A Round-Up of Spring Flowers

Butterweed (Packera glabella), Asteraceae (sunflower) family

(4/4/2022: Reposting because we should celebrate flowers every year!)

Text from 4/14/20: This past week, Zach and I had a little vacation— we were originally going to visit family in Nashville, but the stay-at-home order nixed that. Thankfully, the weather was gorgeous, so we were able to take a lot of walks and hikes.

To the Missouri River: a poem

From Montana you coalesce,

This Month: Coming Home, Little Adventures, and Seeking a New Normal

Mist on the Missouri River

We've been back in the Midwest for over a month now, and I still don't know what life is supposed to look like. Zach is back to Walmart (in online grocery pick-up), I just finished the Legends and Lanterns Halloween festival, and we are both working a lot and trying to catch up with friends and struggling to find equilibrium and direction in our new life back home. It wasn't the roughest transition in the world, but it's been long, very long. 

My instinct is always to rush myself, to get my life together right now, but I'm pushing back against that and trying to take things in bite-sized moments. One step at a time, we're trying to figure out what we want, and what we should do, and what "normal" means in this phase of our life.

Here are some bite-sized bits of what we've been up to lately…

New housemates!

The biggest news is that we have housemates now! Lydia, who's been my friend since high school, lived in and took care of our house over the summer, and it worked out best for everyone for her to continue living here while we moved back in. Our other housemate is Lydia's adorable cat, Eddie— he is one of the friendliest cats I have ever met, not even trying to pretend that he doesn't adore us and want to be around us all the time. All the benefits of a cat without any of the responsibility!

New car!

The other big news is that our old car (a 1993 Oldsmobile) finally gave up the ghost, and we decided that it wasn't worth repairing yet again. After some serious discussion and consideration, we decided to buy a very new car— a fully electric one. We are now driving a Chevy Spark EV, which has a range of about 80 miles and we plug into a regular outlet at our house. I'm going to write a whole post about why we chose an EV, so if you're intrigued, stay tuned. (UPDATE: Here it is!)

Legends and Lanterns

As I mentioned, I just finished the St. Charles Halloween festival. Other than a single day of rain, the whole festival had absolutely perfect weather, and we enjoyed large crowds come to celebrate the spookiness! My favorite part of the festival are the regulars who come weekend after weekend— they are welcomed, included, teased mercilessly, and find a place where they truly belong. 

Baba Yaga, the most famous witch of Slavic folklore

A Weird Sister from Macbeth, Baba Yaga, and a Victorian mourner

Making music videos

Our friends Tyler and Adrienne were in town, and we got the chance to film footage for upcoming music videos for our band, Insomniac Folklore. This involved spooky lighting effects, vintage white gunnysack dresses, smearing fake blood on each other's faces, and trying reeaaaally hard not to get blood on the aforementioned vintage dresses! I was so glad for the chance to sing and perform with them a bit before they head back to Oregon. Although the videos aren't up and won't be for a while, you can still check out our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/InsomniacFolklore

Taming the garden

It's no secret that our garden is a jungle, and unfortunately we haven't worked on it as much as we've wanted to. I'll post a proper garden update soon, but in the meantime, just know that we've harvested a respectable amount of food with very little effort— raspberries, strawberries, figs, elderberries, volunteer tomatoes, amaranth, daikon radish, some sunchokes (we have a whole forest of them to harvest after the frost), and, of course, ridiculous amounts of kale!

Fermenting adventures

Zach and I are committed to having more live food in our diet, and have gotten some fun ferments going. We've been eating sauerkraut every day, and soon we'll have some red sauerkraut (made with red cabbage, beets, and apples) and some pickled beets to try! Zach has also been brewing kombucha, and, as always, we have our milk kefir and sourdough. Next up: water kefir!

Soft focus on the pickled beets!

Foraging

It's wonderful how many things there are to forage this time of year! We haven't had a huge yield of anything yet, but we're learning a ton, and have so far foraged pawpaw, gingko nuts, and sumac. I'm going to write a whole blog post about this later.

