SEEING THINGS – Meeting the Invisible Halfway

Seeing this grimy sawtooth snowbank this morning reminds me how many
things in this wondrous world we can “see” only because of their effects on
something else.

Upwelling, wave-dampening “fluke prints” evincing a whale swimming out of sight below the surface. The jostling of larger subatomic particles by otherwise invisible “ghost particles,” or neutrinos. Tiny puffs of air on one's face from bat wings deep inside a pitch-black cave.

And this, a mound of snow poked by the invisible rays of a quickening late-
winter sun.

Though there's surely more to life than meets the eye, what a miracle how much more of it we can behold if our seeing is generous enough to meet it halfway.

TEN-FOOT STRIDES

 

It's one of those precious late-October-in-Minnesota evenings. I've walked tall this past half-hour, body thriving, spirit nourished by all I see and feel. And then, in one captured moment, as sun nestles into thinning treetops across the river, my stature positively soars. Now I walk in ten-foot strides o'er this patchwork quilt of spent, mauve-tinged cottonwood leaves.

And today somehow the contrast between my cool front and warm back feels especially satisfying. Soon I'll have to get here by 3:30 instead of 6:00 to grow like this. Oh, I'll stand tall, but the reach of these sublime colors will be stunted. And both sides of me will be cold.

BLUE-SKY BLIZZARD – Awash in Wintery Wonder

This morning in the forest every branch and twig seems more slender for the epaulet of fresh snow atop its shoulders. The fine lines of dark taupe and raw umber branch and spread, etched in a Maya blue sky. Crisp post-Alberta-clipper
air hovers, breathless, at around zero.

PHOTO: MichiganMoments.com

I swear I can hear tiny creaks and clanks, whispers of those the hot water pipes in old buildings make, as still-rising sun heats the branches. Though nothing will course through them for another month and a half, there is movement. Imperceptibly, the rough, warm bark swells. Dampened by the first drops of snow melt, it exhales tiny wisps of steam.

Those slight, rising air currents merge and grow, and soon stir the branches. To my right, a few falling flakes catch glints of sun; then more to my left.

      The five-year-old in me opens his mouth and 
      catches as much as he can on his tongue.

PHOTO: Lee Rentz

I stand among trunks in a pool of sunlight. An inkling lifts my gaze, and suddenly I’m awash in a fine, dazzling-diamond mist. The five-year-old in me opens his mouth and catches as much as he can on his tongue. Though too little to even wet it, the snowy spritz quenches my grateful soul. And then, but for a few straggling flakes, it is gone.

I look to position myself under another snow shower, but the game of wonder whac-a-mole frustrates me. I guess the one prize will have to do…for now.

THE EDGE OF WETNESS – A Snowbird's Ode to Heat

My wife and I spend a month or so every winter in a warm place. A very warm place. In fact, the forecast for every single day of the past few weeks here in Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico has required just five words: high: 90; low: 72; sunny.

The very first thing we do when we get here—and it starts with that first hot breath that envelops us as we step out of the airplane—is sweat. And then we keep going, shall we say, with the flow, every day we're here, from the moment we emerge from our villa's air-conditioned bedroom into our open-to-the-elements living area in the morning till a few minutes after we go back in at bedtime.

For most of the day, every day, we walk—into el centro, to the supermarket, to the laundromat, perhaps to Las Gatas, the fabulous little beach around the other side of the bay.

          Sun and breeze wring the sweat out 
          of a body like water from a wet mop.

FISH OUT OF WATER
We love the walking. But the sun here at 18 degrees north latitude on the Pacific coast of Mexico is brutal. Add to that the humidity, lapped up from the sea by sun and breeze, and the very hilly terrain, and it'll wring the sweat out of a body like water from a wet mop.

It doesn't help that folks like us have just left a place where, if you're lucky, there's only about eight hours a day of wimpy sunlight and even Nature can muster no color. So we apply a layer of sun-blocking goo over every inch of our bodies. It feels like you're wearing one of those cheap transparent plastic rain ponchos, like not a breath of air can actually reach your skin.

Now we understand why so many native Zihuatanejenses manage to keep to the shade, carry umbrellas and still, many of them, practice the time-honored tradition of the siesta every day between two and five.

OM-M-M-M
A siesta? But we're on vacation, too busy enjoying the absence of snow and ice and cracking skin to miss a moment. And so we walk…and we walk…and we sweat some more. In just the first block from our villa, up the long, steep hill toward town, it's already soaking through in dark blotches on our tee shirts.

