Dipping our toes back in

July 2019.  That was the last time I posted to our blog. It’s been a weird couple of years and I’m sure I will talk about that a lot more in posts ahead. I took a long hiatus from social -well, everything. As covid seeped in, I started to move away from all forms of media. I took in what we needed for our own safety and to help make decisions for the Return to Learn and Policy Committees I was on for the school district. For the most part, we took rest and mental health breaks. We watched Mo Willems and Some Good News. We gathered lesson plans, did online classes, and looked at puppies and zoo animals, but distanced ourselves from the hypermedia mania of apocalyptic proportions that seemed to want to throw people into either panic or anger stricken tirades at each transition and into the maw of an ever deepening divide as we all scrambled for survival, feeling like we were being chewed up and on the precipice of being swallowed. So I inched away. It was restful, freeing, and isolating. I am sticking my toe in the waters of coming back, unsure if I will ever dive back in the way I was before. I saw this quotation the other day from Arundhati Roy, “What is this thing that has happened to us? It’s a virus, yes. In and of itself it holds no moral brief. But it is definitely more than a virus… It has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to ‘normality’, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.” I wrote stories during this time about skies clearing and hope for the future, with a heart aching – at times not being able to see the good, but hoping against darkness it is still there. I wanted to address the gap and the space we are moving through as we move forward. 

Our most recent trip started (and ended) a couple weeks ago. I am posting after we we got back and schedules settled down so we could fully enjoy our time together and be present. Now I can organize my thoughts and photos as I write.

We set off at 8 am on a Friday morning and left our puppies with the neighbor girls who so kindly stayed with them. We had a fairly uneventful drive for the 6 hours to Indiana Dunes National Park. Jeff spent some time on the phone working. We started our license plate game with the boys. Sam was the recorder and we got quite a few plates for the first stretch. Indiana Dunes is one of the United States’ newest National Parks, established in 2019. It has 1,100 plant species and 350 bird species with in 15,000 acres. Yellowstone has a similar number of plant and bird species spread over 2.2 million acres by comparison. The park has 15 miles of beautiful beach on Lake Michigan – where we let the waves wash against our feet and though it was chilly, wished we could have more beach time – Lake Michigan is a gorgeous spot (the boys really wanted to return for the lake), biodiverse wetlands, and as the name indicates, sand dunes that move and shift, some have covered tall trees for which only the tops can now be seen. There are 50 miles of hiking trails along meadows and through wooded areas.  We took a couple hikes to a historic homestead (Bailly’s) and to Chellberg farm, where there are gardens and funny little chickens. It was an interesting National Park, somewhat integrated into the city with steel mills and railroad tracks in places. The beachfront had a concession stand.  We didn’t get much time to explore, but got a feel for the place and Sammy had enough time to earn his Junior Ranger badge.

We packed a lot into our first day and wanted to make it to my sister’s in Grand Rapids, MI before it got too late to spend some time together. We had Jet’s Pizza, played outside with the kids and their new puppy, talking late into the night. It was great to get our families together. The conversation and time together was nourishing.

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