earth – gianna soderstrom

old and new

September 29, 2018Posted in writingTagged Anselm Society, Artists Retreat, beauty, blogging, Colorado, Colorado Springs, earth, faith, friends, friendship, learning, nature, scars, truth, writingLeave a comment

Colorado Springs, Colorado, Anselm Society, Fanciscan Retreat Center

Maybe they were just rust spots but when I walked by slowly I felt the orange-printed echo of fellowship. These weird patio stains happened because people sat here, talking. They argued and they laughed and they encouraged and they cried and whole friendships left their tattoos on the concrete patio for the rest of us to see and take hope.

I saw a tree that had been strung with barbed wire to make a fence a decade ago or more. There was a crease around the rusted wire and dark green moss was growing into that old scar and it was beautiful. Scars have no need to end in ugliness, I thought, and the thought gave me hope.

We sat in church one week, listening to passionate teaching from Colossians, learning verse by verse the ways Paul tells us to live like Christ. “We’ve all heard that we should live like the world is about to end, like this is our last day. But what if we lived like this world is about to be made new? What if we lived like heaven was breaking into Earth?” My soul grasped at that thought and has not let go since. I realize it with cartwheel-inducing joy: that is the vision that has slowly been taking over my sight this year. Scars twisted away from ugliness towards glory? Rust stains cemented proof of relationship? This is beautiful. This is real.

This is, somehow, the beginning of something. There are whole wide reams of sight and knowledge to rediscover. Lean into this with me. Look for the newness. Look for the magic. Don’t all our favorite fairy stories end with the world being regained, recovered, evil fought back and goodness reinstated? I know there will be a new heaven and a new earth one day but let’s not write this one off just yet. Maybe if we look closely, his kingdom is coming on earth as it is in heaven. Coming right here in this old imperfect globe.

wild raspberries

July 16, 2018Posted in adventure, camp life, parentingTagged Bemidji, berry picking, blogging, Colorado, Eagle Lake, Eagle Lake Camp, earth, essays, family, learning, memories, nature, parents, raspberries, wild raspberries1 Comment

It was mid-July when I first learned about wild raspberries. We were camping, camping all together on our summer family trip to Bemidji State Park. The hot afternoons we spent out in the boat together, whipping the intertubes in circles and pulling the skiers in straight lines. Cool mornings Mom liked to get us out biking. There were mixed feelings about hopping on our bikes in the midwest humidity, but our motto was “Everybody gets a turn doing what they want.” Mom, Josh, me and sometimes Josiah all wanted to bike.

My parents took the lead and the tail. Mom biked ahead with Josh, competitive nature in full force. I did my best to keep up despite a slight nagging sympathy for Josiah and Kiara, younger legs biking slowly in the back with Dad. We went single-file down the winding paved path; Josh and I weaving side to side and attempting to break each other’s records of Distance Ridden With No Hands. Eventually our family caught up with us, all but Dad and Kiara. I turned around, volunteering to find where they’d gotten hung up. Sitting still at a junction in the trail galled me when we ought to be moving.

Dad was stopped by the side of the trail. Kiara struggled up a hill behind him.

“Dad! What happened?”

“Wild Raspberries,” he said with a sly smile, and popped a red berry in his mouth. His knowledge of the outdoors had identified for him a treasure we all missed; his voice identified the warm pleasure that filled him whenever he spent time in the woods.

“Really? Are they good?” I’d never harvested any fruit out of the wild before.

“Try some.” He handed me one, and bent over to pick more. They were good. I began to pick them with Dad, leaning over with my bike held upright between my legs, the front wheel turning heavily towards the trees. Kiara caught up and sat beside the road, eating the berries we shared with her. Soon the rest of the family trickled back and called us sly names for not telling them about the sweet gems we’d stumbled across.

Every year after that, I paid attention to what month it was when we camped at Bemidji. I found ways to quiz Dad quietly, asking him whether the raspberries would be ripe yet. If they were I hung back from my usual fast-paced riding. I’d race Josh across the bridge, attempt to ride with no hands between the vehicle-prohibiting metal gates on the trail, hold my breath to keep from panting while I tried to be the first one up the hills. But when we came to the large aspen grove, white trees in their haze of golden-green light stretching out between the ferns, I’d drop back – “to check on Dad and Kiara,” I’d explain with a shrug, perhaps just a little too innocent.

We’d spend a few minutes eating all the tangy plump raspberries we could reach from the trail, scheming quietly how long we could stay before the others would turn around to find us and deplete the amount of berries we could each eat.