Hiking

We've been able to do a bit of hiking— at the Lewis and Clark Trail in Weldon Spring and at Pere Marquette State Park in Illinois— to reconnect to the flora and fauna of the Midwest. Autumn is my favorite season, and I'm so glad that we've gotten to see the leaves turn from the very beginning.

Views from Pere Marquette State Park

Reading:

Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse (Update: After reading reviews from Diné (Navajo) critics, I can no longer recommend this book. Roanhorse is a member of a different nation than the one she wrote about, and appropriated sacred religious figures in a way that the Diné reviewers found harmful. You can read more here.)

The Sacred Enneagram by Christopher Heuertz (A deeply thought-provoking book discussing the Enneagram personality lens and how it affects our spirituality as Christians.)

The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri (A gut-wrenching novel about one Syrian couple's journey to England as refugees. I felt really depressed after reading it, but it was an amazing book that reminds us of what refugees must go through to reach safety.)

Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin (Almost through my third reading of this book. I love it so much!)

What have you been up to lately?

~~~

Portland 2019: One Last Show

Actually in Idaho, but I just discovered these photos and they're the only ones I have of any of our shows.
First three photos courtesy of Lounge at the End of the Universe, Boise.

Proof that I did in fact play cello

Jessie Bear! He's a bear.

I was an emotional mess on July 2nd, the day we drove into Missouri, and it wasn't just because of the landscape. I would soon be seeing my parents and some of my friends after being gone for nearly five months, and I would also be saying goodbye to Tyler and Adrienne for a little while, and Jessie and Nolan for the foreseeable future. This little family that we had forged in this breakneck road trip would be disbanded, at least for me. I had already decided that I wasn't going with them to the Audiofeed Festival, and I stuck to that decision, even though I had second thoughts. I had to choose my priorities. But it was still going to be really hard to say goodbye.

This sign in the venue's bathroom made me laugh.

Our venue that night was a punk house in Columbia, Missouri, a spacious warehouse-type space adorned with colorful graffiti. We were one of several bands in the line-up, and I alternated sitting inside with my earplugs listening to the other artists, and standing outside in the humid night chatting with other people. I wanted to soak up this last show, really savor it, really appreciate the people I was with.

Our show was raucous and crackling with energy, the audience a mix of devoted fans and very drunk people determined to dance to every song. I turned my amp up all the way, and broke a few bow hairs, and sang as loudly as I could.

The last song we sung was "Earplugs," a love song that I had played with them on the previous tour, in 2011. In that year, also on tour was a shy young man with beautiful hair who walked fast and I was absolutely not going to fall in love with. Every time we played this song on that tour, I had felt a tug at my heart, wondering if it could be for me, and the boy with the beautiful hair had looked away because he didn't want to get caught staring at me during a love song.

We used that song for the first dance at our wedding, of course.

Now here I was, two thousand miles away from the boy who had become the man I'd married, but I felt our love, our connection, stronger than ever across the continent. Here was a love that both held me close and allowed me space, one that wanted to be with me all the time but could also be happy for me when I left him to gallivant across the country. It meant more to me than ever before.

The emotion I'd felt all day was welling up stronger as I turned my attention to my bandmates. Adrienne in a gunny-sack dress with golden spirals dripping from her hair, gesturing dramatically as she sang. Tyler, bedecked in ram horns with sweat pouring down his face paint, whipping his guitar and pressing his lips to the mic. Nolan, his curly brown hair falling halfway down his torso, his gaze focused inward as he drummed. Jessie swooshing his blue hair around, shaking his guitar for vibrato and tapping pedals with his toes.

The affection I felt for all of them in that moment, the blinding ache of how much I loved each one of them, almost overwhelmed me. It was a huge love. An almost embarrassing love. A love amplified and intensified by being together in a metal capsule for a week and somehow not killing each other.

We sang the last chorus of the song together, a cappella, at the top of our lungs:

Though this body may not hold up,

We will never grow old,

We will pass from life to life,

Though this body may not hold up,

We will never grow old,

And we'll pass from life to life!

Coming to the end of a trip feels like a kind of death. 

We drove to St. Louis that night, crashing at Adrienne's sister's house (also a long-time friend) at nearly four in the morning. Jessie and Larissa slept in one room, and the rest of us in another: Adrienne, Nolan, and I each in a corner on our own bed, and Tyler in the middle on the floor. The air was sticky and warm; we turned on the fan, flicked off the lights, and laid spread-eagled on top of the blankets to try to cool off. Outside, crickets hummed.

My body was beyond exhausted, confused about the time zone, begging me for sleep. But sleep meant bringing this trip to an end. Sleep meant waking up and being driven to my parents' house for the next phase of the journey— one I was dearly looking forward to, but one that didn't ease the pain of saying goodbye to this phase.

"Tell us a ghost story, Tyler," I murmured into my pillow.

Tyler paused for a second, then began to weave a story from his past, about a summer night and a ghostly train. His voice was a low hum, the images taking shape in my tired brain. 

I didn't want this group— this family— to break up. I wanted to keep touring forever, keep basking in this love and friendship and shared experience. I wanted to hold tightly, to possess this week, to grasp the magic in my fists.

But that's not what travel is about.

Travel is learning to love quickly and deeply, and then to let go.

Tyler's story ended with a spooky flourish, and for a few sleepy minutes we talked about ghosts, and time, and things we didn't understand. The conversation dwindled into silence, exhaustion finally having its say.

I laid in the darkness, still glowing with the love I felt for each person in the room. I wanted to say something, wanted to tell them how I felt, but I didn't want anyone to feel obligated to say "I love you" back. I didn't need reciprocity; I loved them whether they liked it or not.

So instead of saying anything, I snuggled into bed and fell asleep with a smile on my face.

But I hoped they felt it. I think it was implied.

