September 12, 1970

Pastor Niemoeller in Nazi Germany a quarter of a century ago = "They came after the Jews but I was not a Jew so I did not object. They came after the Catholics but I was not a Catholic so I did not object. They came after the trade unionists but I was not a trade unionist so i did not object. Then they came after me and there was no one left to object."

September 5, 1970

We are. We simply are. We be. It's as simple as that. There is no why. There is no reason. We simply are. No more. And yet - even that - is really kind of wonderful, isn't it? We are - the trees are - the rain is - the sky, the clouds, the wind and the sun, moon & stars are - they all be - the thunder is - over all & beyond all - beyond war & killing & hating & wanting there is thunder - loud & free & demanding - demanding to be heard - "I am" it says - "I am here - hear me" - and we hear. And we wish we were as free - as forever as the thunder is. We are not.

August 19, 1970

What is it all about? The moon sits on the roof across the street so full and fat and shining white - it speaks to me - it touches me across eons - it tells me it is all right - all right - love will carry the day and the night and all of us together.

The air - the night - the air of night breathes - fresh against me - cool against my warmth - my love has left me - only now - and fills me still - and, moon, it knows, how well, how full I feel - full as it, the moon, is full & near - crooning over my world - my world that belongs to only me tonight - this moment - this now -

I love, I love, I love, I love - this love now!

August 8, 1970

I am here. I am home. There is no place of which I know where I would rather be. We have a different cabin, #9, this time built closer to and higher above the rock sphere so the water sounds are more present inside than they are in #10, but it's situated on a small bay which makes for a difference I became aware of just now. We are - I am - sitting on our usual rock out from #10 (the boys, Doug & Eric, are playing "castle & knights" over aways) and the green water is raising itself high in sucessive swells crumbling on pink granite in white ruffles & I realized I was hungry for just that. In the small cove by #9, the water doesn't rise, doesn't swell, doesn't break & I was deprived - all day I felt myself unable to absorb - it was as tho I was non-porous where I was, was making no impression - the sights & sounds were not breaking through - partly, too, it was too warm, too still - I was unfeeling, asleep, immune - and just now I opened, I woke, I absorb, I love - it is all still here - I have not lost it.

July 24, 1970

Heavy, hanging half of moon
Mottled orange --

Love for son = pure
not moral, virginal pure but
clean, clear pure

June 13, 1970

I am me and I am alone and just now I feel content to be so. Still not wanting to go home after the movie & thinking of driving as help, I drove out Hwy 5. I remembered the U of Minn. Arboretum & thot there might be a spot for quiet. There was no one at the entrance tho it was not yet 6:00. I drove in, seeing no one except what at first appeared to be a coyote crossing the road. When I got out of the car the coyote turned into a silver german shepherd who immediately approached me (w/very little encouragement). Here I was all alone as far as eye could see with only dog for company so I spoke to him as to a friend. I asked him if he lived there - for answer he followed me into the enclosed garden. I had the whole glorious place to myself - it was like finding a pearl. Most of the beds were bare, newly planted, but there were several groups of interesting & lovely flowering plants - tall, tall spikes topped w/fat round balls of periwinkle stars, lower spires ending in similar blue constellations - all of the allium family evidently leaves flat, broad & pointed as iris leaves.

In the corner there was a bench simply made of a long raw weathered board w/a mounted inscription "In memory of Ruth Eggleston Heines". I asked Ruth if I might sit down which I did & I thot then I could think of no lovelier way to be remembered & I, too, would like only such a memorial to me after death. I commented occasionally to my shepherd once, with tears rushing to my eyes, I was inclined to say how good it was to make a friend so speedily - "not an easy thing to do these days." He sat at my feet with head to be scratched & rubbed.

