The trail was way better than we had anticipated, the hills made low and the valleys high so that we glided on our snowmobiles with the ease of falling snow. I was on the back of the two- seater and I didn’t mind one bit, as I could leave the driving to Vicki and appreciate just where we were, deep in the north woods of the UP on back roads that went on for scores of miles with nothing else but woods and swamps, swamps and woods. Dark pines hung with snow crowded the logging roads and I marveled at their wonder. Then it came to me that I was marveling at their wonder much more than usual. Something unusual was happening and it was coming on quickly, raising flat pine woods into a sort of heaven. In seconds, it felt that I was in paradise along with them.
It is probable that this feeling has been sprinkled upon both saints and thieves alike, but mostly to the youth in their health and vigor, and mostly just as a feeling. This was more. I was no longer young and vigorous, yes, but more so, I understood that this glory was not in the pines alone and certainly not in my head. It was as it would be if, and when, I could see right, which, since this was unusual, was almost never. I understood then that this was the hand of God more surely than any hand painted by Michelangelo, and that I was being privileged, not for anything special I had done, but out of pure grace. It was a gift. I knew it would not last, and I clutched at it so hard that, indeed, it did not last, which is the way of such things. But still, it stood as a wondrous thing.
The following day was different. The temperature was rising into the thirties and we knew we had to leave early to get the good snow, but of course we did not. Our son Jeffery thought he needed gas on his own just-bought but old snowmobile, so we decided to take the trails to Melstrand, the closest place for gas at some twenty miles away. At first, the snow was melty but smooth, but once on the woods path west, it turned into an endless sea of waves, moguls that jolted the back as it throttled the rider up and down, up and down. I made the joke somewhere along the way that it was like endless sex without the joy, which fell far flatter than the roads, but on we went, on and on, until Jeff slowed and then stopped. Uh-oh. When a new old-used snowmobile driven by a young speed demon comes to a stop, it could only mean one of two things: that he had to pee or that the snowmobile was crapping out. It turned out to be number two, pun intended, for being stuck deep in the woods truly can leave you in a deep pile. Worse, once we checked it out, we found that the track would not turn. That meant that dragging it out was going to be very, very difficult, requiring a type of rope that we did not have with us.
I should have known. I had been driving this time, and at first had been blessed briefly with that ecstatic feeling as we passed the great pines, but soon the mood changed as if by a passing dark cloud. Something was, as they say in California, harshing my buzz. As the bumps throttled me, I could feel the good leave and the bad approach, something that I felt was perhaps evil. I can be melodramatic – a broken-down snowmobile early in the afternoon on a nice day is not exactly evil, but it was a bummer none the less. How would we get the beast out? We would somehow, but it would be all that we would do that day. And two, this was Jeff’s big buy. Now he looked like a boy who just had his puppy run over. A dark cloud, a bummer, and why?
We figured on our options, too quickly really, and decided that I would snowmobile back to the car and trailer, then drive back to Melstrand, from which I would precariously pick my way 2.5 miles into the woods on the logging trail to where we were stuck. The idea sucked, but we couldn’t think of anything else except being helped by some other snowmobilers who maybe had a better rope or could maybe fix that damn thing. We couldn’t guarantee that, of course, but a few miles on the way back I came upon a large troop of snowmobilers and had the grim humility to stop and ask for help. The first, a young woman, shrugged her shoulders and called over a tall man, who quickly said that he would be glad to. They were looking for gas anyway, and did I know the way to Melstrand?
And so I had my cavalry and felt almost like a hero when we approached Jeff and Vicki and the used snow-curse, only to see that his old clunker had the front lights on. This meant that it was running, and I quickly shut off the engine of my good machine to hear what had happened. It turned out that another guy had stopped, flipped the mobile on its side, and then forced the track to move (something that I had tried to do but had failed). It was probably the drive chain, he said, and it was now back on and everything was a go, but he wouldn’t push it. Get to Melstrand and pick it up with the car.