~~~

Portland 2019: A Midwestern Sojourn

On July 2nd, driving toward Eastern Kansas, we crossed into what was unmistakably the Midwest, and something inside me came undone.

It wasn't that I was exactly crying from the moment that everything started to look like Missouri, but you know that feeling you get when you're about to cry— that pressure in your eyes, the knot in your larynx— but you don't want to because there's really nothing to cry about? Yeah, I felt that. It was beautiful. Everything was so freakin' beautiful. 

I wrote in my journal:

Now that we're back in Missouri (or close, I guess), and the weather and scenery are objectively worse, I realize how very much I still love the Midwest. Today I saw cottonwoods glistening through a haze of humidity, and I nearly cried for the joy of being home. This is my land, my people, my culture. No matter how much I travel, Missouri is always home.

For something to be familiar is for it to feel right. Our minds are constantly comparing, analyzing, trying to determine what's normal. For the past four and a half months, my brain has been trying very hard, putting names to things, scraping grooves for my mind to follow: Douglas fir, hooded merganser, wild rhododendron, chilly air when the sun goes down. I had been adjusting, but now, my brain springs back into the familiar with a sharp click, and I feel so much joy I want to cry. 

Trees grow on the hills along Interstate 70— pin oak, silver maple, black walnut, box elder, wild mulberry, smooth sumac, black locust, sycamore, cottonwood. White limestone peeks out, Virginia creeper climbs the trees, honeysuckle bushes tangle up the underbrush. It's dense and weedy and buggy and humid and alive, so alive. It's home. I am home. I had no idea how much I missed home.

This is the danger of naming things, I think. You get attached. You get grounded. You love and you name and you put down roots…

I didn't appreciate St. Louis until I started traveling. It took a while. I returned from Bellingham, home of orca whales and purple starfish, and wondered why anyone stuck around the maple-and-cornfield flatland. But the more I traveled— the more cities I saw, the more worldviews I encountered, the more unfamiliar each trip became, the more I imperceptibly began to value St. Louis, and the Midwest, for what it was. A place to raise a family. An abundant crop land. A huge river and a free zoo. Summer nights at the Muny or Shakespeare in the Park. Safety. Rain. Familiarity. Love.

To travel is to appreciate both journey and final destination of home. To travel is to love. To travel is to experience things anew, both on the road and at home. To travel is to see clearly, whether for rejection or embracing. To travel is to see, and to love, and to come home again.

