family – gianna soderstrom

looking for rest

September 5, 2018Posted in camp life, courage, writingTagged beauty, blogging, Colorado, Colorado Springs, faith, family, home, journal, learning, moving, nature, rest, truth, Woodland Park, writingLeave a comment

This is one of those weeks where all the challenges circle around like the steps on the stair climber at the gym. No matter how long you climb or how fast or slow or how tired you are, they just keep coming at a steady and predictable rate. Being consistently tired and having tough mornings or minutes or months isn’t even taking you by surprise anymore.

I told myself this month would be crazy. I wanted the advance warning, so I looked at the calendar and took myself by the shoulder and said, “Yeah. It’s going to be wild. October is a long ways away. So instead of looking at the busyness, look for the rest. Don’t wait until next month to sit down, read a book, admire the mountains, invite someone over for dinner. Look for the rest this month, right now.” I wasn’t mistaken about the schedule. We’re five days into the month and the best summary I can think of so far is that yesterday when I gave up my one unscheduled hour to pack for the week, a container lid fell on my nose and scraped it hard – the only reward for my labor. Oh well.

I’m not good at resting. Anyone who knows me can tell you that. I like to achieve things. I like to have worked hard for a long time. I like to have the dishes washed and the high chair clean and the laundry done and the packing finished. I like to sit down only when I can survey my little domain tidy and comfortable. September doesn’t get to be that way.

In the effort to savor what I have instead of wishing for what I don’t, I’m looking around for the things I’ll miss next month, back in the city. I’ll miss the mountain, with our drive-by view of Pike’s Peak’s profile, misted over today, with snow on the rocky slopes running down towards the trees. I’ll miss the way the aspens are turning so slowly. Already the bright green leaves that blanketed the hills are turning to rust and gold with the cool breath of fall. I’ll miss the wood tones of the furniture in staff housing. Our home will be lovely in the Springs, but less woodsy. This is the month to lean into the things I could overlook too easily.

I’m asking myself, too, whether this month is bad or just hard. Bad things happen; car accidents, illnesses, crime, injury. This isn’t one of those. This is living farther away from friends, parenting longer hours while Grant works, balancing our life between a storage garage, a suburban basement-home and the spacious housing at camp. It’s challenging to cook without my kitchen appliances or wonder which box that needed item was put into, and when I’ll find it again. But it’s not bad. It’s just a hard thing, and it will end.

Beyond all those things, truth is the anchor I need most right now. I opened Psalm 27 today, wondering how I could go for so many weeks missing out on the social occasions that I crave, introvert though I am. Is this loneliness just going to pervade the rest of my life? Will I always feel a bit purposeless, a bit alone, a bit worn out while I chase a toddler around and have nobody to talk to? But Psalm 27:1 says “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”

My courage and joy don’t depend on friends, on being walking distance from a good coffee shop, on getting to sleep in while somebody else gives Erik a bottle and his first diaper change of the day. My life is held in the strong grip of God. Verses 13-14 of the same Psalm say, “I believe I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; Wait for the Lord!”

I do believe it. I do believe I can find rest, here in the Aspens shedding their summer summer colors for a short-lived autumn glory. I will wait for the Lord. I will make my heart take courage. I will look for the rest.

cliff jumping

August 3, 2018Posted in adventure, camp life, courage, writingTagged blogging, cliff jumpers, cliff jumping, close friends, Colorado, courage, courageous, creativity, Eagle Lake, Eagle Lake Camp, faith, family, friends, Lake Superior, Minnesota, north shore, truthLeave a comment

There is a cliche I’m tempted to use when I try to describe the passing summer: harder than I thought but better than I expected. I think cliches are better expressed in stories. After all, aren’t cliches just familiar sentiments that we’ve chosen the same, typical ways of expressing? But our stories are all different.

I was the girl who camped with her friends instead of going to parties with them. Once we all slept on the lakeshore after gazing in awe at a meteor shower. It rained on us around midnight but we just ducked under our covers and laughed it off the next day when we shook the sand out of our blankets. One July we packed up and drove to the north shore of Lake Superior. We left at 3 am because we didn’t have reservations and we were banking on being there in time to get two non-reservable campsites. It was a gamble, but we were all together in a too-loud pickup truck eating fresh donuts and trying to keep each other awake and we were willing to take the risk.

The nights were cold and the days were foggy and even so the next morning we girls walked up to the boys campsite to see Caleb striding confidently out of the tent in a swimsuit. The rest of the boys trickled out after him, swaggering a bit with their damp towels over their shoulders. The river we camped on was horribly cold for July and even so there was a definite wall of colder water where the river met Lake Superior and somehow all the same, Caleb planned to go cliff jumping.

Sheri calmly declined. There may be a moment when peer pressure has caused Sheri to cave but I have not seen it. Anni and I looked at each other with wide eager eyes. We had no resistance. It was cliff jumping or a slow death of shameful cowardice. We got our swimsuits and followed the boys. We could hear our hearts pounding over the crunch of our flip-flops on gravel so we sang Dive by Steven Curtis Chapman to pump ourselves up and drown our fear.

We hovered on the edge of the gravely ledge while the boys jumped in line. Once, twice each. I looked down; I shook; I wavered. I thought of how cold the water would be. Worth it? And I imagined the adrenaline-filled glory of coming up the steps to my friends cheers. Worth it?

And then I jumped.

The water was harder than I pictured. It stabbed the soles of my feet and stung the undersides of my outflung arms. I fell farther than I imagined: There were deep heavy layers of water above me when I tried to swim back up. The breath I couldn’t breathe in caught in my throat as I tried to push the waves aside, to resurface. But the glory overwhelmed me. When my feet left the rocky soil I felt the wind in my hair. I felt myself falling with helpless joy. I scrambled onto the rough shore visibly trembling; there was an overwhelm of laughing courage inside so strong I barely heard the offered cheers.

Our feet squeaked against our wet flip-flops as we walked back to our tents. We were cliff jumpers.

That is how I would describe this summer. The long, arduous hours I expected were longer, more painful than I thought. They built resentment and frustration. I’m exhausted when I wake up every morning at 6. The weeks of E teething have been impossible. The times I spend with Grant have been rare, interrupted, disconnected, frustrating.

But the beauty has been overwhelming. Our marriage is stronger. We learned that “being in love” can’t carry us; we learned how to fight for each other in cups of coffee and spontaneous sushi dates and saying I’m sorry. I learned to play with Erik more; we read books and play chase and sometimes seek out the other littles to give me a break. The woods that looked like nothing but a dead burn scar this spring have been washed with the magic of wildflower meadows and red raspberries and baby Aspens like a thick green blanket. The close community has shocked and warmed me like the adrenaline and applause when I climbed out of Lake Superior four years ago.

This summer has stung me like hard cold water on my skin and emboldened me like laughing courage shared with old friends. Here’s to the life we create at camp. Here’s to the hard things we couldn’t imagine and the glory we feel and cannot fathom. Here’s to being cliff jumpers.

^ Anni and I, at Lake Superior. 2014.

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.