Grant and I walked around the lake at camp one evening when we first moved up here. He told me again the story of how he and his co-counselors were told to weed the areas between the boulders of the damn, and then suddenly chided when the property manager discovered they’d pulled up not just the weeds, but all the wild raspberries. We laughed together comfortably. I looked down the sides of the damn at the small stiff bushes poking up between stones. The raspberries were certainly coming back well.

The longer I live at camp, the more raspberries I discover. They grow along the trail up to Raven’s Craig, they grow between the boulders that pile high beside the road. Raspberries bloomed in springtime along the walk down to the dining hall and behind staff housing and on the trail that led back to Halfway Meadow. Now they’re ripening.

We walk around the lake again, this time with little Erik on Grant’s back. I linger, slowing down Grant’s long strides across the open back of the damn. There are raspberries to pick. Nostalgia warms me; I put a raspberry in Erik’s mouth. He grimaces with the burst of tang, and then smiles widely around the sweetness. I shape a memory in the sunshine, saving it for us to taste again next summer.

Every time I find a dark red raspberry, ripe and ready to eat, I remember eating those first wild berries with Dad. I hear the excitement that crept into his voice when he taught us about the woods he loved. I remember learning about the trees from him. Mom quizzed us on our trees by tickling our noses with their leaves, making our homeschool learning fun. Dad taught us from the heart of him; there was no tickling, only a deep love of all things wild that made his knowledge gold and transformed the woods into holy ground.

It is mid-July. I try to remember all the places I’ve noticed the rough shapes of raspberry leaves over the spring. I wander back quietly, hoping to find and collect the sweet red memories before everyone else catches up.

crazy days, lovely days

June 4, 2018Posted in adventure, camp life, habitsTagged blogging, Colorado, Eagle Lake, Eagle Lake Camp, earth, home, learning, mountain meadow, mountains, nature, photography, Pikes Peak, truthLeave a comment

The days are crazy here. I may look back on this conclusion someday and wonder what I thought was so crazy about them, but it still seems true now. I live more unplugged, since taking my phone out of the house means losing reception instantly. I play more with Baby E. We play hide-and-seek around and around the large comfy chair in the living room, or wrestling games, or chasing games. We play upstairs on the porch with the others, although Erik is a bit of a loner so far.

We walk downhill to the dining hall once or twice a day (which means uphill back and we mamas all groan the whole way.) When Erik naps I put the monitor on the front patio and walk laps around the driveway to staff housing, checking the monitor every five minutes when I pass through. Sometimes we all walk down to the beach together, or up to the gate to see Pikes Peak. If I’m feeling energetic and adventurous, we’ll hike the “mother loop” which feels 90% uphill, or walk out on the trail towards Halfway Meadow.

There’s a trail up to the Cross I haven’t explored yet, since it’s too steep to take Erik up, or to hike without a radio connection. There’s a trail to the Raven’s Craig where I’ve only discovered the trailhead and the first few yards of the narrow, winding track. There’s a bike track that stretches out past where another trail meets the road. The lake is surrounded by a trail that rides up over the damn. There are burn scars and wildernesses waiting at our doorstep. Overall there’s a lot of walking. I barely drive anywhere.

I’m learning to find beauty in the repetition. When I walk laps around the willow marsh during E’s naps, I look for new wildflowers blooming, or study the few aspens that rise above the willow brush more closely. There are new birdsongs to be heard, new shades of green to be discovered. I try to look with fresh eyes every time I walk around it.

I’m trying to see God the same way, new and deep and beyond what I could ever comprehend, yet always revealing more of himself. I try to look deeper and more closely at the scriptures I’ve read so often. There is more to be found, understood, absorbed, applied – if only I can learn to see it. God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow but his mercies are new every morning. I cling to these thoughts and passages and look for the new mercies of God in the old, old words he gave us, just like I look for the newness of leafy aspens and blooming wildflowers in the narrow marsh below our front door.

beauty from ashes

May 26, 2018Posted in adventure, camp life, habits, writingTagged beauty, beauty from ashes, Colorado, creativity, earth, Ephesians, Ephesians 3:20, exploring, God, learning, more than we ask or think, nature, parents, photography, stillness, truth, walking, writingLeave a comment

“The Waldo Canyon fire burned all the way around camp,” Grant tells me. I’m impressed, and I see the hand of God in the story as clearly as if he were opening the camp gate to let us in. But to me it is just a story still. In the year of the fires I was in Minnesota, celebrating my graduation, finding a new job, planning travels for the next year. I didn’t understand just how close the fires had come until I began to explore.