The beauty & quiet of the place were spectacular. The sky was empowered with huge masses of cloud - grey & white - mass upon mass - huge & boiling & off in the distance was a formation to gasp at. Great figured shapes formed a hallway of incredible proportions - a hole in the sky - mass behind mass, growing brighter the greater the distance, giving a feeling of infinite space & distance such as I had never seen or felt before - it literally made me gasp for breath. The sun was setting, blue sky was clear between cloud clumps, but still there was a sense, more than anything, of a haze, a dream-like breathlessness throughout all the air. This was a moment so rare & yet to be rarer, as to be too much for me. I had to move, to walk, to remind myself I was not a true part of the scene - I was but a visitor - an outsider looking on. I would have liked to have frozen there, to have become immobilized - to have dissolved - no, to be instead as marbelized or otherwise made permanent so as to spend eternity there - or my chair of eternity as that wooden bench, that weathered latticed fence to enjoy each season in its turn & time in absolute peace or as the lovely lavender clematis to enjoy each summer season & rest to come up yet again.

Shepherd & I strolled along & around the varieties of peonies - rose-fragrant & shading from deep red & pink to white, all w/diff. aspects, some w/diff. leaf shapes, some still in spherical bud & some bare & to seed, surrounded by fallen petals. All this time there was complete quiet save for the constant embroidery of bird song, loud, constant & lyrical.

Then the first glints of evil in nature's plan intruded & mosquitoes appeared. I began to have a moment of reacquainting myself with the ginkos of my girlhood. Then I said goodbye to my friend & drove off as he stood in the road w/his head turned toward me, watching as tho sorry to see me go.

I still could not bring myself to leave so I stopped again short of the entrance-exit where the breeze was strong & kept the mosquitoes away. Here was the lilac collection, sweet-smelling where lavender & pink clusters & deep green where blossoms had fallen. I stood against the stone & wood fence, surveying the scene - I felt healed & whole for once - here peace & grace & graciousness abounded - filled the air & the eyes & the whole sky-world. I did not want to leave - I did, in fact, want to stay there forever, for all my life, which is the same. A tiny thing flew toward me - I thot a bumble bee - but it was a hummingbird, sleek & fast & extraordinary. I knew I must go, I felt I had to leave before I lost my grip on reality - I wanted to leave before staying became compulsive - before, in essence, I had to be dragged away. With great dignity & poise I got in my car & rejoined the stream of life on the highway feeling a slight touch of panic at the reentering, but yet feeling I'd gained a life-giving, healing message or injection & a knowledge as to where & when to go again when fake-life again began to crush out my acquaintance, no, love-affirm with true-life. It is yet there to be found. How long - oh, how long?

Memorial Day, 1970 - Part 5

I was out earlier w/my 2 blessed creatures - the kitten made brave attempts to explore but always rushed back to me to hide under my knees or snuggle against my legs. The wind ruffled, furrowed & flowed through her long soft hair. She sniffed & tested the new cool wind & struck out to follow it tho, at no great distance, turned around to assure herself of my presence & concern. Her confidence ran out & she raced back to me pouncing on high bouncing hops over the new spring greens as tho she were as light as down which, in fact, she almost seems to be.

In expression she closely resembles an owl, a resemblance I noticed early tho did not clearly identify for a day or 2. Her owl-like appearance seems to stem from the mottled coloring of her face as though made up of overlapping tawny feathers thru which her wide round golden eyes peer, perked by the same sort of upright pointed ears (or ear-like extensions?) as on some owls' heads. Also because of her long hair she is able to turn her head thru quite a large arc without seemingly needing to move her shoulders or aught else the way owls are seen to do.

Memorial Day, 1970 - Part 4

I have been formulating some thots - not over entirely, but elaborated upon & will try to record them. First, I was outside just now in the "down field" with Chalet & Ginger - only the 3rd or so excursion for the kitten. What she did & how she looked were so wonderful to me I felt as I always do - a deep gripping desire & need to record, describe, preserve - for any other realistic critical eye - whatever for, whomever comes along, I do not know.

And I am getting more progressively more withdrawn. Silent, anxious, shy, & most of all inexpressive - part of the same cynicism as alone causes this, but also it stems from increasing inadequacy or feeling thereof. I realized today that my lack of confidence in my mental worth, in my judgments of almost everything, in my ability to hold the interest of anyone for any length of time, is causing me more & more to avoid talking, speaking up, relating experiences.

