Sustainer

Five o’clock Friday, I drive home as fast as I can on the icy streets. When I get there, I pack my car: thirty-below sleeping bag, long underwear, snow pants, chopper mitts, beanie, scarf, ski goggles, and a change of clothes. My cross-country skis are last and run the length of the small car’s cabin, from rear window to front passenger floor.

            In the hallway, I slide on my puffy down parka and flip its long, coyote-rimmed hood over my head. A full zip leads to soft, warm, quiet darkness—complete insulation from the outside world. My mother’s muffled voice comes from the fur-lipped light at the end of the tunnel. I flip the hood back down.

            “What’d you say?” I ask.

            “I said ‘You’re taking your good coat camping?’”

            “Yeah! I want to live!”

            I poke my head in my room for one last scan. Ah! I snatch the blue mint tin from atop my headboard and drop it in my inner chest pocket, snug as a bug.

            “So, where are you going, again?” Mom asks.

            “The Boundary Waters…just north of Ely.”

            “Minnesota?”

            “Yeah.”

            “And who are you going with?”

            “Brian Derby.”

            “Anybody else going?”

            “Nope, just us.”

            “Just the two of you?”

            “Yep.”

            “Okay.” She shakes her head. “I never heard of camping in the middle of winter. Don’t freeze to death.”

            “I’ll be fine. We’ll have fire.”

            “Alright, just please come back in one piece.”

            “I will.”

            We hug.

            She says, “I love you.”

            I say, “I love you too.”

            I leave East Grand Forks city limits, heading east on Highway 2, and enter the treeless, tired-gray snowscape of March in the Red River Valley of the North. Spring is in the not-too-distant future but still nowhere to be seen. It has been an eventful winter and one I will not miss but the fall…we are all still reeling from the fall.

*

In the fall, my three-year stint of sewing wild oats in the Twin Cities came to a quiet end. The lease on my shared basement apartment in downtown Minneapolis wouldn’t be renewed. I had no job, no money, and no prospects. The only move I had was back in, under my parents’ roof in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

            My little brother drove down with his big red pickup and a flatbed trailer. We soon discovered that Grandma’s wooden sofa set from the 70s wouldn’t fit through the front door, so some deconstruction was necessary. (It was on its last legs anyway and pretty much fell apart on its own.) I figured we could just toss the pieces in the dumpster, but the maintenance man happened to be on site and made us dig them out and take them away. Red-faced, we placed the remains of the furniture on top of everything else already loaded in the trailer. It was a fine pile of garbage and for six long hours it embarrassed me. As I followed the trailer, the physical representation of my failure to “make it” in the big city swayed back and forth in front of me. The sofa’s splayed spine finger-wagged all the way back to Grand Forks.

            In my parents’ office, I slouched atop my bare mattress and reflected upon my current situation. I figured at least it couldn’t get any worse.

            A week later, I joined some friends on my very first trip into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. I entered a new world. A beautiful world. A simple, yet complex world of water, rock, and boreal forest. A serene maze of nature navigated only by paddle or foot. A sanctuary from the motorized hum of mankind.

            I discovered that the BWCAW not only rested on an international boundary, but also a metaphysical one. Its seamless progression of zen scenes led me into a meditative state of consciousness, a zone where the tranquility of the outside world translated to a peaceful inner one. I was in a place where sunlight could momentarily transform the dripping beads of water from a silent paddle stroke into a string of shining diamonds. Like the pristine water, my purpose was always clear. Everything made sense. Like a towering pine that seemingly grew out of rock, I understood that life might grow anywhere light could find it. Shared with friends, the BW was a welcome oasis of quiet euphoria amidst my bleak state of affairs back in the “real” world.

            Upon returning to Grand Forks, I found the nature break had reset me. For the first time in a long time I felt great, had hope for the future. The therapeutic vibes carried over into my “normal life” so much so that when I started looking for a job again, I also looked for ideas for my next outdoor adventure.

            One morning, I found myself in the Grand Forks Visitor Center. Bathed in natural light, I was drawn to a freestanding display which held postcards of bison and wild prairie roses. I picked up a brochure that declared, “Like No Place on Earth.” I read on, “A short drive north from the geographic center of North America, there grows a garden created by a promise of peace.”

            The International Peace Garden straddles the border shared by America and Canada, the longest boundary shared by two nations on Earth. What better place to get centered than a peace garden in the center of the continent?

            The brochure’s cover had a photo of the garden’s signature landmark—the Peace Towers, twin structures that stand at the western end of the long formal garden where nationalistic notions dissolve into nothing but flowers.

            An alarming tone of voice woke me from my floral daydream and pulled my attention to a TV on the far wall. The Twin Towers in New York. A gaping hole. Black smoke billowing across a pale blue sky. I didn’t understand. An airliner flew into the frame and disappeared…into the other tower. A fireball surged out, then up.

            I left the center and drove straight home in silence.

