Passages
Photo by Chuck Hoffman © Genesis+Art
St. Croix River Valley
Hudson, Wisconsin
The St. Croix River arises in a valley carved by the torrential movement of water flowing out of Glacial Lake Duluth nearly 12,000 years ago. Located near the contemporary village of Solon Springs, the river begins as a creek, enters the Upper Saint Croix Lake, and then flows south some 170 miles.
November in the St. Croix River Valley has its own unique beauty. The trees of fall have lost their leaves, exposing the contours of the landscape. Their reveal are outlines of the ages. The sky is a pale gray, silhouetting the last migrants as they fly south along the winding banks of the St. Croix. The river is the color of cold steel and flows unceasingly. Summer's warm sun and rich color have been replaced by the quiet and calm of umbers and burnt sienna. While I love warm water and sunny days, I also seek out this season's stillness and solitude. This seasonal threshold helps to move me forward in time. When I least expect it, during the most mundane daily tasks, a shift of focus occurs. This shift bends me toward the rhythm of the universe, a cosmos of soul and spirit, bone and flesh, which constantly reaches toward divinity. It helps me to see and hear above the cacophony amid my multitasking. These feelings find their way into my art and helps me engage a sacred frequency that is perforated with pregnant pauses. My unspeakable joy is experience and sojourn, it is the ineffable within all our reach.
The seasonal clock will turn again. Winter will be here soon, as fall holds fast for now. November is the time of the year in the northern hemisphere when we begin to think about the coming of winter, of the dark. It is the thinnest time of the year, the season in which the veil between time and eternity can become transparent, the time when darkness overtakes the light. It's time to prepare for the frozen season ahead — storing food and firewood, flying south, or digging a deep den. Wintering is how wisdom is made, and every time we winter, we grow in resilience and compassion, and we deepen our capacity for joy. Seasonal time can be the threshold of beauty by embracing the natural and metaphorical period of change in our lives.
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