–the usual housewifely stuff. Yesterday I hand-wrote several letters. None of this was the writing I urgently need to do.
The need to post a new website essay related to writing hovered behind my thoughts like the afternoon thunderstorms: black and threatening. Each storm rattles the windows, throws any loose furniture around on the deck, and sneezes a few drops of rain: none of these actions very useful either to a gardener or a writer.
Because the air felt nippy when I woke at sunrise, I decided to enjoy some of the last of summer’s heat by tilling the garden. As I turned over the rich brown earth, I reflected on the meaning of Lammas. Also called Lughnasad by the ancients, it was traditionally commemorated only by women as a time of regrets and farewell as well as harvest and preservation.
Reflect, said the ancients, on regret and farewell, but also celebrate what you have worked hard to harvest and what you have preserved for your continuing life.
As Autumn comes, many people enact the ancient rituals of Lammas, but may be unaware that these celebrations reflect a long ancestral history. We may remember plans we made for summer, regretting that we have not accomplished everything. Frantically, we rush to cram a little more summer into the days. A tingle of chill in the air, like this morning’s 57 degrees, reminds us that winter is coming, so instead of whining about the heat, we revel in it as we harvest and preserve the fruits of our labors.
During Lammas, our ancestors paused to take note of their regrets for the things undone in summer. They said farewell to the summer’s activities while welcoming their harvests. Writers can observe the season in the same way as gardeners.
The Celts made this a fire festival, in recognition both of summer’s warmth and in preparation for the coming winter when they might need to conserve fuel as they huddled together around small fires, sharing warmth. If you wish to celebrate like the ancients, consider writing your regrets on paper or corn husks and tossing them into a bonfire so they vanish from your life. To celebrate harvest, share your garden’s fruits, perhaps baking rhubarb crisp or stirring up rhubarb sauce, or baking freshly-dug potatoes in that bonfire, surrounded by friends.
In the spirit of Lammas, then, I faced my failures: I have not yet finished the draft of what I’m calling the Wheel book. I have written that failure, among others, on a piece of paper. With the grasshoppers has come drought so the prairie here is tinder dry. Rather than risk building a bonfire outside, on August 1, I will light a candle in my study and carefully burn the record of this and other failures.
Writing down my failures has allowed me to become fully aware of my regrets for this season, so I can more easily let them go, both in my mind and through the fire’s symbolism. Furthermore, I realize that if I spend time brooding on what I failed to accomplish, or if I attempt to figure out why I did not do all that I wanted to do, I will be wasting time during which I could be writing.
Lammas asks us to consider farewells to whatever is passing from our lives. As a writer and human being, I welcome this prompting to say a firm goodbye to the things that are really over. Perhaps you can find visual symbols of what you regret— photos of that boyfriend who betrayed you? Throw them into a flame, or into moving water, or bury them in the ground.
Some folks bid loss farewell by whispering the hurt into flower bulbs, which they then plant. Symbolically, the pain returns in the spring transformed, in the form of a new and blooming life. Most of my plants are natives without bulbs, and many require freezing to be viable, so on my walks I collect seeds, and mumble my regrets as I scuff them into earth where I’d like them to thrive.
I’ve dug the potato crop, and we will eat all of it with our Lammas meal: five small potatoes. We will try not to think about last year’s crop, which supplied us with potatoes from September through May. This winter, we’ll have to peel the potatoes we eat since their skins harbor pesticides used by commercial farmers.
But on Lammas, we will rejoice in what we have and give thanks that we are not wholly dependent on our potato crop for nourishment this winter.
For the Celts, the August harvest was a time of story-telling, as well as giving thanks to the grain gods and goddesses in gratitude for a good harvest. Some folks find a visual way to represent their triumphs, perhaps creating a decoration like a corn dolly or wheat weaving like those made by ancient grain farmers, or creating an altar to represent the harvest. We reminisce about the garden’s toils and triumphs, and talk about what we might plant next year.
Inspired by the harvest aspect of Lammas, I list the things I have accomplished. In applying to the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, NV, I spent a lot of time writing a proposal for a workshop as well as preparing a CD with recitations of new poems. I’m disappointed that my application was rejected but I’ve revised the workshop to use in another context. So, while the application was a failure, I was able to recycle some of its materials, turning the whole experience into a positive one.
This year so far, I’ve written four home page messages, one each for February’s Brigid, the Vernal Equinox of March, April’s Beltane and the June Summer Solstice, a total of almost 9,000 words.
I wrote the introduction to a book (by a writer who has worked at my Windbreak House retreat) to be published by the South Dakota State Historical Society Press. I wrote a cover comment and review of another book. Observations about meat, grouse, natural predators, rabbits, organ meats, snakes and other prairie critters all furnished subjects for blogs on my business website. A college class reading my book No Place Like Home sent questions about the book to which I responded at length.
Further, I wrote two essays published in Orion magazine. Later, National Public Radio’s “Living on Earth” asked me to read them for on-air publication. A request for free writing advice turned into a lengthy blog on why I cannot and will not provide free advice to everyone who asks. On paper, I reflected on the fact that I am called a “nature writer”; I later submitted the essay to the International League of Conservation Writers, which published it online. Besides all this professional writing, I kept up lively correspondence with several friends, much of it in hand-written letters.
Compiling this list amazes me. Though I was determined not to regret what I have not written or done, I hadn’t fully realized how very much I have accomplished so far this year. Truly, my writing harvest has been generous. And I spent a lot of time in the garden, even though that harvest was less rich.
Besides writing, of course, I’ve prepared a couple of meals most days. Jerry cooks breakfast on weekends and we make our own breakfasts during the week. When we go to town, we usually eat lunch there. Let’s see: 365 days in a year multiplied by 3 meals a day is 1,095 meals. Deducting for the meals we fix ourselves or eat out, I’ve prepared at least 400 meals, perhaps as many as 700. I’ve washed the sheets 30 times, vacuumed the house at least 45 times, and cleaned the toilets at least 300 times. On Lammas, I will pat myself on the back for all this work.
Because Lammas is an occasion to consider preservation, both literal and symbolic preserves are appropriate for the Lammas festival. You celebrate when you turn summer’s fruit into jams, jellies, and chutneys for winter. Consider, too, other kinds of fruits– memories and scraps of writing– you have gathered this year. How can you preserve the memories of the summer that is passing sweetly even as winter approaches?
Don’t just put your photographs online; print them so you can look at them even when the computer is off— or when the file has been lost or hijacked, or you are old and in the nursing home without a computer. I’ve been told that creating physical photo albums is outmoded, but while my mother was in the nursing home, she found great pleasure in returning again and again to her old albums; she rediscovered memories each time. She would never have seen those photographs online. I framed a large collage of photographs of her at different phases of her life and we both enjoyed telling visitors about the times when the pictures were taken. I think all these activities helped her keep more clarity of mind than she might otherwise have had.
Lammas observances might include writing letters and postcards to friends instead of emails. Turn photos into postcards for short notes. Write memories in your journal. Capture the highlights: best meal of the summer, best sunrise, best day, best companion; you create the list.
Whatever you do– gardening, writing, or playing bridge– face your regrets and failures and then bid them goodbye. Consider how the earth recovers from winter into spring, taking heart for your own spring to come. Our planet is suffering in the current climate change crisis, but if hope exists, it rests on individuals like us. Take time to tally up your harvest, to revel in it, to appreciate your work. Then preserve it in your heart for the winter to come.
“Youth is like spring,” wrote Samuel Butler in The Way of All Flesh, “an over-praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.” This is the message of Lammas.
Writing suggestions:
What do you regret about the summer just past? Can you discard those regrets by burning them symbolically or literally? Can you memorialize these regrets by writing about them, and diffusing their power over you?
What do you bid farewell to at summer’s end?
What have you harvested this year, either literally from the earth or from your work and your relationships?
What form of thanks seems appropriate for what you have received?
What ways can you find to preserve memories of your year’s harvest, and of memorable events from your year?
What was your best day during the summer? Your favorite event? Who is your favorite of the new people you met and why? This might be a good time to tell friends and relatives how much you appreciate something they’ve done for you, or how much you appreciate simply knowing them.
What have you accomplished in writing so far this year? What are your plans for writing during the rest of the year?
Collect the snippets you have written this year that have not progressed to a longer draft or a finished work. Read through them; take notes. What inspiration do you find?
Here’s a specific exercise for not writing: The Ball of Light
Stand outside where you will not be disturbed. Plant your feet a comfortable distance apart so you stand without swaying. Let your hands hang at your sides; shake them to loosen the muscles in your shoulders.
Close your eyes. Breathe deeply several times. Imagine yourself drawing air in from the entire universe, pulling it down into your lungs, fingertips, toes, into every molecule of your body.
Imagine a ball of light centered in your chest. Gather your senses into the ball of light. Imagine your hands inside your chest holding the light, firming it into a smooth round shape. When you have the ball of light pictured clearly in your mind, let it rise slowly up your neck into your head. Let it stand there, spinning, for a moment. Slowly move it up through the top of your skull and above your head. Take time to look down at your body standing relaxed, to breathe deeply again. Then concentrate your attention in your light again and let it rise up over the grass and the buildings. Pause every now and then to look around so you always know where you are.
Allow your light to rise over your immediate surroundings, up over the country, above the path of jet planes, out where the universe is blackness lit only by stars and where you might see other glowing balls of light. Become aware of what you see and sense there. Slowly bring the ball of light back down through all the layers of atmosphere to your chest and belly again. Breathe deeply.
Once you have done this a few times, you can do it anywhere, anytime, in less time than reading these paragraphs. Use this as a relaxation and centering exercise anytime. You may find that you are more ready to write afterward.
Remember this: Graham Greene realized early in his writing career that if he wrote just 500 words a day, he would have written several million words in a few decades. So he developed a habit of writing only 500 words a day and stopping even if he was in the middle of a sentence. Writing two hours a day, he published 26 novels, as well as short stories, plays, screenplays, memoirs and travel books.
