Earth Day Birth Day 2026: Binding things together
Photo: Chuck Hoffman © Genesis+Art
Apostle Islands National Lakeshore
Bayfield, Wisconsin
This is the Third year Chuck has “surprised” me by planning my Earth Day Birthday at one of his favorite places. For several years we have come to this retreat center in the far north of Wisconsin with our art supplies, a good book, and some hiking gear. We have used this time to reset and restore before we launch into the business of the coming year.
The last 6 months have included more challenges than Chuck and I care to contemplate. Between personal and political hair-raising events, the renewal is well deserved by both of us. One might even say that the entire country could use a reset, but that is another matter. Our last 6 months also probably explains what I noticed this year on our usual pilgrimage.
Our yearly visit always includes a hike on the Houghton Falls Nature Trail. The falls, often known as the Echo Dells, protects a picturesque precambrian sandstone gorge where an unnamed seasonal tributary falls into the clear waters of Lake Superior. The gorge is shaded by second growth hemlock, yellow birch and white cedar, along with a few large white pines. This year there was more late snow on the ground and Superior was still icy in coves and on the breakers. The trail is breathtakingly beautiful and accessible. It terminates on a rocky cliff over the Lake and is popular with locals and tourists. Happily, this time of year, we might see only a handful of people or none at all.
Spring is just barely arriving here and the deciduous trees are just beginning to leaf, so the structure of the forest is completely visible. The sun reveals the forest floor in all its wild April glory. Only the pines and hemlocks shade the ground from the much awaited warmth. There are rotting black and brown leaves, ramshackle pinecones, melty snow mounds and squishy trails. Hatching bugs of all kinds perch on top of puddles, trees have crashed to the ground from wind and snow and buds everywhere are on the precipice of bursting forth. It is a broken and disintegrating world teaming with new life.
What caught my eye this year were the dead, decaying birch trees, of which there were many, lying on the ground. Sections of the collapsing yellow birch decomposed into bundles of crumbling sticks. Remarkably, strips of its white papery bark remained wrapped around the tree, binding the deteriorating insides together. It looked like the Red Cross had been there. Three and four inch-wide white bark bandages held the decomposing birches in bundles.
I was surprised that those thin strips of bark could outlast the breakdown of the core and the heart of the trees. It’s a good birthday surprise that after a 6 month stretch of noticing so many things falling apart, I would finally tune into the metaphor of the bandaids binding up the broken-hearted and the broken parts of those birch trees.
It’s easy for me these days to notice the hard, the alarming and the frightening. Minneapolis is still reeling from January and February, people are still terrified, war is on all of our minds, groceries and healthcare are becoming more out of reach, Mayo Clinic is still on our travel itinerary, and really, are we seriously thinking again about mining copper in the Boundary Waters? We must pay attention, and do what we can to stop the madness. We can also become the bandages that keep things together, mostly ourselves, so we can be useful.
As is my present custom, I have come to the woods once again to hide out and have my birthday. So as another Earth Day Birthday comes to a close, despite the disappointing absence of last year’s birthday fox, it is with astounding gratitude that Chuck and I have had another year together and will return renewed. By the way, even if there was no birthday fox, I did see an enormous white barred owl in the wetlands.
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