I walked back to the horsebarn one evening. There are trails and work roads that split off into the hollow woods as I walk, and I notice that the forest is scarred and sooty. Black and gray trees point up like crooked bony fingers. They stretch down to the very edges of this tiny green valley, closer than I imagined. With practice you could stand at the edge of the barn and spit into the burn area. It is the same when I walk around the rest of the camp, stretching my legs on a cool afternoon and looking for the places I will walk with Erik in the lazy days ahead.

“This is Excursions Valley,” Grant explains as we crest a hill and walk down towards the cabins dotted along its side. There are more wildfire scars here. We walk in the spring-green valley and when we look up at the next hills their rounded tops are clearly arched against the blue sky. There are no evergreens filled with the low rush of breeze to obscure the edges of rising mountains here. No, there are only the skeletons. Here the green pines are gone and only seasonal grasses and the young whip-like Aspens bring color to the hillsides.

But there is color. The grasses have come back; their green ranks have pushed through the dry growth from last year and are springing up, brighter with every sunny day. Where mature Aspens grow in the mountains they form delightful streaks of bright green amongst the evergreens, and here instead of veins and pools of lighter green amid dark, they form a haze of bright growth around the bases of old burnt stems.

There is an unused wood stove in the Dining Hall that people have set wood paintings of encouraging sayings on. A small one near the front says Beauty From Ashes. I remember it day after day when I sit at our kitchen table, looking out at the burned slope reaching down almost to the camp; the soft green haze of fresh leaves reaches a little higher and shimmers a little brighter every time I look. Glory and growth are springing up from the graves of old trees. Beauty from ashes.

I have given up on writing many times. There was a year when I scarcely wrote at all, even to journal. There were a few months when I pushed through a large project only to set it aside, unfinished, for over a year. I eventually began to consider it pointless to pick up again. The last season has seen me working and spousing and parenting all together and addicted to my phone in between. There wasn’t time or energy to write. There wasn’t quiet space to find creativity.

I’ve discovered the vitality that walking and silence bring to my creative side this season, and writing has been possible again. Fear has been sliding away. I’ve been pushing fear away; fighting for my words, my inspiration, my quietness. Some beauty is returning to this old love of mine.

I keep praying over my writing. I’d love to be famous you know, and perhaps I have it in me, but I don’t think that’s what my writing is for. If my goal is to be a well-known and well-loved author, it will get in the way of having a unified, sound marriage, of parenting with connectedness and wisdom and presence. Those goals are more important.

But God is the God who “can do far more than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us…” (Ephesians 3:20) I keep asking for beauty to come from the ashes of my writing habits, my creative desolation. I keep asking that God would do far more than all I could ask or think – that he would use this creativity and desire for His purposes, that he would help me to focus on what is most important, and bring the writing to fruition in its own time.

initiate

May 14, 2018May 14, 2018Posted in adventure, camp life, courage, writingTagged blogging, Colorado, Eagle Lake, Eagle Lake Camp, earth, friendship, initiate, initiation, learning, nature, poetry, writingLeave a comment

I am an initiate

starting, but not familiar yet.

In the autumn it was “Hello, we haven’t met,”

but they welcomed me in, fellow Mama, camp Mama.

I floundered and wondered at their conversations

and wished I had history to make a translation, but

I am the initiate.

At Christmas it was “White Elephant” and I laughed

happily until my gift was different and

I laughed bitterly and I knew

I was still the initiate.

In May they said Happy Mother’s Day and I asked

What should I pack? What will I want for a summer at camp?

Then we were traveling

and on gravel roads, I slid and slipped

I still felt like an initiate.

The sun was rising somewhere but the fog kissed my fingertips

beauty comes at me in catched breaths and gasps.

Pine trees hold raindrops in sunshine and glisten

when my footsteps echo the birds stop to listen

I recognize home lights of housing like beacons

the air herself bends around me to receive.

Initiate, maybe, but not uninvited.

seeing

May 11, 2018Posted in adventure, camp life, habitsTagged adventure, Adventure Camp, beauty, blogging, cabin, camp life, Colorado, Eagle Lake, Eagle Lake Camp, earth, God, gratitude, Jesus, kids, learning, light, nature, outdoors, parenting, parents, sky, teaching, truth, writing5 Comments

Yesterday we moved most of our summer things up to camp. The back of the truck was full of boxes, the baby boy full of rice and stew. The higher we climbed up Rampart Range, the higher the anxiety mounted in my own heart. We unpacked, stowing our favorite mugs in the cabinets, tucking away canned tuna and steel cut oats in a cupboard, setting bread and tortillas on top of the fridge.