            I spent the rest of the morning watching the towers fall, watching people fall, watching people flee, hearing people scream and cry in the streets, chased by an expanding black wave that rolled unchecked from ground zero, into video cameras, and out of TV sets across the world, filling the mental homes of every witness.

            Everyone struggled to figure out the next move. No one knew what to do. Where do we go from here? As the late-night shows started to come back on the air, a simple answer was repeatedly offered—we get back to work.

            After searching the classifieds, I found myself driving to the north edge of town, down a muddy, rutty road named Phoenix Court. At the end of the lane, there was a modest corrugated metal building, surrounded by a large yard filled with towering stacks of wooden pallets.

            I was hired to run the GAP 960 auto-nailer or, as it was referred to in the shop, “the machine.” I was on one side and Pete, the other. It was like a rapid round of cards. One would lay down three boards; on top of that, the other would lay three spacers, then both of us would simultaneously lay the top boards and then, whoever could first, would hit the big red button, activating the carriage of mounted nail guns—three pointing up and three pointing down, which tracked the length of the pallet, nailing it all together, seventy-two nails in just under three seconds.

            One day in February, Pete and I were humming along on the machine when the yard door rose, and Rolando zoomed in on the forklift. He placed what looked like a giant piece of cake directly behind me. It was a fresh pallet of boards from the yard, frosted with a half foot of snow on top. I brushed off the cold topping with my forearm and cut the steel bands with my snips. The boards were frozen together in one big block. I needed a hammer to break them apart. Eventually, I reached the middle of the frozen shipment of boards and discovered a small cavity, and, in that space, a furry brown caterpillar curled up in a tiny ball! Astounded, I showed Pete and we stopped production. Pete found a red shop rag and we swaddled it and tucked it away in the dark parts room.

            At the end of the day, I brought it home and set up a basic terrarium. It was alive for a few weeks but died shortly before I was to go on my first winter camping trip in the Boundary Waters. At the time, it seemed right to bring it with me and return it to nature in the most beautiful natural environment I knew. I looked around my bedroom and found a nearly empty tin of wintergreen mints. I popped the last one and put the caterpillar into its tiny casket.

*

Now, I am flying through the dark of winter’s night. Two headlights cast before me, my small find tucked away in a secret place, close to my heart.

            When I get to Brian’s place in Bemidji, we load his minivan under moonlight and then set off for Ely. The next three hours give us time to catch up.

            “Sorry I missed you when you were up here in the fall,” Brian says. “I was around, I just got the message too late. Sometimes I forget to check the phone.”

            “That’s okay,” I reply. “We had a good time. We did the bog walk by campus and I picked up the Lord of the Rings trilogy from an old bookshop. I mainly wanted to read them before the movies came out but after the Twin Towers fell, reading the books took on a deeper meaning.”

            “Hmm. The Two Towers,” Brian says in recognition of my implied correspondence. “Jon said you and your brother stopped by the house in Grafton on Christmas Eve?”

            “Yeah, that was a weird night. When I got home, my mom met us in the hallway and told us that they just got word from the Langdon hospital that her mom didn’t have long. So, Marc and I drove north. It was so dark and desolate up there by the border. The stars shone so brightly.

            When we got there, my grandmother was writhing and moaning in pain but still lucid enough to call us by name. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just held her hand and tried to imagine a happy scene—a summer day, a meadow, a blue sky, the shining Sun. I focused on the Sun and it got closer and closer until I realized I was “going toward the light,” so I stopped and just caressed her hand. After a while, we let her be and went into the waiting room. That’s where I finished The Two Towers.”

            “That’s the one with the talking trees?”

            “Yeah. Maybe we’ll meet some talking trees this weekend, eh? Anyway, around midnight, we went to say goodbye to Grandma and found that she had passed. We drove back, stopping in Grafton along the way. For what, I don’t know. Just to see a friend, maybe? Jon and your cousin were in the pool. Marc and I stood at the edge in our winter jackets and beanies while your cousin spun ‘round in her bikini. Jon and I talked a bit. I told him her passing was a gift since she had been in pain for so many years.”

            It is close to midnight as we roll through Ely, past closed up shops, admiring ice sculptures that line the city park. A few miles out of town, we park at an entry point and get into our sleeping bags for our night in the minivan’s bucket seats.

            In the morning, we load out backpacks, step into our cross-country skis, and slowly enter Fall Lake. It is a sunny day and windy enough to surround us in a cloud of swirling, prismatic flakes as we disturb the loose snow atop the frozen water.

            After half a day of skiing our gear up and down portage trails and across small lakes, we enter Basswood Lake and settle on an island site. Consulting the map, we discover that Christmas Island, and Canada, are immediate neighbors to the northeast.

            Darkness falls quickly and finds us huddled around a pile of cold, damp twigs, taking trepidatious swigs of booze. Brian isn’t worried because he has heard of a “surefire” way to start fires—soak a sock in blackberry brandy. “The alcohol will ignite the sock, creating a slow burning rag, like a torch,” he says.

            An hour later, we are still without fire and Brian is without a sock.

            We aren’t scared for our lives. It isn’t supposed to drop below zero and we both have weather-rated sleeping bags, extra clothing, and the tent. If worse comes to worse, we can brace the tent and cover it in snow like an igloo or something. But, really, we need a fire. There is nothing quite as disappointing as camping without one. So, in desperation, we scour the moonlit campsite and the surrounding woods for anything that might burn.

            Tucked in the nook of a bare branch, I spot a tiny tuft of wispy, mint-colored lichen. Looking up, I spot another and another. I bring a handful of the almond-sized masses to the fire grate and place them on a flat stone. We hunker around, blocking the breeze coming off of the lake. We cup our hands around the small mound of little dry fluffs and I slowly bring my hot lighter to it. Flick. Oh! They burn bright! And fast! And sustain a single, beautiful flame before dying out a few seconds later. Success! Now, we just have to find a lot more of them. So, like two little hobbits, we quietly creep through the woods, plucking and gathering, filling up our knit hats with the tiny, green plants.

            Deep in the trees, I realize Brian has gone in the opposite direction and I am alone. The only sound comes from my slow, soft steps compressing the untouched snow. Then comes a sharp snap from a hidden branch underfoot. I freeze. I sense eyes upon me. Gradually, I bring my gaze up to some bare branches. Gasp. An angel radiating moonlight—a large snowy owl with its wings spread wide brings them down in the blink of an eye. WHOOSH! By mere inches the creature clears my head. Pure, wild energy bolts through my body. I scramble back to camp yelling jumbled incoherencies, too alive to form words.

            Back at the cold fire grate, I rapidly convey the experience to Brian. We combine our tinder and carefully place the smallest of twigs around it in a cone shape. Still shaking from excitement, I accidentally knock our structure down a few times. Eventually, we get a healthy fire going and both of us can relax a little.

            “Man, I’m still a little amped,” I say as I pat my chest, remembering the mint tin in my breast pocket. I take it out and lift the lid. Locked in its last loop, the caterpillar corpse is a brown ring lightly powdered in mint dust. I delicately place the ring on a flat bit of bark and set it on the small pyre. Converting back to its essential elements, it adds to our humble fire, a small light in the night.

            I softly sing, “Will the circle be unbroken / By and by, lord, by and by / There’s a better home a-waitin’/ In the sky, lord, in the sky” before transitioning to “I’ll fly away, oh glory / I’ll fly away in the morning.”

            At bedtime, the snowy owl still soars through my mind and I have trouble falling asleep, but at least it’s not from the cold.

            The next day starts with a little ski around neighboring Christmas Island and then around ours, weaving an infinity symbol across the invisible border. Upon returning to camp we hang our coats on some tree nubs, and then take seats on the log bench by the fire grate. My gaze is drawn to a pair of sizeable stumps on the edge of the campsite. The Forest Service must have felled them because they are level and large enough to stand on. They almost look like tombstones marking past lives.

            I go over for a closer look, before hopping up on one. I find my footing, straighten my posture, and breathe deeply. I look upon the lake, Christmas Island, and the tree-topped horizon. I sigh. A breeze hushes through camp, and with it, the slightest sound—the long, creaking whisper of stretching trees. I stand straighter yet, my arms at my sides. I close my eyes. Like some ghost limb, I imagine the tree that was, can feel life circulating through me, from the stump, into my soles, up my limbs, my trunk, and out through my fingertips and crown. A tingling verve throughout. I open my eyes to find my arms outstretched, palms open, toward the sky. A conduit for energy between earth and air, my body leans with the breeze. I hear my neighbors leaning with me. A chorus, we creak together. Sharing a sensation, I understand something of them. Brian joins me, stepping up on the other stump. Together, we channel the trees and listen to them, commune with them, truly hearing them for the first time.

            Later that evening, after a nice fire, we settle in for sleep. This time, I fall asleep right away.

            The tent walls are aglow with the soft light of early morning. I take it in before wriggling out of my cocoon-shaped sleeping bag. I unzip the tent flap and stick my head into the Northwoods winter scene. I stare at the fresh snow that blankets our site and watch, dumbstruck, as a single, nearby flake rises from the ground and flitters up! I blink rapidly, mouth agape, and watch a second, and then a third snowflake rise until our site is filled with upward movement—a living snow globe. One comes up from under my nose and tickles the tip. It’s not a snowflake at all, but a tiny white moth! They’re all moths, each and every one of ‘em! Their fluttering ascent unveils a verdant green ground was hidden underneath. I watch the world wake from winter, the promise of spring and new life take flight.

            I awake. It was but a dream. Yet, I carefully crawl to the tent door, still partially in my cocoon, to slowly unzip the flap and gingerly poke my head out. The snow is still there. I stare. It’s not going anywhere, at least not today. But the power of my dream still courses through my being because I know its truth—life will rise again.