My Year In Review...

And what a year it's been! It included my divorce finalizing, my dad dealing with a variety of health issues, me finally coming to terms with who I am and how I want to live my life, putting down roots once again in the Michiana area, embracing my new role as the medical power of attorney and primary care coordinator for my Great-Aunt Dorothy, falling in love with a wonderful woman and subsequently coming out to my friends and family, my parents putting their house on the market in the spring and having it sell 24 hours later, their move to Minnesota after living in Indiana for almost 40 years, going on an epic 5,000 mile road trip to California to close out that chapter of my life, completing my first 5K race, and ultimately realizing that the best things in life are often hidden in plain sight.

I want to thank those friends and family who've known about and helped me through all these changes this past year! I'm blessed beyond measure to have your unconditional love in my life. To those of you I haven't seen or talked with in a while, I carry many happy memories in my heart and look forward to making more with you in the coming years.

As usual, I feel like pictures say it best. Here's a compilation of my adventures over the past year...

Hiking at the RES, a local preserve where I attended girl scout events when I was little girl

Rum Village Park - a new favorite hiking place right in South Bend

Finding happiness

My mom lost in the petunias at Varner's Greenhouse

Sunset over the Rockies near Denver with my cousins

My reward for a long day's drive from Denver to southern Utah

Visiting the Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park with my friend Alysia and her little boy

A bit of silliness with family at my goddaughter's high school graduation party

Fourth of July fun

Warren Dunes State Park along Lake Michigan

Go Boilers!

Celebrating my nephew Andrew's 4th birthday

Discovering the jazz scene in South Bend

Pond reflections on the Notre Dame campus

My first 5K race on Thanksgiving Day up in Niles, Michigan

Celebrating Thanksgiving with Aunt Dorothy, Uncle Jeff and Michelle

Happy holidays and best wishes for 2016!

Welcoming Change

February in Indiana was long and cold and very white. After a relatively balmy January, a parade of winter storms marched across the country, and the Arctic wind blew long and hard over the waters of Lake Michigan. The temperature plummeted as the snow piled higher and higher. I shivered and shoveled my way through the month with the consolation that at least I didn't live in Boston...

And then all of the sudden it was March. Within the span of one warm week the snow disappeared into the ground. Although the initial color change was welcome, the muted shades of mud brown and dried leaf eventually blurred together. 

During this in-between season, I was enrolled in an online photography course called "Everyday Magic", which forced me to stretch my mind beyond the damp, dull surface of my surroundings. I was pleasantly surprised to see beauty in places I never expected to find it...

Sometime during the month of April, in what seemed like the blink of an eye, the grass in the yard turned from khaki to emerald... 

...and succulent pastel colored shoots began to emerge from the jet black dirt.

New leaves unfurled along bare brown branches...

...as droplets of rain coalesced in their folds like tiny precious jewels.

Fair weather clouds drifted across the bright blue sky...

...while a burst of stunning colors and shapes decorated the ground below.

The cold, blank canvas of February seems like a distant memory to me now, replaced by this technicolor landscape I dreamed about and longed for only two months ago. But just yesterday I noticed the daffodil petals in the front yard are already wilted and fading, a reminder that everything changes. At the end of the long winter during that time of in-between, if I weary of snow white, mud brown and faded leaf, may these colorful memories give me faith in that eventual first glimpse of a new spring.

Precious Stones

I take slow, deliberate steps along the shore of Lake Superior with my head cast down, gaze sweeping methodically across the ground. Thousands of small pebbles are scattered in tiers on the sand, some glistening at the edge of the ebbing waves, others pushed further up the beach by past storms. They create a colorful earth toned mosaic punctuated by bright flecks of mustard, terracotta and slate blue.

My eye is most easily drawn to the layered nuggets of maroon and gray, which glow like hot embers in the shallow water. These rocks known as banded iron formations were created in the region two billion years ago when oxygen first became abundant in the atmosphere. This element combined with dissolved iron in the oceans to form iron oxides. The oxygen was produced by photosynthesizing algae, thus preserving the first breath of plant life in stone and laying the future economic foundation of this entire region.

I spy an oval shaped slip of white rock scored with telltale tubular striations contrasting against the grainy brown sand. It is a piece of fossilized coral from the ancient shallow sea that covered this land 400 million years ago. I imagine a watery world blanketed with coral reefs. Sea lilies sway in the current as the perfectly spiraled shell of an ammonite jets by, squid-like tentacles streaming in its wake. Trilobites scuttle across the sea floor over and around clusters of brachiopod shells. A seagull’s call brings me back to the terrestrial present, but thoughts of geologic time and transformation continue to swirl in my mind.

I am determined to collect a rainbow of rocks. Oranges and blues are mostly igneous rhyolite and basalt deposits from a 1,200 mile long rift through the heart of North America that opened up one billion years ago. It extended from modern day Ontario down to Kansas and branched over into Michigan. A large basin formed at the junction of the northern and eastern arms of the rift, which was ultimately filled with water by retreating glaciers to form Lake Superior just 10,000 years ago. I add them to the metamorphic green epidote and yellow chert already in my pocket.

Red, brown, purple and white sandstones represent deposits from ancient rivers and streams that flowed off the volcanic mountain ranges in the region 500 million years ago. The brown sandstone was particularly prized by architects in the late 1800’s as a building material, referred to as Lake Superior Brownstone, and was used to construct many stoic buildings and residences in the towns that ring the lake. These sandstone formations were also carved and smoothed by wind and waves to form the Apostle Islands.

The individual colors of rock all blend to steely gray as twilight approaches. I sit on the beach listening to the hush of the waves lapping onto shore, holding the accumulation of two billion years in the palm of my hand. Sunset casts its glow as the lights of Washburn begin to twinkle in the distance. I dig my toes down into a confetti of geologic time to feel the lingering warmth of the radiant summer sun still in its grains.

A Minnesota Christmas

The first days here pass in quiet anticipation. Christmas carols softly playing, a ticking clock, the husky sound of a sleeping baby’s breath, the gentle whir of another load of laundry or dishes being run. Grandparents arrive filling the house with admiration for their first grandchild. As Christmas Day draws near meals are planned, freshly baked goods begin to accumulate on the counter tops and the pile of presents under the tree swells.

Watching from the warmth of the kitchen window, the low winter sun casts long shadows across the barren yard, as naked branches sway in the icy breeze. Surrounding the house as far as the eye can see are rumpled fields of black soil littered with the detritus of this year’s corn harvest. Sporadic clumps of bare trees in the distance indicate nearby neighbors. The chill dry air preserves a light dusting of snow and stands air bubbles still in their escape from a frozen puddle next to the house. High clouds skate across the pale blue sky veiling the sun until the hour before sunset when copper colored light spreads across the landscape. The momentary glow seeps through the windows and fills up the house. Soft pink clouds simmer to a deep raspberry as the horizon continues its turn away from the sun.

My sister and her husband live on a farmstead that has been in his family for decades. A walk around the property may unearth any number of artifacts from previous residents, be it rusty segments of crooked wire, weathered wooden doors, or thick glass bottles frosty with time. Our family has gathered this week to celebrate a baby’s first Christmas in a newly built home, and to add our memories to those contained in these fields and barns.

I wish all of you a Merry Christmas and that many happy memories await you in the coming year!