I cover subjects only in the most superficial manner & in my effort to get out of the limelight quickly, to finish swiftly I become even more uninteresting - it's viscious, progressive & contagious, burning with each painful, uncomfortable experience. And so, in the same vein, because this same shallowness, weakness of character & confidence, I cannot & do not write to any extent or in any depth. I have long wondered how authors can fill whole books - how they can write in such tiny steps toward the ultimate, distant goal, their conclusion. I have a good latest vocabulary, but my poor self confidence puts such stricture on every aspect of my human performance as to practically totally incapacitate me. Why can I not have the tenacity of mind & character that would allow me to write or I would wish to. Even now - I am wrong of writing thus --

Memorial Day, 1970 - Part 3

Drawn outside earlier by more resonant movning foghorn blasts, I know an oil carrier was moving toward port, working his way along, revealing his place visually by the dark smoke trailing along above the fog. As I sat reading, the fog approached me - at intervals. I looked to see it coming closer & I thot to stay, welcoming the prospect of being enveloped by fog - then glancing up another moment from my book - Charlotte Bronte's excellent biog. by Gurin - I was both pleased & disappointed to see the fog had gone except in the far southern distance, melted away by the sun which now gave us its friendship from welcome blue skies. Now, later, I'm back & I see the opposite shore is again hidden behind a soft grey wall & still the fog horns blow - higher tone and farther from Two Harbors, deeper from ships on the lake.

I have had further proof this weekend, if such were needed, that loneliness, aloneness, can bring on a sickness, a malaise, quite real. I felt lightly ill with it this morning, enjoying doing what I alone wished tho all the while feeling un-right & unnatural about it - unmoved, apart, not entirely healthily human. It was only after simple contact with 2 women in 2 gift shops that I felt right again, whole & healthy, part of normalcy, one with humankind.

I have another blasted insect bite up under the hairline causing my whole right temple to swell into a hard lump & my upper & lower eyelids on that side to fill with fluid, to puff & hoop increasingly. It is as all my life a reaction most noisome.

Memorial Day, 1970 - Part 2

Being without Doug up here gave me a wrench at first. I understand & agree with his choice to stay home but still I wept briefly, huddled hugging my knees close to the water's edge last night or evening in the layering gloom and why? Because it made me feel as tho something had been pulled out by its roots - as a tooth properly loosening in its own good time is at last pulled free, its last remaining root-contact wrenching free with a last brief accompanying spurt of life's blood. A bitter-sweetness pervaded me - bitter because now it's as tho in essence I must do without even him and sweet because it is as it should be for him - a growing up and out and beyond. I thot how perverse parenthood can be - how on the face of it a mother might want her son to be attentive & constantly with, ever loving and even adoring, to reimpress & reassure her of his love and caring - but in full knowledge & intellect, knowing that condition would be a sickness or a terrible ill - for him thus ultimately for her. So I am glad for him and for myself as a mother while at the same time being sad for myself as a needful lonely human being.

Memorial Day, 1970

Awake at 6:30, up at 7:00 and out onto my rock. Saw, to spark my morning into life, a scarlet tanager, perched on the rocks as close to the singing water as I would dare go myself. Brilliant scarlet, true - with black, black wings. What an incredible revelation it is to see something as this expressing life - not flat as in a photograph or a painting, but round and moving - alive in all its senses. This particular bird hopped from rock to rock looking perhaps ? for some of the large earthworms I've seen moving across rock & through pool - it kept always the same distance from me showing, however, very little fear. It was as tho proof that - tho I see it, or another again - now across the small cove next which I sit - my weakening eyes cannot see it in sharp detail, but the bright color could not be missed among the neutral shades of its surroundings. There, now, I can better see with my binoculars - the red is truly brilliant but there is a paling under the wing & a mottled portion on the dark wing but she sits quite fat & serene on the rock ledge above the lapping water as tho simply enjoying the rarity of sunshine just as I am doing.

Now I look again and she is gone - as is the other bird, strange to me, I saw the same circular field of vision tho on a rock beyond the tanager & a bit higher - white of breast & black of head tho it looked as tho the back & wings might be greyer - not a gull, but larger than a songbird. it hopped to a lower rock hidden behind the tanager's outcrop & out of my vision.

It's after breakfast & beautifully sunny to a point - tho, threateningly, halfway across the arm of the lake hangs the heavy fogbank, as tho ready to pounce & once again shroud my shore. I fear it will very soon - not as fog perhaps but as all encompassing greyness. The fog horns are still sounding as they have continuously since I arrived yesterday. Yes, it's coming - already the arm is blanketed & the air cooler.

After dishes - a grey world again, tho still a lovely one - kitten Ginger is leaning against my arm purring and now sitting (as I write) on the table looking out the window, watching something high that I cannot spot - her head is tilted back - perhaps a gull? Now down to follow 2 people, a German-hiker-looking couple, walking along the rocks. The birches are still in bud or small new-leaf condition. The undergrowth is low & undeveloped, all allowing greater distance in view. Water silver-grey except where breaking it becomes a clear grey-green frothed with white. It pulses mildly and endlessly. Living here I would not be alone as I am alone at home because here there is distance, space, openness, privacy, timelessness - oh, I see now, a small gnat caught Ginger's eye & she follows its erratic movements faultlessly.

May 29, 1970

I have just come up from the mesmeric influence of the Lake Superior shore. The meeting of water and shoreline did as it has always done - it catches me, holds me, binds me - I inevitably fall under its hypnotic influence as some of mankind has done since men's time began. I see infinity in the polygonal rocky pools - look into them & you can see back to when this world began. And then back to the water's surge which is so attracting, I think, because it never tires, it never stops. Most everything in our lives is so fleeting & temporary that something so apparently eternal as the forward & backward movements of the water has an irresistable answer for our hunger for permanency.

And outside the cabin the long-needled pine drew my smile as I saw each separate needle tipped with a crystalline drop of rainwater.

May 26, 1970 - Part 2

I am the mother of a son. I have a child and I am a mother. My child is a male child, a son, and so I am the mother of a son, a blessed thing to be. I know not how other mothers feel about their sons. I only know there is no state of being in my life so important and so precious as my motherhood, no facet of my life so full of sheen and glow as my son and his own being. To see him grow and develop is truly a daily miracle. I say not that he is superior to other sons. I do not know for sure whether he is or not, but I surely do know every day of life with him, near him, is a time of being part of a miracle, a wonder, a suprise, a joy - the miracle of develoment, the wonder of growing awareness, the surprise of individual response, the joy of sharing and loving and experiencing.

As a mother I am right & I am wrong. I have given him and I have deprived him. I have deprived him by my own being of strength, of confidence, and of a sturdy exterior. I have given him by that same being a sensitivity, an enjoyment, a love of animals, of weather, of woods & hills & distant views, an inherent kindness, gentleness, liberalism, a soft interior.

How shall we be rated - he & I - as human beings - what value have we?

May 26, 1970

Oh, L - I see your small worried burdened face; yes, I do believe in your lonesomeness - you need as I need - unhealthily & too much. It seems so foolish - it is so foolish - but thots of you affect me more than any others have - is it you or me, at this time, that is different - I can scarce wait for Saturday week. It is most strange.

May 24, 1970 - Part 3

And yesterday a new door opened giving me an unexpected breath of quite a different kind - I don't see it clearly yet - seems quite an unlikely union - L. & myself - but strangely enough his kissing me that Sat. some weeks ago & his calling yesterday shook me as no one else has done ever & I don't understand why really. I was literally "shook" - my hands were shaking as I cleaned & tidied up for his coming over.

He's quite right in some ways - the way he dresses & cares for himself - his similar tastes & level of intelligence - his gentleness & thoughtfulness & perhaps most important (no, not quite most) he seems able & willing & determined to stick to a plan made.

And very strangely I sit here now quite full of thoughts of & desire for him. Is it only because it is new & fresh after a long dull spell. I needed someone's attention & touch & care & love - I needed it most terribly. Fri. at work I came close to tears & tears came close to spilling over because of simply hearing a particular sort of music that set a tone of feeling & pointed up most painfully my hunger & my need & my loneliness & ache. And Fri. night driving home from a full evening with M. & D. at the BPW convention I knew again that no happy amount of fun & wholesome activity can ever fill the void that waits always inside of me - an aching empty dryness that fills my self & my soul. So perhaps can L. fill it - for awhile anyway - fill it by giving to me & by needing my filling of himself. He needs & I need & each for now be enough possibly for the other but it at least is something & I am grateful for it.

May 24, 1970 - Part 2

Last weekend driving home from St. Louis on Sunday was very pleasant. Up early & off, all the fields of new grass & new crops were silver grey with dew & the air was so cleanly fresh & freshly clean - I slowly began to be aware that there was something particularly pecular to what used to be the best of my young growing-up world. A smell was there - not just a country side smell or a spring smell, but a Missouri countryside spring & summer smell. What it is I am not wise or trained enough to know but it was a coming home at last.

We stopped at a wildlife refuge near Troy (?) - back off a side road into absolute quiet. We got out of the car & absorbed & breathed & listened & loved all of it. D. left the road to attend as privately as he could to a natural need & afterwards he returned, shoes & trousers wet - almost to the knees. Looking back his trail was clearly seen - the tall weedy grasses were in their naked pale green where his going had shaken the morning moisture free. It was 7:30 in the morning.

It seemed such complete quiet & yet when I closed my eyes we all stood still & listened there was incredible noise - birds of numerous stories - tones & sounds above and far off, farm dogs barked & a distant rooster crowed - it was incredibly beautiful - the sounds of silence & of life.

May 24, 1970

Seems longer than 5 weeks since I've written here. Time goes so slowly and yet so fast all at the same time. I am more full now than I have been for some time and I want to record. I should have that last weekend in Larsmont and the absolute satisfaction I received from being by the lake. It came to me why, that this was my own little seashore near enough to be within my distance, time & financial limits, complete with gulls & surf & sand & shore & distance & cloud & sun & storm & wind & rain & life. I cannot do it justice - my store of words is too plain, my limits of confidence too tight, my inhibitions too great - I am able to deal only in repetition & cliche', but it relieves the pressure emotion builds up & so it serves. But watching, studying, surveying, looking out upon that lake, that spot sends nourishment through my eyes as surely as food maintains the body through the mouth. Next weekend I shall try to do better while at that very spot. Oh, I mourn the loss of that other journal that some hated & hateful person took from me - part of me is gone - a piece is missing still for part of me was in those words but none now.

April 17, 1970

I went to a movie alone tonight - the first time I have ever gone alone. The Arrangement - not a good movie but it touched me and I came home crying. Crying why? Crying in my crippledness, crying for all the sadness, hurt & confusion in people & myself.

But I lingered in the yard & felt the cool springness of the night air, threw my head back & smiled at the high white 3/4 moon oozing pale light all over the sky - laying in a pale chiffon layer all over the black, and small cloud patterns moved across the field of my watery vision. I am here now in my aloneness and I'm aware, it fits better now. I am more comfortable in it. I truly am. I feel a difference and it is freedom & peace & an opening up of doors.

Here I am, me, and no one else. Not much but yet much more than nothing.

March 26, 1970

Here now, on my 42nd birthday, I am wondering how it can be that today I can feel so glad, so reasonably happy, so at peace with myself, while yesterday I felt close to breaking - lost and full of despair almost unable to function. It probably stems from many things - the weather has broken. Tho heavy snows hit Chicago & southern Wis. & Minn. and we are due for 8 degree weather tomorrow, there is something changed in the light, the air, the smells, and sounds. I feel - I know it is there - and it affects me - the weather's softening, softens me. It gives me great hope - also B. at work has been sweet & attentive - a card the other day, a greeting and lunch today - sweet and sincere looks & smiles & words tho all only of the warmest friendly naure. I think we might find comfort and warmth together if things were otherwise. J. is due for dinner tonight & I see him in a new light as well. I intend to see the best, remark on the best & being the best in this good and dear person. The yellow mum plant he brought me last week also before me - bright & glowing - the best most naturally beautiful, marvelous things in the house.

November 29, 1969

It's very strange but I am living over minute by minute last weekend - the happiest time of my life - 28 1/2 hours that may never top. If what I now feel for G.L.W. is love & I do believe it is, it is the first time for me, for he is that beautiful happy medium I have thot was impossible to find. He is the loveliest, most beautiful human being I have ever known so closely. I do love him and if I were not so sad at not having received a letter from him today I would smile at the classicness of it all. I am suffering from the pangs of loving a man who belongs to another, who lives 359 miles away, who can be mine for only the very briefest of periods at infrequent intervals. and yet somehow it is worth it. But I can hardly believe the exact way my feelings fit into the classic description of the lot of the other woman. But yet it is somehow worth it.

I can wait.

November 20, 1969 - Part 2

I remember long ago saying aloud to myself "Oh, please, Ed, be nice" prior to meeting him, a new friend, for the first time. He was nice in ways peculiar to him - and now I find myself about to meet another new friend and I say again, "Oh, please, Gil, be nice" - be what I need - be a new form of what I need - let me be what I want you to be would want me to be --

November 20, 1969

Oh, Antoine de Saint Exupery, where are you now? What made you decide that time to go? Why did you leave us? Leave me? What beauties you denied us when you left us behind. Why, where, how did you go? You left your sky and became part of your sea - but it was my sky, too, by inheritance and by love - tho not by friendship and familiarity as it was with you - but mine ever so truly - and my sea, too, that holds you now - no, holds you not now - no space can hold you now - you are too much for that - you are the words you wrote & left behind - words read & thought & repeated &, as "thought" is, you are immortal, beautifully, immortally young & magnificent. I love you.

Note: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (29 June 1900—31 July 1944) was a French writer and aviator. He is best remembered for his novella The Little Prince, and for his books about aviation adventures, including Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars.

November 14, 1969 - Part 2

I considered a long time ago that my life was like a string of beads, irregularly spaced and irregularly shaped - yet each one beautiful in its own right - each bead being a moment in time, a feeling, a thought, an experience - some lasting no more than a second, some extending into minutes or even hours - each a stepping stone - seemingly insignificant but in truth more significant than jobs, homes, even than friends.

November 14, 1969

Today, after the loss last week of my other journal (stolen in my suitcase from my car while in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with J.), I write again.

I arrived today at a new attitude, pray life this one will take root & grow strong - it is simply "Life Itself" meaning life itself is enough. I have felt at alternating times in the past life itself is not enough, life itself should be enough & now life itself is enough.

"LIFE ITSELF". I felt blue driving to work this morning & then this thot swept over me - coming from nowhere in particular - only I noticed that I gathered up from the snowy world around me a sense of joy, a pleasant sensation as tho of some vaguely remembered happiness & I thot I must have been happy at some similar season in some year past. It was unexpected but very welcome - I could not identify the time or place or reason - but it was unmistakeably good. And so I knew with a certainty that life itself was good - the wonder of being alive, a live human being - being 41 and in reasonably good health - being aware & alert to what? To the freshness of winter's appearance, to the once again newness of snow - the lovely soft colors of winter - there were willows like clouds of golden steam & russet oak leaves still clinging - my eyes could hear them rustle. The gentleness of the landscape where still it could be glimpsed - gentle formal arrangements of grey & black - of brown & white expressing so simply a life - renewing peaceful calm. All day saying life itself to myself was like a prayer - my god being life - simple. Life wherever & however expressed - a wonder and a miracle quite by itself - and enough, yes, enough. Suddenly every good thing was a bonus - every kind word, smile, touch, was a prize. I did not need them - I accepted them with relish - I loved their givers - I loved every degree of life, love & humanness - every good degree of being as expressed throughout the minutes of the day - I did not feel the frustration I usually feel at not being able to develop & elaborate on each one - I stood alone, simply enough, reminding myself "life itself" is sufficient & feeling it so.

Driving home at 5:00 it hit me true again - that hour - that portion of the day when light lowers & colors glow - when one feels lonely & cozy all at the same delicious time - life itself is enough when there is beauty & marvelousness in things simple & ordinary as the pattern of white & scarlet lights sparking the gathering dark, multiplying & fragmenting themselves on the glistening, black, snow-moistened pavement - as comforting as the lavender hush the day was becoming - as patient as the slumbering trees, waiting, now quietly waiting for the spring that will come, yet 5 months away.

August 20, 1968 - Part 2

Oh, God, the glories that are out there - glories in which I play no part but of which I want to be a part. It is foggy today & the fog horn bloweth - 2 blasts about 30 seconds apart - when out on the rock the splash & smash of the waves often drowns the sound of the fog horn 'til it's scarcely audible. The power and constancy of the water movements are so satisfying & such a source of comfort to me - why is it? It is cold out there, but a soft soothing cold - not bitter or sharp - tho moisture in the air is palpable & fragrant. The smell reminds me of -- what? Florida, 1948 - Dunedin, Sarasota, Clearwater, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Lake Wales? Or Mexico, Acapulco, Pie de la Cuesta, Mazatlan, or other times up here, along and around Lake Superior - but the smell is good & familiar.

For moments I become, my mind becomes, submerged in the book I'm reading & I'd lose consciousness of where I am and then as I come up and out of the book's content, I feel again what I had forgotten for the moment, the cold, the air, the wind, the splash & spatter, the fog horn - the water world.

Yesterday was marvelous - we woke up to great waves bursting apart on the rocks below us & the storm continued thru the day during which we drove north to Gooseberry Falls, Split Rock Light House, Silver Bay & the Baptism River where we hiked 1 1/2 miles to & from the falls of the river, the highest waterfall in Minnesota, coming back with shoes caked & heavy with red clay mud. Up at the falls I found more of the solitude I crave - alone with the world I absorbed, the quiet. The air was full of fine drops of water & I could not tell whether they came from the sky as a fine rain or if they were from the spray of the falls, probably both but mostly the latter. The water poured over the edge & fell clear or frothy down the rock face to explode into clouds of spray & foam at the bottom - the moving air carrying the spray horizontally thru the air in uneven bursts of mist. Without too much effort it would be imagined that we were the first to discover this natural splendor - so primeval & untouched the scene seemed.

Rain, gentle absolving rain
Cleanse me
Wash me away

Gentle soft sweet rain
Clean & sweet
Soft & new

August 20, 1968

It's 7:30 p.m. - August 20, 1968 - the shore of Lake Superior at Larsmont, 2 mi. so. of Two Harbors. The mother mallard with her six young that we first noticed a month ago sailed out of her indentation in the rock ledge awhile ago & gracefully they are setting a gentle line thru the milky blue water, swelling & mottled with darker blue - from somewhere come heavier swells which roar nicely & slap harder against the rock wall that drags away below me. The sun is setting behind me leaving the sky a turquoise blue & its clouds peach & warm grey.

The boys laugh at their play over on the next outcrop. Chalet growls at my side at the movement of a solitary person away to my right. Another dog barks off the point to my left. Thru my binoculars I see the family of ducks farther out in the lake, evenly spaced spots of dark about half way between me and the rapidly disappearing line where water meets sky, now almost melted together in a distance of lavender & robin's egg blue.

Suddenly there comes a cold swell of air laden with the heavy smell of moisture & fish & I must get a sweater. Back, I see the color has drained from the sky. The light house at Two Harbors sparks the point north of me & south another light appears & disappears - unexpected specks of brightness in the otherwise almost totally grey distance. The water before me is truly beautiful - it is like an infinitely faceted opal - all opaline blue, pink, lavender & grey with occasional dark turquoise shadow-faces. Darkness is gathering & gently falling upon my shoulders. The peace that this place & the distance before me holds, envelopes & fills me and it is as tho there is no tomorrow & other place - only me & the infinity & eternality of water, space, sky & distance.

It is but an illusion.

Hold the Sun Still

Earlier I had the urge to throw up my arm & hold the sun still in the sky to keep her there above me, to halt her glide across the vault of blue. And just now I have made the same mistake again of anciently feeling it is the sun that marches instead of the earth that turns. I know the earth turns, I feel the sun marches.

This blog is where we stop time and hold Alice Nelson McCoy, still. Though she is no longer living, her words and writings are here. Until today, they were in a box, still and quiet. I'm tempted to identify her, what she was to me, or what she wanted to be, but instead, I'll let her reveal her own self through her writings.

The title of the blog will be the date of her writing and while I originally wanted to blog them on the same month/day they were written, I find her journals are in no particular order, so I'll just post them as I wander through the pages.

ANMc - I love you, still!