With each thing I unpacked, the stark reality of our summer at camp took on form. I had known the fridge would be small as but I tucked kefir on the top shelf and then negotiated the almond milk behind it I wondered how I would work with this space. I knew there wasn’t a bookshelf but when I stowed my favorite books behind a charming little end table door, I wondered how I would survive in this literary desert. The windows, larger than I had remembered, were covered in window wells and my heart sank a little more. I had planned for Erik to share our room but when I put him down in the pack’n’play, still unhappy after a bottle of milk, I wondered how much more motherhood I could manage for the day.

I saw the sun shining through a hedge a few days ago. The sidewalk was shadowy and dark but in the gap between the leaves the sun was bright and gold, all the more beautiful for having trickled through the leaves, maybe. And when the sun slips behind the dark-rising mountains in the evening, the colorful rays of evening shine out the more lovely for being ephemeral.

Perhaps that is the way with all beautiful things. I must learn to see them. The moments of glory in parenting will only shine the brighter when I am looking for them, when I have walked through the frustrations. The small closet, the narrow cupboards, the welled windows; these will all become worthwhile when I have looked for the ways that camp life is shot through with light. The same moment the sun sets, the stars begin to appear. When the challenges rise like the dusky mountains in the evening, the soft rays of joy may just become more beautiful.

Look for the light, my friends.

the succulent and I // repotted

May 10, 2018May 10, 2018Posted in adventure, camp life, courageTagged aloe, blogging, camp life, camp wife, Colorado, Eagle Lake Camp, earth, gardening, God, learning, nature, planting, repotting, succulents, transplanting, writingLeave a comment

Last week I repotted my succulents. I bought them from Sprouts nearly two years ago; the dark aloe in copper colored pots played perfectly into my wedding color scheme of rose gold and green. I used them as centerpieces and kept them as living souvenirs of that day. I’m not a green thumb, and I don’t think they’ve thrived under my care, but they’re still alive.

After keeping them alive – somehow – for so long, I decided to stop hoping and start learning. I looked up how to repot them; it seemed like a logical first step since they’ve grown so much. Then I learned how often to water them. Having tabs about succulents open on my web browser is one thing, but it was another completely to walk into the garden section at Walmart and ask for the correct potting soil. It was yet another to grab an old kitchen spoon in lieu of a garden spade, buckle my baby boy in the patio swing, and start scooping a few handfuls of gravel out of the alley behind our house to act as drainage in the bottom of the pot.

They are happily repotted now. I just watered them for the first time (you’re supposed to wait about a week to let them adjust to the new soil.) I’m a little worried that they haven’t loved being transplanted, but hopefully they begin to adjust since they have more room to grow again.

Today we beginning our move up to camp for the summer. We don’t need to bring our entire household since the staff housing there is furnished, but clothing, books, baby toys, cold-weather and rain gear, hiking boots, and anything else we may need up there that we won’t need down here is going in today’s truck load. I’m feeling like my succulents must have, lined up beside the patio waiting to be transferred, at the mercy of gentle fingers and an old kitchen spoon. We’ll be living next to families I already know and love, but I haven’t known them long. I’ve gone to camp before and been in the mountains, but never this camp, never for a summer, never in this role. It seems like a natural role to assume, but a challenging one. It will require adjustment.

Somehow, despite all my nervous anticipation, fear of the unknown, the strangeness of the “camp-wife” role, I’m excited. I flourish in the outdoors, honestly. And I’m beginning to think I’ll adjust well, having more room to grow again.

I used to joke about being a “black thumb” – once a cactus under my care died for lack of water. But there is something about nurturing plants that feels very much like embodied hope. Perhaps even our doomed-to-decay bodies have the essence of life flowing in their very fingertips. Perhaps in a sin-broken world we can still thrive, grow, even nurture.

gardening

April 20, 2018Posted in adventure, parenting, writingTagged baby boy, courage, daffodils, dirt, earth, flower gardening, flowers, gardening, heritage, hyacinths, plantingLeave a comment

Grandpa used to keep two giant gardens. The front one was bordered with gladiolus, Grandma’s favorite flower. I remember the five-gallon buckets of bulbs he kept in the basement during the winter. I also remember the crates and boxes of squash, carrots, potatoes and parsnips he sent home with us in the autumn. White parsnips, fried up in a little butter? Not bad, my dad would say. I grew to like them just because of the way Dad talked about them.