And so we did, me leading the way to Melstrand, then heading back the 20 miles to the car, then driving back to Melstrand, where we loaded the bad beast on with difficulty, as whatever was wrong with it was happening again. As I had known, all that pretty much shot our day. On the other hand, it might as well have. The weather was getting warmer, the trails worse, and who wanted to deal with machines at this point anyway? But my ecstatic rush was gone, now almost forgotten in the hassle of the day’s events. Not evil, not really, but not what I would have wished for.
It was time to leave the next morning, and my wife was more eager to go than I had expected. Still, I insisted in getting in a mile or so of simple skiing beforehand, and I slipped off of the cabin porch with ease – a little too much ease, as the melting snow of the day before had frozen during the night. The trip down the trail was fast but difficult, as all the digs and divots of the snowmobile tracks were now frozen hard like trolley tracks. On the way back, though, the ecstasy of the two days before came near again as a break in the pines revealed a great cloud of frozen fog hung up in the powdery blue of the morning sky. It looked marvelously like a massive fluff of pink cotton candy lightly dusted with soot. But as I raised my face to look at it more fully, the sky disappeared, turning to snow that was really close-up. In looking to the cloud, I had neglected the frozen trolley tracks and had slipped backwards onto the trail.
Nothing hurt, unusual with my bad luck with that sort of stuff lately, but in a few seconds I realized that I could not get up. My shoulder was still injured from a biking accident that summer, and my leg still weak from another on Thanksgiving morning, and besides, everything was as slippery as ice because it was ice. It was such that after trying unsuccessfully to detach one of the skies, I just gave up, helpless. After a few seconds of that, it occurred to me that this would not do any good, so I crawled over to a bush and pulled myself up, no worse for wear except for the covering of icy snow on my coat.
From there, we labored to get our stuff back the nearly five miles to the car, made more difficult now that we had only one snowmobile to drag the two sleds and accommodate the dog, but we did it and by noon were cruising south on the road again towards a world where money would get us out of any trouble. Then came the long hours at the wheel, and with them and a few cups of gas-station coffee, the thoughts. What less than reality could that ecstasy have been, because that is what it said, clearer than words? It was what was, without question, but what about what happened next? The broken sled, the falling off of the skies, those things that had snuffed out the ecstasy, those things so common to the frustration of our regularly reality, those impediments always thrown before our joy, what of them? There is no question that these, too, were reality. Always, there they were, the two blades to the scissors that formed opposing edges that snipped into pieces any final proclamation as to the nature of our lives. Yes, the bad often forces us to depend on others, and to find that others actually can be depended upon, but there has to be more, doesn’t there? Is that all it’s about?
Some might say so, and that is not such a small morsel to chew on after all. Realizing that we are a part of a greater whole, this whole that we have named humanity, is a big deal and something that the Gospels often tell us. That is not all there is to reality, but maybe it’s the glue that pieces it back together, for it is not just me who is granted the high and the low, the ecstasy and the troubled waters, but all of us. It is not, then, ever about how I am, but how WE are, how we are all in this together, together in a torn world that shouts the glory of God but leaves us distracted and suffering and ultimately dead. It would seem that something is either wrong with perfection, which clearly cannot be, or that something is wrong with us, which all but the most pathologically narcissistic recognize. And if it is about my imperfection and yours, and we don’t like it, we’d better get cracking.
On the long drive back, that’s what I thought, and how it came to me that this is why the moral path was given to us by our greatest saints rather than universal healing and abundance. Surely, if Jesus could feed 5,000 (plus families) with a few loaves and fishes, and if he could raze this guy and that girl from the dead, he could do it for us all, but I think if he did, we would still be stuck with the scissors. We would still be stuck with our own incompatibility with perfection and truth, and we would cut the paper in half again, dividing the "forever" from our shallow vision so that the bread and fishes would rot and the risen would die again. It is you who convinces me and me who convinces you of the reality of our broken vision, and it is by giving up the division among ourselves that we can give up the delusion of a divided universe. The help of the strangers on the road was as important as the ecstasy in the pines, both coming together as one leads the other to the same – to one truth, to one race, to one world of perfect compatibility, to one God, perfect and forever as he made us all, if we can get it right.
The trail was way better than we had anticipated, the hills made low and the valleys high so that we glided on our snowmobiles with the ease of falling snow. I was on the back of the two- seater and I didn’t mind one bit, as I could leave the driving to Vicki and appreciate just where we were, deep in the north woods of the UP on back roads that went on for scores of miles with nothing else but woods and swamps, swamps and woods. Dark pines hung with snow crowded the logging roads and I marveled at their wonder. Then it came to me that I was marveling at their wonder much more than usual. Something unusual was happening and it was coming on quickly, raising flat pine woods into a sort of heaven. In seconds, it felt that I was in paradise along with them.
It is probable that this feeling has been sprinkled upon both saints and thieves alike, but mostly to the youth in their health and vigor, and mostly just as a feeling. This was more. I was no longer young and vigorous, yes, but more so, I understood that this glory was not in the pines alone and certainly not in my head. It was as it would be if, and when, I could see right, which, since this was unusual, was almost never. I understood then that this was the hand of God more surely than any hand painted by Michelangelo, and that I was being privileged, not for anything special I had done, but out of pure grace. It was a gift. I knew it would not last, and I clutched at it so hard that, indeed, it did not last, which is the way of such things. But still, it stood as a wondrous thing.
The following day was different. The temperature was rising into the thirties and we knew we had to leave early to get the good snow, but of course we did not. Our son Jeffery thought he needed gas on his own just-bought but old snowmobile, so we decided to take the trails to Melstrand, the closest place for gas at some twenty miles away. At first, the snow was melty but smooth, but once on the woods path west, it turned into an endless sea of waves, moguls that jolted the back as it throttled the rider up and down, up and down. I made the joke somewhere along the way that it was like endless sex without the joy, which fell far flatter than the roads, but on we went, on and on, until Jeff slowed and then stopped. Uh-oh. When a new old-used snowmobile driven by a young speed demon comes to a stop, it could only mean one of two things: that he had to pee or that the snowmobile was crapping out. It turned out to be number two, pun intended, for being stuck deep in the woods truly can leave you in a deep pile. Worse, once we checked it out, we found that the track would not turn. That meant that dragging it out was going to be very, very difficult, requiring a type of rope that we did not have with us.
I should have known. I had been driving this time, and at first had been blessed briefly with that ecstatic feeling as we passed the great pines, but soon the mood changed as if by a passing dark cloud. Something was, as they say in California, harshing my buzz. As the bumps throttled me, I could feel the good leave and the bad approach, something that I felt was perhaps evil. I can be melodramatic – a broken-down snowmobile early in the afternoon on a nice day is not exactly evil, but it was a bummer none the less. How would we get the beast out? We would somehow, but it would be all that we would do that day. And two, this was Jeff’s big buy. Now he looked like a boy who just had his puppy run over. A dark cloud, a bummer, and why?
We figured on our options, too quickly really, and decided that I would snowmobile back to the car and trailer, then drive back to Melstrand, from which I would precariously pick my way 2.5 miles into the woods on the logging trail to where we were stuck. The idea sucked, but we couldn’t think of anything else except being helped by some other snowmobilers who maybe had a better rope or could maybe fix that damn thing. We couldn’t guarantee that, of course, but a few miles on the way back I came upon a large troop of snowmobilers and had the grim humility to stop and ask for help. The first, a young woman, shrugged her shoulders and called over a tall man, who quickly said that he would be glad to. They were looking for gas anyway, and did I know the way to Melstrand?
And so I had my cavalry and felt almost like a hero when we approached Jeff and Vicki and the used snow-curse, only to see that his old clunker had the front lights on. This meant that it was running, and I quickly shut off the engine of my good machine to hear what had happened. It turned out that another guy had stopped, flipped the mobile on its side, and then forced the track to move (something that I had tried to do but had failed). It was probably the drive chain, he said, and it was now back on and everything was a go, but he wouldn’t push it. Get to Melstrand and pick it up with the car.