We stopped in Kansas City to drop Jessie off at his house; his wife Larissa was waiting, and had set out a bowl of fruit and made muffins. They would be following us in a separate car to the show tonight in Columbia, Missouri. Seeing them reunited gave me a sharp pang, and I desperately missed Zach. But I gently reminded myself that I should focus on the moment, that I should enjoy the time we had here in this unique situation. I should savor this final show that we'd all be playing together tonight.

I stood in Jessie's yard, drenched in sweat, and looked up at the silver maple leaves waving in the breeze. My heart swelled with emotion, and I blinked rapidly to clear the tears. 

I glanced down to see Tyler, looking like he was about to drop dead of heat exhaustion. We were beings from alternate universes, converging on this spot that brought joy to me and death to him.

Sometimes I forget what a sacrifice Zach made to move to the Midwest.

In a much more choked voice than I intended, I blurted out, "I just really like the Midwest, okay!"

Tyler laughed and nodded. "I know," he said. "I know."

~~~

Celebrate the Seasons: February!

In my part of the country, February is one of the most temperamental months, weather-wise (yesterday the state of Missouri had a tornado warning, freezing rain, dense fog, flash flood warning, snow, sleet, sub-zero temperatures, and everything in between— in just one day). When the weather is being crazy, it’s tempting to stay inside, but I encourage you to put on some good clothing and head outdoors! (Then come home afterward, make yourself a hot chocolate, and consider some of the suggestions below.)

1. Find a new nature area to explore. It can be tough to find energy to go out in the weather, but exploring a new place can provide the motivation. Look around what’s near you and see if anything sounds interesting! (St. Louisans, I highly recommend Powder Valley Nature Center— which features a cozy indoor area with a bird-watching wall. For Missourians in general, check out the new Missouri Department of Conservation's Outdoors App.)

2. Have a waste-free Valentine’s Day. Holidays are always a good time to consider gift-giving and wastefulness. See the New Dream guide for a meaningful (and environmentally-friendly) Valentine’s Day. 

3. Try your hand at a craft. Traditionally, winter months were mostly spent inside working on things that would be useful for the upcoming year. If you’re looking to try a new craft, now is a good time to start! Choose one that doesn’t require buying a lot of gear (for instance, ask to borrow someone knitting needles and buy a single skein of yarn, rather than buying several sizes and a rainbow of colors), ask a friend who knows the skill, see if your library offers free classes and instructional books, or check out the ever-helpful mentor, Uncle Google. I’ve enjoyed making wreaths and other decorations out of natural materials, and have been practicing my drawing more lately. How about whittling, weaving, candle-making, or baking?

4. Swap seeds. There may be a seed swap happening near you, but you can always hack it by asking other gardening friends if they have seeds to trade. If you’re in the St. Louis area, make plans to attend the STL Seeding Frenzy Seed Swap— last year I brought zinnia seeds and came home with all sorts of veggie and flower seeds, plus a Jerusalem artichoke tuber that grew into towering sunflowers!

5. Read aloud to a friend. Storytelling around a fire has been part of winter in the North for time out of mind, and reading a book aloud by candlelight honors that tradition. Waiting for spring is inherent in winter, but listening to stories in the meantime is a beautiful way to embrace this unpredictable month.

How do you celebrate February?

~~~

Ice on the River

The best part of the lingering cold weather is the ice that has formed on the Missouri River. Every day there’s something new to see!

Snapshots of the Missouri River

I love this river.

This Week: I Am Home

Flowers from my garden: black-eyed susans and bachelor's buttons

My favorite view of the Missouri River

When Zach and I returned to our home church a few weeks ago, several people asked us, “So how long are you in town for?” Apparently we had given the impression that we were either permanent nomads or else planning to move out west. All day long we were telling people, “Oh, we’re here for good. We live here.” Some people seemed confused that we still wanted to live in St. Charles after all the beautiful places we’d visited. I find it hard to convey that the dramatic scenery of the west makes me happier than ever to live in the midwest. 

To many, the thought of returning from a trip to the realities of jobs, mortgage, and bills sounds horrible. But after having been away from everyday life for three months, I appreciate it much more than I did before.

Cooking black-eyed peas for soup

I loved our Grand Gallivant. But I love our home in St. Charles, too. My life here is full of simple joys, long-term projects, and time spent with people I love.