My aunt kept one large immaculate garden almost as big as Grandpa’s two put together. I spent some hot summer afternoons moving too slowly down the rows of green beans, wondering when the bottom of my bucket would disappear. Harvesting the sweet peas took longer because we’d all stop to shell a few as we went, snacking on the round tart peas, almost crunchy in their raw ripeness.

My best friend grew a garden too. Her mother was an avid flower gardener, and soon Anni had her own little strip of black wet earth, turned over and brightened with tiny moss roses. She took care of the ferns too – large green fronds nearly as tall as I was that we bruised playing hide-and-seek.

Mom’s gardens were a bit more chaotic. There were raised vegetable beds behind the house that we kids toiled over unwillingly. There were marigolds seeded along the edge of the field that came back and surprised us every year, and an odd row of gladiolus we’d planted from bulbs Grandpa gave us. We always forgot to dig up the bulbs for the winter but somehow they came back. There were a few beds around our large lawn, too, planted with tiger lilies and daylilies, sedums, irises, tulips and daisies and geraniums.

I learned what a garden could look like and somehow worked myself up to believing it would be impossible to start my own. I tend to idealize and romanticize new things, new ideas, until I’m actually afraid to try them. It happened with gardening. I love flowers, I want a garden, but I’m terrified I won’t do it well so I haven’t bothered to do it at all. This spring my mother-in-law brought me a potted arrangement of daffodils and grape hyacinths. They’ve run their course and stopped blooming already, and I finally dug up the bulbs.

This autumn we’ll be moving to a place with a tiny garden bed, and I want to at least try gardening, even if it means starting with five daffodil and six grape hyacinth bulbs. I took my wee boy outside to play while I rubbed the dirt off the bulbs and separated them by variety. The hyacinths were already reproducing, I noticed! Some of the bulbs had little half-bulbs growing off of them.

The bulbs are in paper bags in the pantry now, labeled and waiting patiently to be planted in the pre-winter chill. And me? I’m excited. It felt wonderful to get some dirt on my fingers, let the earth touch me again. There will be flowers growing next spring that I dug up and cared for and planted, and though it’s only a few bulbs from a grocery-store arrangement, I’m still proud.

let the earth touch you

April 7, 2018April 8, 2018Posted in adventure, writingTagged adventure, barefoot, California, California Redwoods, Colorado, dirt, dirty, Eagle Lake Camp, earth, muddy, natural, nature, Northern California, Ridgewood Ranch, travel, writing, zipline1 Comment

It sounds stupid in my head to want to take a barefoot walk in the middle of a city neighborhood, but I do. My best friend and I used to do it together when I’d visit her in the city. Even now sometimes I can’t resist. I went out barefoot just a few weeks ago. I didn’t go much further than just around the block, but it still felt grounding somehow.

The weekend after that walk I visited friends in northern California. We took a hike through a grove of giant redwood trees. The trail was flooded in places. We sidestepped over half-cracked branches to cross wide puddles, and leapt carefully from one muddy bank to another when the water filled the entire trail. I had forgotten how irritating and exhilarating it is to get your socks wet through your shoes and slide precariously on the slick earth.

The next day we visited Ridgewood Ranch, wandering in and out among the fenced and wooded pastures, following first the redwoods and then the creek. We stumbled upon a beautiful pasture pocked with cow patties, hoof-prints that had collected water, and an old zipline. In the spirit of adventure, we all took a turn on the zipline – racing down the hill and dragging our feet on the tussocked ground to slow ourselves before coming to the end of the cable.

My jeans were so dirty I had to turn them inside out to pack them in my suitcase that night. But I was glad, even then. It was satisfying to get so dirty for once. I often did as a kid, even as a teen. Lately I’ve been adapting to sanitary, suburban life, I suppose. Why is it so important to just be outside, in the woods, getting dirty? There is something so natural and free about not minding if your socks are a little wet, your jeans a little muddy. It is important to let the earth touch you, now and then. To remember where you live, how you live.

It’s all making me more glad that we’ll be moving up to summer camp next month. I look forward to getting a little dirty, washing a little extra laundry, and getting a bit closer to the earth. Here’s to the the pebbles that get into our sandals, the puddles that soak through the mesh of our shoes, the wind that whips your hair across your eyes, into your laughing mouth. Here’s to being people familiar with the ground we walk on.