  We know exactly where, and at what time of 
  day, every little patch of shade in town resides.

Walking in this heat becomes a kind of perverse meditation for us. We've memorized nearly every step of these two-or-so miles, how to pace ourselves and negotiate obstacles in the fewest number of them possible. Uneven cobbles, off-and-on-again curbs, exposed utility pits—all things OSHA would have a field day with back home. And we know exactly where, and at what time of day, every little patch of shade in town resides.

Our favorite of these little oases is right at the spot where the La Ropa neighborhood ends and La Madera begins. There, at the top of the steps leading down to Calle Adelita, between Kau Kan restaurant and a rustling stand of bamboo, the wall seems to catch every whiff of breeze off the bay and funnel it down to that hundred-square-foot remnant of Eden.

FLOW-THROUGH
Not only is it shady and breezy there at Kau Kan; it's also the best place in town
for flow-through. Flow-through is that miracle of aerodynamics where a nice steady breeze catches your sleeve at just the right velocity and angle to puff it up, works its way across your back or chest prying the wet fabric away from your skin, and then flows back out the other sleeve.

It is heaven, our reward for all that sweating. Next to a cool shower, and perhaps a couple of ice cold Coronas, flow-through is the most refreshing break a wilted snowbird will ever get. You really should try it.

       One must find one's own ways to be cool.

As I've been jotting this all down, I'm thinking there might be more to flow-through than the mildly humorous image of a grown man standing by the busy Scenic La Ropa Road with a blissful expression on his face, his arms spread limply like a poor rendition of the Crucifixion. There's a kind of metaphor here, isn't there, a lesson in slowing down, opening up and letting go when one travels?

I'll let you draw your own parallels. Whether you do or not, suffice it to say one must find one's own ways to be cool.

AS IF FOR THE FIRST TIME – Sun

It was a very long winter here in southeastern Minnesota. It takes a certain kind
of internal strength—some might call it insanity—to weather those five months
of short, too-often-gray days. Now, spring’s crept in tentatively…and seems
reluctant to leave.

It seems like just a few weeks ago that it finally hit me, even if the air wouldn’t yet admit it, that we were finally out of the gray winter woods. That day, I brushed my arm against the black wrought iron frame of a bench I was sitting on and nearly burned myself.

You can see why, around here, we might take the sun less for granted than most.

Few of us have ever experienced more than 
a few days without the company of shadows.

CAN’T STUMP WONDERMAN
Like so many of Nature’s omnipresent wonders—like water, trees and air—even if it sometimes seems in short supply, the sun is still awfully easy to disregard. After all, few of us have ever experienced more than a few consecutive days without the company of shadows, not to mention natural warmth, light and all the sun’s other gifts. In fact, the sun’s so integral to life on earth, that its absence is utterly unthinkable.

That familiarity, no matter how we might try to fight it, breeds apathy. Like food
or water, unless we were to experience life without the sun, none of us can ever
fully appreciate its wonder. But hey, do you think that will keep this WonderMan from trying?

WHAT’S THAT STRANGE GLOW?
So how often do you think about the sun? Can you imagine how it might look and feel if you’d never experienced it before? If all the ambient warmth, light and plant-growing energy you’d ever felt had been somehow man-made?

It turns my skin darker, but has 
the opposite effect on my hair.

Here are just a few of the reflections I can imagine one might have on the wondrous novelty of natural sunlight, seen for the first time:

• How can anything so small—it takes up only about .0005 percent of the sky—be so bright, so warm, so all-enveloping?

• That tiny orb’s glow heats things it lands on, but not the air it passes through on the way. (Kind of like how your microwave heats your cocoa but not the mug.)

• When I face it with my eyes closed, it turns my eyelids into fiery orange lighting gels (a perfect background to show off my little, black, stringy eye floaters).

• It moves across the sky all day and then, apparently, sleeps somewhere at night.

• Just after turning in, its glow lasts a while, turning clouds amazing shades of pink and orange.
• It seems to do something to my plants that grow lights can’t—like they’re on steroids or something.

• It turns my skin darker, but has the opposite effect on my hair.
• The thing’s so powerful that if I let it shine on me for an hour it burns my skin.
• It uses the spaces between trees’ leaves like lenses, focusing its light into so many circular pools, like thousands of tiny spotlights.

Can you imagine experiencing natural sunlight for the very first time? Could you see it the way a five-year-old would? What observations might you have?