My teaching job started up this week, so the past few weeks gave me plenty of time to readjust to life at home. I thawed our frozen food, bought vegetables, and began making and stockpiling soup (including this awesome recipe). I weeded the garden (morning glories had nearly eaten half our porch), mowed the yard, and trimmed back the wildflower garden. I discovered an army of creepy-looking bugs on my asparagus and almost tried to kill them before learning that they were ladybug larvae— one of the most beneficial carnivores you can find in a garden— and I was so happy to see my integrated pest management working that I literally laughed for joy. 

Cherry tomatoes from the farmers market

The river is here, higher than usual but not flooding. We saw two or three fireflies before the cooler weather set in. I’ve had the windows open, and I can hear trains rumbling by in the distance. I passed out flyers to the Frenchtown businesses. Zach has started making sourdough bread again. We’ve played a lot of Rock Band and I’ve gotten to the “Hard” setting on the bass (except for Rush songs because Geddy Lee is a maniac). We’ve been studying Deuteronomy and the Ten Commandments in church. I’ve started working on a piece of piano music. My houseplants are back, making me smile every time I see them. I’ve been listening to Kansas and Simon and Garfunkel on my record player. Zach and I have started biking more, dodging butterflies along the trail, seeing how little we can use our car.

Aloe, peace lily, and snake plant

Yes, real life is less dramatic than visiting a national park. But real life brings me a kind of quiet joy that can’t be found on a trip. And for the moment, having returned from a grand adventure, I’m ready to settle down and continue making this house into a haven.

~~~

This Week (Wanderlust, Demolition, and a Whole Lot of Cornfields)

“People say that Missouri is just one big cornfield. That’s not true at all! ...This is a soybean year.” 

~a Missouri joke I heard somewhere

An old photo, along the Katy Trail. I didn't take any pictures yesterday because I was experiencing the moment.

This weekend has been packed full of stuff. I volunteered for several hours at a beer booth at Festival of the Little Hills to raise money for the Frenchtown Heritage Museum, then stayed up till almost midnight that night playing board games with friends (even a couple rounds of Nerts, a stressful card game that has driven me to violence in the past). Yesterday, between church, spending time with family, and taking a scenic drive to Alton for dinner, I felt like I had three days’ worth of activities packed into one. Wonderful, but tiring!

Today, Zach and his brother Francis have been working on a room in our garage, tearing off the walls to prepare for turning it into a habitable space for Francis to rent. While they demolish stuff, I’ve been folding laundry and washing dishes and listening to Beatles and The Who, as usual.

After I wrote the mini-series about contentment last week, I found ample opportunities to practice what I preached. A breath of cool weather washed over St. Louis, bringing the promise of autumn— as well as a sudden, intense, always-experienced-but-somehow-never-expected surge of wanderlust in my heart. I blame Tolkien for conditioning me to feel that September is the month of travel (but it does work out well, with air fare dropping significantly after Labor Day). I looked at a map of the US and poked around restlessly on Google Maps. I distracted myself. I tried to allow myself to feel the wanderlust without judgement. I read Rocket Llama’s comics about her PCT hike (they are AMAZING). I started work on my own memoir, even though it hurt. I played a lot of piano and sang impromptu songs about my feelings, because that’s how I roll.

Yesterday, I finally told Zach, “I feel like I need to get out. Can we go eat dinner in Alton?” Alton is a tourist town across the Mississippi River on the north side of St. Louis, a stop on the way to my favorite hiking spot, Peremarquette State Park. Zach agreed, and we hopped in the car, windows rolled down to enjoy the cool air.

Instead of taking the fastest route, a web of highways through North County, we headed straight north from our house. Here, about five minutes of driving takes us out of St. Charles and into the outskirts— the remnants of the small-town living that once dominated the area. Here we see a racetrack with bumpers made of old tires, a building with heavy columns and a light-up Budweiser sign out front, dilapidated farmhouses next to modern bungalows (taking their chances on the floodplain), a white VFW post with neat rows of picnic tables out back, a red-tailed hawk perched on a telephone pole, teenagers joy-riding in tractors, forests with gravel roads delving into them, a mailbox painted like an American flag, a factory churning out smoke, ditches filled with water from the latest flood dotted with great snowy egrets, wooden signs for the Alton Lake Sailing Club, parking lots for people’s boats, a roadside stand selling peaches, huge power lines stretching into the distance, and acres upon acres of cornfields, brown for the harvest. Errant clouds drifted across the sky, and the sun was low, casting a golden glow over everything. 

As we drove, I felt my muscles unknot and my body relax. I looked over the vast floodplain, details great and small that are both familiar and new. My family always used to take this route to Peremarquette, the long drive’s anticipation being part of the experience. Nostalgia rose in my heart, not only for the past but for the present moment. I imagined myself old and gray, talking to my grandchildren, telling them how I remember when that Super-Mega-Suburb-Complex was just a giant cornfield. I almost cried thinking about it. But then I perked up and told Zach, “Or maybe they’ll just turn this whole area into a wetlands preserve and heal the land of the damage the farming’s done.” That was a better idea. I was going with that.

I leaned back as the miles rolled by, gazing into the distance at the columns of white rock jutting out from the green bluffs across the river. And I smiled, because despite any pull I have toward other places, despite how much I might struggle every time autumn arrives, I know that I am a Midwestern gal, through and through. My roots are here, not trapping me, but nourishing me. This is home. This is mine. This is right here, right now— and it’s beautiful.