And so we did, me leading the way to Melstrand, then heading back the 20 miles to the car, then driving back to Melstrand, where we loaded the bad beast on with difficulty, as whatever was wrong with it was happening again. As I had known, all that pretty much shot our day. On the other hand, it might as well have. The weather was getting warmer, the trails worse, and who wanted to deal with machines at this point anyway? But my ecstatic rush was gone, now almost forgotten in the hassle of the day’s events. Not evil, not really, but not what I would have wished for.
It was time to leave the next morning, and my wife was more eager to go than I had expected. Still, I insisted in getting in a mile or so of simple skiing beforehand, and I slipped off of the cabin porch with ease – a little too much ease, as the melting snow of the day before had frozen during the night. The trip down the trail was fast but difficult, as all the digs and divots of the snowmobile tracks were now frozen hard like trolley tracks. On the way back, though, the ecstasy of the two days before came near again as a break in the pines revealed a great cloud of frozen fog hung up in the powdery blue of the morning sky. It looked marvelously like a massive fluff of pink cotton candy lightly dusted with soot. But as I raised my face to look at it more fully, the sky disappeared, turning to snow that was really close-up. In looking to the cloud, I had neglected the frozen trolley tracks and had slipped backwards onto the trail.
Nothing hurt, unusual with my bad luck with that sort of stuff lately, but in a few seconds I realized that I could not get up. My shoulder was still injured from a biking accident that summer, and my leg still weak from another on Thanksgiving morning, and besides, everything was as slippery as ice because it was ice. It was such that after trying unsuccessfully to detach one of the skies, I just gave up, helpless. After a few seconds of that, it occurred to me that this would not do any good, so I crawled over to a bush and pulled myself up, no worse for wear except for the covering of icy snow on my coat.
From there, we labored to get our stuff back the nearly five miles to the car, made more difficult now that we had only one snowmobile to drag the two sleds and accommodate the dog, but we did it and by noon were cruising south on the road again towards a world where money would get us out of any trouble. Then came the long hours at the wheel, and with them and a few cups of gas-station coffee, the thoughts. What less than reality could that ecstasy have been, because that is what it said, clearer than words? It was what was, without question, but what about what happened next? The broken sled, the falling off of the skies, those things that had snuffed out the ecstasy, those things so common to the frustration of our regularly reality, those impediments always thrown before our joy, what of them? There is no question that these, too, were reality. Always, there they were, the two blades to the scissors that formed opposing edges that snipped into pieces any final proclamation as to the nature of our lives. Yes, the bad often forces us to depend on others, and to find that others actually can be depended upon, but there has to be more, doesn’t there? Is that all it’s about?
Some might say so, and that is not such a small morsel to chew on after all. Realizing that we are a part of a greater whole, this whole that we have named humanity, is a big deal and something that the Gospels often tell us. That is not all there is to reality, but maybe it’s the glue that pieces it back together, for it is not just me who is granted the high and the low, the ecstasy and the troubled waters, but all of us. It is not, then, ever about how I am, but how WE are, how we are all in this together, together in a torn world that shouts the glory of God but leaves us distracted and suffering and ultimately dead. It would seem that something is either wrong with perfection, which clearly cannot be, or that something is wrong with us, which all but the most pathologically narcissistic recognize. And if it is about my imperfection and yours, and we don’t like it, we’d better get cracking.
On the long drive back, that’s what I thought, and how it came to me that this is why the moral path was given to us by our greatest saints rather than universal healing and abundance. Surely, if Jesus could feed 5,000 (plus families) with a few loaves and fishes, and if he could raze this guy and that girl from the dead, he could do it for us all, but I think if he did, we would still be stuck with the scissors. We would still be stuck with our own incompatibility with perfection and truth, and we would cut the paper in half again, dividing the "forever" from our shallow vision so that the bread and fishes would rot and the risen would die again. It is you who convinces me and me who convinces you of the reality of our broken vision, and it is by giving up the division among ourselves that we can give up the delusion of a divided universe. The help of the strangers on the road was as important as the ecstasy in the pines, both coming together as one leads the other to the same – to one truth, to one race, to one world of perfect compatibility, to one God, perfect and forever as he made us all, if we can get it right.
RSS Feed