Kathleen Norris writes in Dakota that “the forced observation of little things can also lead to simple pleasures,” and illustrates this with the example of a young monk who was given an old, worn habit when he joined his order. He soon discovered that the worn wool was excellent for sliding down banisters.
Adapt this idea for sliding down the banisters in your life. Carefully observe and note down the little things you do every day: picking up the children’s socks, folding your husband’s clothes, petting the dog, and wiping up the drops of water around the sink after brushing your teeth. Then consider and write about the reason you do these things. If the reason is not because you care for the individuals and care for the home in which your love for them occurs, then perhaps you can stop doing them. Write about this choice.
# # #
The Wheel of the Year is structured with sixteen essays, one for each of the eight seasons through two years, with an intermission essay, “Respect Writing By Not Writing,” which discusses taking time off. Extensive writing suggestions are included, as well as additional resources. The workbook is intended as a guide and teacher as a writer sets up her own schedule of writing and develops a relationship with the natural and mundane worlds in which we live. If the reader came to a retreat at my Windbreak House Retreats, this might be a series of conversations we would have about writing.
I have sold nearly all of my copies of the book, though I believe it can still be found online. I plan to create a revised version in the next year or so in order to correct a number of publisher’s errors. I will work with the same editor who did the lovely layout of my book Write Now, Here’s How: Insights from Six Decades of Writing.
Once I have the revised edition I will announce it here and on my Facebook page.
Linda M. Hasselstrom Windbreak House Writing Retreats Hermosa, South Dakota
The Spring 2022 issue of South Dakota History (Vol. 52, No. 1), provides an illuminating article about a poet of our past who was completely unknown to me: Rebecca Fusfeld, a Sioux Falls resident who wrote poetry from the 1930s to the 1960s.
Her work, says the article’s author, Anna Amundson, a history professor at Augustana University (Sioux Falls, SD), is one example of how Jewish people in South Dakota took part in a national movement to educate their Christian friends and neighbors about their religious beliefs and lives. Fusfeld (also spelled Fusfield) shared her perspectives on Judaism, her experiences as an immigrant, and her observations of nature in South Dakota. She also argued against the isolationist perspective held by many Americans before World War II.
The Fusfelds arrived here when the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) organizers were openly recruiting members throughout the state, opposing African Americans, Catholics, Jews, non-English-speaking immigrants, and labor union members.
The temperance movement was also important at this time. Many states made exceptions in their alcohol bans to allow observant Jews to use wine in the home—but not South Dakota.
While many of Fusfeld’s poems were published in Pasque Petals (the official literary magazine of the South Dakota State Poetry Society, which began publication in 1926), I could find no evidence that a book of her work is available today.
I’d welcome any information about her work and how modern readers might find it, since this is surely a segment of South Dakota writing history that is little known to many residents.
Linda M. Hasselstrom Windbreak House Hermosa, South Dakota
Elise’s destiny was to hunt the prairie grasslands. Instead she helps Maggie Engler of the Black Hills Raptor Center teach people how important the lives of raptors — red-tailed hawks and other birds of prey — are to us.
Raptors prey on birds, voles, rabbits, amphibians, fish, carrion and even grasshoppers. For humans, though, the best news is a raptor’s appetite for mice.
Mice eat wheat, corn, oats, rye and other grains used in cereals, bread, pasta and beer. In one year, a pair of mice and their offspring can produce thousands of babies. Each pair of mice that lives a year eats 8 pounds of grain between them, and spreads their filth in another 22 pounds.
Because they don’t see well, mice mark every step of a journey with urine and excrement so they can sniff their way home. If you’ve eaten grain in any form, you’ve eaten mouse waste.
“So,” Engler says, “we should love anything that eats mice.”
~ ~ ~
As “perch and pounce” hunters, red-tailed hawks don’t waste much energy chasing things. They soar to settle on trees, telephone poles, fence posts or rocks to watch for prey.
Elise was 10 days old when she was taken from her nest, caged and fed hot dogs and hamburger. Once she learned to accept food from humans, she became dangerous. Believing humans are the source of food and mates, she became aggressive with handlers and could never resume her normal life.
Elise is a visible symbol of how little we know about the prairie that surrounds our highways and cities in the Great Plains.
Engler and her co-founder John Halverson started the Black Hills Raptor Center in Rapid City to help birds of prey recover from human-caused damage. By federal law, the center may educate only with birds that can never be released into the wild. Unfortunately, Elise is one of them.
The center is also home to Phoenix the ferruginous hawk, Freya the red-tailed hawk, Aldo, the great-horned owl, Hendrix and Joplin, the American kestrels, and two Eastern screech owls, Little Red Riding Hoot and the Big Bad Wolf, all species native to South Dakota. Recently, Izaak Walton the peregrine falcon joined the flock of ambassadors. In hundreds of miles of prairie grassland, Maggie is one of the few people offering hope of survival for injured raptors.