~~~

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

The view from Les Bourgeois Vineyards, just up the bluff from the Katy Trail near Rocheport

I’m back! After two weeks of vacation and one week of being too lazy to blog, I’m finally back on my regular schedule. How did it go, you ask? Well...

Short version: we quit the Katy Trail. It was reaching a level of not-funness that was disproportionate to the bragging rights we would have upon completion (read: none). After a week, we had shivered through some unexpectedly cold and stormy weather, Zach’s feet were nearly crippled from tendon pain and deep blisters, and I had a somewhat painful rash covering my entire lower body. Also, the forecast predicted five days of violent thunderstorms. So we said, “Screw it,” and went home.

Cool railroad tunnel

I hate quitting, and for a couple days I moped around the house, fighting depression. I felt like the entire trip had been a waste: a barely-managed 121 miles on a perfectly-flat trail was not an accomplishment I could feel good about. Zach finally convinced me to snap out of it, and we decided to spend our last few days of vacation in Nashville, visiting my brother and sister-in-law and some other friends. We relaxed, ate good food, didn’t walk, and returned home with enough time to work on some home projects. So the vacation wasn’t a total loss, it just didn’t turn out the way I hoped it would.

Francis, Christian, and Zach enjoying hot dogs

Anyway, glumness aside, the Katy Trail was actually quite beautiful, and Zach and I had some great days strolling through prairie, along picturesque farms, beside the Missouri River, or through dense forest. We also enjoyed having my brother Christian and Zach’s brother Francis join us for our final day, which included an epic bonfire and lots of hot dogs. 

I’m hoping that someday we can return to our stopping point, Jefferson City, and hike the rest of the trail, just so I can finish my mental measuring line from one side of Missouri to the other. 

In the meantime, I’m glad to be home— I’m still on break from my job, the garden is flourishing, we have some exciting projects in the works. After months of feeling restless and discontent, I’ve realized, with some surprise, that home is a place I want to be. For the first time in ten years, I feel rooted. And that is a wonderful feeling.

~~~

Grand Basin, St. Louis, Missouri

Where to Go: Trail of the Four Winds, Lake of the Ozarks State Park, Missouri

It’s taken me forever to get around to this blog! When Zach and I were staying at Lake of the Ozarks State Park for our anniversary trip, we got the chance to hike this multi-use trail. It was honestly one of the most beautiful trails I’ve ever hiked in Missouri, winding in and out through a dozen different ecosystems, from watery bottomlands and coniferous groves to open prairies and glades. 

Zach and I only had time to hike the south loop, which is 9.25 miles— it connects to a north loop, which adds another 4.25 miles. The trail was well-worn and well-marked, with a lot of gradual inclines and pretty views. 

If you’re interested in hiking this trail, check out the trail section of the Lake of the Ozarks State Park website here and the Four Winds trail map here (pdf reader required). Here are a few photos I took: