I remember once, in my 20s, watching my mom spend the better part of an afternoon looking for her keys. I made the mistake of suggesting to her that life might be easier if she could get organized, putting things in the same place every time. A widow, who had raised the four of us while working full time as a switchboard operator, Mom was understandably hurt at what felt like a criticism. She replied, “Micki, you know how hard I’ve worked. I never had time to be organized.” She didn’t see the irony in that, as she was locked into a pattern of never getting caught up no matter how fast she ran.
Many mornings and afternoons I take our two little brown dogs (the LBDs) for a ski around the village fields, somewhat aware of the beauty surrounding me as I sort through random thoughts and work up a sweat. Today, however, the fields were crusty with ice — too slick for a ski and too shallow for snowshoes, so I put on heavy snow boots and spikes, and the girls and I headed out.
Breaking the icy crust with each footfall, to make a path for the short-legged Luka to follow, I fell into a slow rhythm. Not going anywhere fast, I started looking around and soon had my camera out photographing the curiosities of a mid-winter morn. We slowly headed up into the hemlock woods, where the snow is softer and shallower. I let the LBDs lead the way, keeping Luka the hound leashed, as I tried to follow the path that small dogs will take. Sniffing tracks of deer, fox, squirrels and other unknowns, the girls read stories with their noses, and I, with my eyes.
An unknown moss grew on the side of a tree, some species of Anomodon perhaps; circles of yellow sap on snow sweetened the ground around trees; persistent fruits of wild apples and buckthorns — both non-natives, one loved, one hated — decorated the forest like baubles; the sun, peeking through the clouds turned the snowy forest into sculpted warm mounds; dewdrops clung to the fine branches of hornbeams and hophornbeams raining down whenever I got too close; messy scraps of bark and shelf fungi lay on the ground around a dying maple where a pileated woodpecker had recently excavated a long hollow in search of ants; one purple blue cohosh berry still clung to a stem.
It seemed like a long time since I had slowed down to look and to photograph. When did I get in such a hurry, like my own mother? When had I allowed the stress of life to blind my eyes to the beauty of a slow walk in the woods? Every household has its sadness and challenges, and ours is no different. I guess I have the LBDs and a sheet of ice to thank for slowing me down.
I have my mom to thank that I have a penchant for organization. In fact, I even ran a little organizer business for a while, until I realized I was in fact acting as a therapist for hoarders yet being paid as a garbage collector. Whereas Mom never did understand that putting things away in the same place meant you didn’t have to search for them, to this day, I cringe at kitchen drawers where breadcrumbs and onion skins live side-by-side with rubber bands, toothpicks and junk mail.
Micki Colbeck, of Strafford, is an artist, a conservation biologist and a member of the Strafford Conservation Commission. Write to her at mjcolbeck@gmail.com.