“The birds don’t belong to us,” Halverson says. “They belong to the people of the United States. They are not pets. They are only caged because they are too seriously injured to be released. Their lives were damaged, usually by humans, so they are being recycled in educational programs, to help people understand the importance of these birds to the world.”
Even on the prairies, many raptor species have sharply declined in locations where their habitats have been altered by subdivisions, plowing, highway construction, mining and other human activities. Raptor species are also damaged by rodenticides and other pesticides, organic chemicals such as PCBs and metals such as mercury and lead. Many die from secondary poisoning after eating contaminated prey, perhaps poisoned prairie dogs, rats or mice. Some die from eating lead if they feed on animals shot by hunters. Engler, an ardent big game hunter, has switched to non-toxic shot.
The picture isn’t completely bleak; species like the bald eagle and peregrine falcon have rebounded since use of the pesticide DDT was restricted in the 1970s.
As part of teaching the public to appreciate the birds, Engler and volunteers introduce the BHRC raptors to the public in 160-170 programs a year for preschool through college classes, community groups, visitors to national and state parks, conservation camps, outdoor expos and sports shows around western South Dakota. Engler estimates Elise has visited 2,500 classrooms.
“I can teach any topic through birds,” Engler says, because “raptors capture the human heart like no other birds.”
Trained as a naturalist, interpreter and environmental educator, Engler has done this work for 30 years in various capacities. She also teaches preschool and tutors people with dyslexia. In her “spare” time she cares for the birds, handles BHRC correspondence, communicates with volunteers and writes grants.
The mission of the nonprofit BHRC includes scientific research, education and rehabilitation and release, but achieving those goals is difficult without a building. Engler and volunteers haul the birds in their cars all over the state to present programs, then bring them home to the newly built facility east of Rapid City.
A building to temporarily house the BHRC ambassador birds has moved the group closer to being licensed to rehabilitate the injured. Eventually the ambassadors will be moved into their own permanent aviaries or mews. Then the building now in use will be dedicated to rehabilitating the injured. Providing a place for volunteer veterinarians to work on the birds would allow more of them to be returned to the wild to live out their lives in their necessary place in the food chain.
Science has not proven that rehabilitating common species like great horned owls or red-tailed hawks helps the local population. “But,” Engler says, “returning an injured bird to the wild enables us to bring people a step closer to nature and a world from which they are too far removed. I want people to be able to visit on special open house days, to see the raptors they might see in the skies over their own homes, take part in a program, to watch a release of a rehabilitated bird.”
The property will also enable the Black Hills Raptor Center to conduct and participate in understanding the role of raptors in the environment. Having the raptors available for public visits will draw more community support, volunteers and donations. South Dakota has an abundance of raptors that are rare in other areas. Daytime (diurnal) raptors include bald and golden eagles, turkey vultures, osprey and five kinds of hawks — red-tailed, ferruginous, Swainson’s, broad-winged and rough-legged. Five North American falcons live here — the American kestrel, merlin, prairie falcon, peregrine falcon and, in winter months, the gyrfalcon.
Only three accipiters — hawks with short, broad wings and long tails particularly suited to fast flight in wooded areas — live in North America. South Dakota has all three: the northern goshawk, Cooper’s hawk and sharp-shinned hawk. In addition, nine species of nighttime (nocturnal) raptors float through our night skies: great horned, eastern screech, burrowing, long-eared, short-eared, northern saw-whet, flammulated, barn and snowy owls. This rich legacy of predatory birds offers an extraordinary opportunity to encourage strong breeding populations of wild raptors here.
After eleven years of gutting rats and mice for raptor food on her kitchen counter, Engler is overjoyed to have a food preparation space separate from her own kitchen.
The site will also allow volunteers to begin rehabilitating raptors locally. At least 100 people a year ask Engler for help with injured birds, but all she can do is assess each bird’s condition before taking it to a facility with the necessary permits to provide medical care. The nearest permitted facilities are several hundred miles away, in Wyoming and eastern South Dakota. Many injured birds don’t live long enough to reach help.
Engler now lives on site, in a residence mostly built by volunteers. The next buildings on the property will be the Rehabilitation and Research Hub. The largest of the 6 planned buildings in the complex, it will include exam rooms, labs, radiology, an ICU and surgical suites will allow BHRC to treat injured birds. A separate isolation and quarantine area will allow treatment of cases of avian pox and other highly contagious illnesses, without endangering other raptors in for treatment.
“Mouse school” will enable the birds to learn to hunt so they can survive in the wild. In these mews — individual apartments for each bird — lower walls will be encased in sheet metal so that live mice released into the rooms cannot escape. Birds will learn to kill their own food, never seeing the humans who deliver it. Thus they will not associate food with people and won’t suffer the imprinting that ruined Elise for life in the wild.
Little Red Riding Hoot and Big Bad Wolf represent the Eastern Screech owl in Engler’s programs, tiny raptors that nest wherever trees are available. They hide in dark nooks during the day, hunting primarily at night, so your best chance of knowing they are around may come from hearing them at night. Despite their name, they do not screech; their eerie call is more like a horse whinnying.
As the smallest of Engler’s educational raptors, the screech owls have the smallest appetites. Little Red Riding Hoot, who weighs about 5 ounces, can eat up to three mice a day, at one ounce each, or 60 percent of her body weight. Unfortunately, wild mice are not an option since they might carry disease that would sicken a volunteer, or poison that would kill the educational birds. One domestic mouse costs 95 cents, making Hoot’s per diem $3.00 during cold weather, or $190 for the coldest 60 days. If she eats two mice a day for the rest of the year (305 days) her total year’s food bill is $750.50 for 790 mice. Feeding all six of the raptors the Center now cares for costs almost $6,000 per year.
Sponsors have included interested local citizens as well as Rapid City’s Reptile Gardens, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the local chapter of the Izaak Walton League. Federal officers have helped BHRC receive contributions from cash fines levied on people who are caught poaching raptors.
In the wild, Elise’s life span would have been 10 or 12 years. She’s 34 years old, and she and Engler have been together since 2008. “She was the first red-tailed hawk I ever had on a glove,” Engler says. “There are very few red-tailed hawks in captivity that have her years on them. We retired Elise a few years ago and now the younger red-tailed Freya takes on the program duties. Elise is living a luxurious life in a new mews with a great view and all the care she needs.”
Her eyes are shadowed with understanding of the inevitable, but she can smile, knowing that the Black Hills Raptor Center will not die.
Linda M. Hasselstrom Windbreak House Hermosa, South Dakota
The Black Hills Raptor Center welcomes contributions. Send to BHRC, PO Box 48, Caputa, SD 57725; phone 605-391-2511; info@BlackHillsRaptorCenter.org
Money isn’t the only way to help. The website (www.blackhillsraptorcenter.org) provides a wish list of items needed, including hand tools, garden hose, postage stamps, bleach, detergent, and boxes of sandwich baggies used when processing meat for bird food.
Maggie Engler with Elise in 2014
Photo credits:
From the internet: mouse in the grain.
From the Black Hills Raptor Center website: photos of the building and mews under construction and the photo of the two screech owls Little Red Riding Hoot and the Big Bad Wolf.
Photos by my assistant, Tam Rogers: Elise the red-tailed hawk with blue sky behind her taken in 2014; Hendrix the kestrel showing his under-wings at an educational talk to a Road Scholar class in 2016; the hawk on the bird feeding platform, the barn owl standing on one leg, and the great-horned owl in the barn window taken at Tam’s place about 7 miles from Windbreak House; the photo of Maggie Engler with Elise taken at an educational program in 2014.
In the long run, I don’t think the adult psyche is well served by being popular in high school. I suppose that sounds like sour grapes, since I was always on the outside looking in, but my belief in that basic truth comes from observation, not resentment. Most of us were born ordinary. . .
That line was probably not the first time I whooped out loud at a truth in the writing of Kathleen Taylor, but it was one of the first I recorded in a list that is still growing. I found it on p. 137 of the third in the series The Hotel South Dakota, which may have been the first Taylor I discovered. (I now own them all, and for a suitable ransom, am willing to loan them to friends.) And yes, I was a nerd in grade school and high school both; I got good grades and was on the debate squad and rarely dated. But those aren’t the only reasons I find these books full of humor and truth.
All six of Kathleen Taylor’s books narrated by Tory Bauer, resident of a small town in South Dakota, have an intriguing mystery at their heart. But they also overflow with truths about life in general, with zingers that highlight life in a small rural town. In 1969, Tory Bauer was a high school sophomore, and as is the case for most girls at that age, finding a date for homecoming was “a Life and Death issue.”
Here’s a quote from the first in the series:
Delphi, South Dakota is a dusty little prairie town, the kind people drive through on their way to bigger cities. But as Tory Bauer, middle-aged, widowed, overweight, cranky waitress might say, “Everything that happens in big towns, happens here too. We just don’t look as good naked.”
Tired of mysteries where the sleuth is clever and sophisticated, and none of the people resemble anyone you know? Read Kathleen Taylor.
In 1969, prevailing wisdom dictated that the way to deal with trauma and grief was to indulge in one good cry and never think about it again . . . . “put it out of your mind”. . . . Amnesia was encouraged.
In my childhood, we were not surrounded by counselors and others paid to help us survive. One day not long after I was dropped as a “city kid” into a rural school when my mother married a rancher, I bloodied the nose of a lout who’d been pawing girls and socking boys his entire grade school career. I’d already fought the toughest girl on the playground to a draw, but drawing his blood solidified my place in the hierarchy. Tory Bauer would understand.
Kathleen Taylor also designs knitwear, has written five knitting books, one mainstream novel, and a paper doll coloring book. She is a spinner, wife, mother, and grandmother; and she lives in Redfield, South Dakota.
Hustle down to your local library and get her books, or buy them at your favorite bookstore– you are likely to want to reread them, and pass them on to friends. In order they are, Funeral Food, Sex and Salmonella, The Hotel South Dakota, Mourning Shift, Cold Front, and Foreign Body.
Linda M. Hasselstrom Windbreak House Hermosa, South Dakota
This essay was originally posted on my website for the Winter Solstice, December 21, 2012.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
I believe that Wendell Berry’s poem “To Know the Dark,” which I did not discover until middle age, perfectly describes how I rid myself of my fear of darkness. And it symbolizes a way to tackle other fears.
My mother, knowing I was terrified of the monsters under the bed, always left a night light in my room. One night soon after I moved to the ranch when I was nine years old, my parents left me alone at home to go to a dance. I decided to cure myself before these tough sons and daughters of ranchers found out I was a “chicken.” So I went out into the darkness, alone, without a flashlight. I wandered into the barn loft; I climbed fences; as my eyes adjusted, I ventured out into the hayfield.
Part of the time I was terrified, but a couple of hours wandering around the ranch buildings and nearby pastures cured me and coincidentally made me love owls. (For the whole story, see Feels Like Far, p. 20.)
Once I’d confronted the fear– though perhaps not entirely rid myself of it– I found darkness to be important in keeping hold of my mental health. For example, by the time I wrote Windbreak, I’d discovered that checking the pregnant heifers anytime between midnight and two a.m. allowed me to really taste the darkness. (Windbreak, pp. 117-118; Land Circle, “Spring Weather,” pp. 9-11.) Once, I’m fairly sure a mountain lion shared the dark with me; the yearling steers got so spooked they knocked down a plank fence. And once I lay in a sleeping bag with my dog and watched the Perseid meteor shower and felt as if I were riding a clear glass ship through the stars. The memory can still make me dizzy when I look up at night.
And once, I had the potent experience of riding my horse home after dark, trusting in her to find our way. (Going Over East, p. 99. Also “Everything I Need to Know I Learned from My Horse,” which is posted on the Horse and Cow Stories Page of my website with a photograph of the horse.)
My ultimate experience of darkness, the event that transformed my attitude about it from acceptance to exultant love, involved a herd of buffalo. I urge you most strongly not to try it; I was desperate and lucky. (Feels Like Far, “Buffalo Winter,” pp. 72-85).
When I moved to town, I felt entirely disoriented in the light-filled city but as I wandered the stairs and rooms of the old house where I lived, I sensed its former inhabitants as friendly presences and found my senses expanding. (Feels Like Far, pp. 87-88.)
Since that first experience, I’ve tried to confront anything that scares me. I’ve managed to get over my fear of flying, for example, though I’m still not fond of heights.
Darkness, I believe, embodies humanity’s greatest fears. We appear to be growing more afraid of it every day because we are spending money we can’t afford to drive it away, to the detriment of every facet of our lives.
This literal darkness seems to be an enemy to Americans, though several states, including Connecticut, Arizona, Maine, New Mexico and Texas, many municipalities and several other nations have adopted legislation designed to limit light pollution from streetlights and other fixtures. Among the rationales for such measures have been energy conservation, the reduction of glare and its resulting traffic hazards, and a desire to allow people a better view of the night sky. Several states have state organizations devoted to reducing light pollution, though South Dakota does not. Several websites provide information about “dark skies” initiatives, including www.darksky.org.
Subdivision dwellers surround their houses with lights that come on when anything moves in the area, guaranteed to drive away the wildlife. Towns pay extravagantly for lamps that blast light in all directions, not just down to the ground where it might be useful. We sleep in rooms with lighted clocks so we can tell the time at any moment of the night; sometimes we even project the time in garish orange letters on the ceiling. All night the little lights of our computers, telephones and other electronic devices wink steadily. Numerous studies suggest that constant light can damage our productivity and increase stress levels, injuring both mental and physical health.
So I propose that the best way to celebrate the solstice is to embrace the dark, both literal and figurative.
First, tackle the literal darkness. Even if you have never feared the dark, you likely have not spent much time in it lately. So celebrate the solstice by finding a place as dark as possible. I prefer to go outside, to sit quietly on a rock on my hillside or even on a chair on my deck. Take a flashlight if you wish but leave it off. Don’t take a watch. Breathe deeply until you lose track of the number of times you have done so. Close your eyes. Listen for the dark feet, the dark wings. Inhale the darkness until you can sense how it is a part of you: inside your heart, your skull.
If you can’t find darkness or don’t feel safe outside, create it inside. Take a blanket into a closet, or under the stairs; or banish electronics and draw the shades. Create as much dark as you can and make yourself a comfortable nest within it. Then simply breathe. Listen: first to the sounds outside yourself and then to the sound of your own heartbeat, your own blood in your veins. If you sleep, that’s fine. But give yourself time to absorb whatever may happen.
Another good practice you might initiate at this solstice season has practical aspects as well. Carrying an unlit flashlight in case of accident, learn to negotiate your house, any outbuildings, and your yard in darkness. The ability to move quickly without artificial light might save you in a fire or home invasion. You might even turn this into a challenging and useful game for the whole family. How quickly and quietly can you escape from your house?
There are two ways of spreading light; to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
Edith Wharton, Vesalius in Zante
I’ve always collected quotations; it’s easier to find them about light than about darkness. Everyone from parents to teachers to priests to gurus both real and faux urge us to embrace the light. If we can’t light our own candle, some of these folks encourage us to take a happy pill. Very few mention that darkness can be a benefit.
I don’t want to suggest that such therapies are useless; sometimes they save lives. But in the glare of constant light we may temporarily forget things that will ambush us when our defenses are down, our eyes are closed, the pills wear off.
Deliberately confronting the figurative darkness, the shadowy places in our own hearts and minds, may seem more difficult than flipping on light switches, but I believe solstice is a good time to do it. Now the universe forces us to realize that darkness is inevitable as the earth turns away from the sun. Embrace the dark now, so that it doesn’t sneak up and wallop you on the head some cold February night. Remember that sleep brings its own darkness, always beneficial; we might consider winter a refreshing nap.
Here’s my example. For the book I’m writing now [Gathering from the Grassland, 2017, High Plains Press], I have spent considerable time the past four years reading journals and letters left me by family members: my father, mother, mother’s mother and others. Deciphering their handwriting, turning wrinkled pages, I’ve spent months watching them disintegrate, seeing truths in their writing that I did not see when they were alive. Busy with my own life, I knew they were failing, but I was enmeshed in the hard labor and bickering of that time, watching my husband slowly sicken and die. Reading those documents has helped me understand actions that seemed incomprehensible then.
Reading my own journals has been even harder. Like most people, I did things in my 20s and 30s I wouldn’t have done if I’d known then what I know now.
Worse yet, I took notes, so I can go back and read about my confusion. Sometimes I’m surprised that the facts I wrote down at the time don’t match the golden light of memory I’ve reflected over particular incidents. My writing and record-keeping habits will not allow me to simply burn these journals and rewrite history. Instead I’ve pursued myself in my own history throughout the past couple of years and spent considerable time reflecting on the past. Yes, it was painful, but the enlightenment and release I’ve experienced has been worth it. I’m going to acknowledge all of this confrontation when I celebrate the winter solstice this year.
I can’t promise you that your confrontation will drive away the pain of loss and foolishness, but I believe anguish will decrease, and understanding will fill the gaps.
After crawling into my own dark places, I spent some time berating myself for failing to see then what I see more clearly now. Upon reflection, though, I’ve concluded that I didn’t do too badly with my knowledge at the time. I was loyal to those I loved–- though sometimes I was mistaken or lied to. Where it’s possible, I’ve atoned for the mistakes I made; in some cases I make amends daily.
In the cold darkness of this solstice season, look at your mistakes. Study them until you see where you went wrong or until you understand as much as possible about how they were made. Then lock them into a heavy chest; drag it to the center of the stone cellar under the house of your soul. Lock the door; set the dragons on watch. Leave the past mistakes behind. Go upstairs into the light and repair any error you can. Apologize. Pay the fines. Then do better next time.
Leonard Cohen found the perfect metaphor in his song “Anthem:”
Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in.
Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in. That’s how the light gets in. That’s how the light gets in.
The winter solstice– occurring at 6:12 a.m. eastern standard time on December 21 [2012]– is the longest night of the year, when darkness covers the land. That moment also marks the beginning of the return of the light.
Dive into darkness knowing that the light will come. Ring your own bells; offer your cracked self to the universe and wait in the warm darkness for the light.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
This Solstice I am wrapped in a particularly deep darkness because my partner of nearly 30 years, Jerry Ellerman, died on September 18, 2020 from injuries received in an automobile accident. I face this long cold winter with only my Westie, Hattie, for company.
Linda M. Hasselstrom Windbreak House Writing Retreats Hermosa, South Dakota
With Mystic Travelers: Images from the Edge, the reader receives not only a book but an invitation to join these two Mystic travelers on adventures to the edge of the world we know through Facebook and their website.
When she married well-known South Dakota artist Jon Crane, Gail Crane was catapulted out of her previous existence and into an entirely different life. Geographically, socially, spiritually, Gail was transformed and began to trust and embrace the unknown. Gail writes in this book with a poetic vision, telling us of the history of that ongoing adventure; there is no end in sight.
For the 27 years of their marriage, this delightful couple have combined their talents. John paints brilliantly, and takes gorgeous photographs; Gail puts considerable energy into navigating the demands required by the business of supporting yourself by selling your art. Her account of their ongoing journey bursts with her personal vignettes and spiritual insights, and is beautifully illustrated by Jon’s photographic artistry.
The back cover features Cosme.
Read the book, then join the couple and Cosme, cat who adopted them, for exciting escapades in Mexico and the American West.
You will also see many photos that couldn’t fit into the book by going to the website, www.mystictravelers.us, or look for Jon Crane on Facebook.
Linda M. Hasselstrom Windbreak House Writing Retreats Hermosa, South Dakota
The honor of being named South Dakota’s first living Poet of Merit, by the South Dakota State Poetry Society, astonishes me because this state is full of poets, as well as of people who have not yet begun to write. Part of this job, I believe, is to encourage people to write their ideas, thoughts, observations, no matter what form they choose.
Poetry is everywhere in the world; make it your pleasure to read it and record it.
Homesteading in Dakota
A few years ago, I received an email from a lecturer in the Humanities in Arizona who was teaching an American West literature and film class. The first poem of mine she encountered was “Homesteading in Dakota,” which her class was reading among other authors detailing women’s experiences in the West. She had read that my poetry in Dakota Bones was inspired by local history, and wanted to know if the story in the poem was true.
Here’s part of my response:
“That’s one of many stories inspired by local history, with the names changed to protect the — guilty. And yes, “Homesteading in Dakota” is taken straight from one of the stories my father told me, with tight lips and in terse sentences, once when we were moving cattle near where the homestead stood. I believe he immediately regretted telling me, but once a writer has a story in her head, it may lodge and grow there.
I even used some of his phrases in the poem, though they’re not in quotes: “walked for a month like he had cactus in his feet,” “the kids grew up wild as coyotes,” and “not his fault the dark spoiled his aim the first time.”
I was perhaps thirteen years old when I heard the story, and thus learned a lesson about the concept of justice in our community, and also something about how women were regarded. And, because I’d visited a homestead site very near where this story happened, and lived only about three miles away, I could even picture how the woman would have worked to grow a garden, how isolated she must have felt.
And those little hand-dug wells are everywhere around here: we have to watch carefully and fill them when we find them. We filled one last fall in my parents’ ranch yard, and there’s another slowly caving not a mile away: rock walls built by hand probably a hundred years ago.
The professor responded, “I so enjoy the details you shared, and can certainly see how your poetry truly brings these people, events and experiences to life. My students discussed your work today, and loved the finality of the moment when you write
He shot once out the window, missed; shot her and didn’t.
First there were quizzical looks, and then the reality was clear, and poignant.”
I also noted that the professor might find more experiences from contemporary Western women in the three anthologies I helped Nancy Curtis and Gaydell Collier edit: Leaning into the Wind, Woven on the Wind, and Crazy Women Creek.
The West has always been a place of rough, sometimes harsh, justice, and I didn’t want the students to think those judgments were all in the past.
Homesteading in Dakota
It was a typical prairie homestead: a hundred sixty dusty acres with not one tree. Mr. Fisher put up a soddy for his wife, five kids, and dug a well by hand the first month. The kids and the woman worked the winch after the well got below ten feet. He cut logs in the hills ten miles away for a solid barn, log-roofed. Once they were settled he went to the mines in Deadwood, seventy miles away, for winter cash. She stayed in the soddy, milked the cow, dug out a little garden, struggling with the sod laced together by buffalo grass roots. Now and then she’d stop for breath, shade her eyes, look at the horizon line drawn smooth against the sun.
Mr. Fisher—she called him that— came home when he could, once or twice a month all summer. Neighbors helped her catch the cow, fight fire, sit up when the youngest child died. Once he got a late start, rode in at midnight. Fumbling at the low door, he heard struggle inside. The kids were all awake, pale blank faces hanging in the dark. When he pushed aside the curtain to the double bunk he saw the window open, a white-legged form running in the moonlight, his wife’s screaming face. He shot once out the window, missed; shot her and didn’t.
The neighbors said Black Douglas, on the next claim, walked for a month like he had cactus in his feet. The kids grew up wild as coyotes. He never went to trial. He’d done the best he could; not his fault the dark spoiled his aim the first time.
Many early homesteaders did as this man did: established their first home in a sod house on the prairie east of the Black Hills. When they had the time, the equipment and the energy, they would go to the nearest spot in the hills where they could cut logs, and haul them home for sturdy farm buildings. Sometimes they built the house first, but often the soddy was considered good enough for the family until the farm or ranch buildings were complete, because the welfare of the stock was paramount.
And a great many of the homesteaders in our neighborhood also went to Deadwood to mine gold for a cash income. My uncle often spoke of his own father’s mining days, and particularly of the horse he rode, and how quickly the horse could make the seventy-mile trip. “That was a horse!” he’d say.
Naturally, anyone in the neighborhood soon visited any new home to get acquainted, and in most cases, those who had been there first were generous and helpful with newcomers.
So it is logical that:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Neighbors helped her catch the cow, fight fire, sit up when the youngest child died.
I could never have verified the next part of the story, of course, but it, too, has a certain sad logic. And in the code of the west, the neighbors might talk about a man who walked as if his feet were sore, but since none of them had seen the incident, they could hardly be expected to testify. And legal authority was either nonexistent or distant. I can almost see the gossips shaking their heads over the rough justice.
Linda M. Hasselstrom Windbreak House Writing Retreats Hermosa, South Dakota
“That’s one of many stories inspired by local history, with the names changed to protect the — guilty. And yes, “Homesteading in Dakota” is taken straight from one of the stories my father told me, with tight lips and in terse sentences, once when we were moving cattle near where the homestead stood. I believe he immediately regretted telling me, but once a writer has a story in her head, it may lodge and grow there. 
Notes from a Western Life 