“People disagreeing everywhere you look
Makes you wanna stop and read a book
Why only yesterday I saw somebody on the street
That was really shook
But this ol’ river keeps on rollin’, though
No matter what gets in the way and which way the wind does blow
And as long as it does I’ll just sit here
And watch the river flow..”
—Bob Dylan, "Watching the River Flow"

We’re underneath a high pressure system that has been keeping us in a hard freeze for the last ten days. Even the ground under the canopy is rock solid. Morning walks, stretching past 9 am, have been mostly still. A raven croak here, an eagle trill there, with a baseline track of plodding feet, a jingling tag, and the occasional treble of chomped frozen sticks. 

But still, there’s flow. 

Ice skating has been a staple in our days lately. The kids are home for holiday break. I’ve been playing outdoor hockey nearly every day. Tim joined me one day, and Katie has been skating with friends with and without hockey sticks. We find flow in the psychological sense on the ice. (Or at least we search for it. Looking at that video clip, we hadn’t found it yet!)

According to Kendra Cherry, in “What is a State of Flow?,” “Flow is a state of mind in which a person becomes fully immersed in an activity. Positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi describes flow as a state of complete immersion in an activity.” Pond hockey games are all about trying to make the perfect pass, against or with the grain, setting up a teammate, somehow before conscious thought spoils the party, and all, lately, before some jaw-dropping scenery.

Our friend took this video of Katie, flowing in front of the Mendenhall, our local ice river. 

Just a couple of days after that, the glacier’s flow dropped what observers called a bomb onto the ice, creating waves under the ice and a bit of a wake up call for all us. 

***

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Less dramatically, near the turnaround spot on our morning walk, there’s one creek that somehow keeps flowing, I think because part of its course runs underground. I haven’t traced its source above the trail. For now, I just like its magic of flowing as it presents itself right there, amidst all the frozen stillness. I like to stand in the middle of it, look up at the canopy of the local giants and feel the stillness and flow at once. It’s not much, but I’ve come to call it “FlowsThough Creek.”

In flow, “The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost,” Csíkszentmihálvi says. 

I imagine this flow state is Cedar’s native turf. Every action, movement, and thought (if there are any) flowing from the previous one. I, on the other hand, catch it where I can. And then use the heart of winter as an excuse to “just sit here,” park my butt in a comfortable chair, and yeah, “stop, and read a book.”

Sometimes, like tonight, I sip a hot drink, make sure the faucet is still dripping (because my pipes are not under any magic ground), and imagine I see air swirling just right to free us from the high, with ample fresh snow. 

The Winter Solstice is as good a time as any for lowered expectations, don’t you think? Sunrise today, 8:47 am. Sunset 3:07 pm. That’s 6 hours 22 minutes and 29 seconds. Our Vitamin D nadir. 

Last year on Winter Solstice I was beautifully surprised by a “luminary” ski on Montana Creek. This year, we have very little snow, plus I know someone’s planning this thing, so I’m not likely to go; I’d rather carry the glow of last year’s memory. 

I didn’t set out to write about surprise, exactly, but maybe I did. (And maybe that’s why I write at all—to tend the little surprises that occasionally come up like fish through an ice-fishing hole. Maybe this blog keeps one or both of us from ice fishing. Apologies if reading it is a lot like watching ice fishing.) 

Let’s face it; the universe is rigged for low expectations, and that may not be such a bad thing. (We have the gift of four extra seconds of daylight—and they may even include a snowflake or two—tomorrow.) In my last post, I wrote about the expectation of fresh deer or other animal tracks after the snowfall. Disappointment came in the form of one porky. 

The next day, with no fresh snow and absolutely no expectation of deer tracks, I saw that a nice deer had signed his way across the trail and up the mountain. I was reminded of a spring morning years ago when bro Dave and buddy John and I were out before work trying to nab an elusive (and delicious) spring king salmon. We were pushing our get-to-work timeline to the last second. Finally, when Dave said, “I think it’s time,”  on the word “time” two beautiful chrome kings struck and made us blissfully late for work. (We’ve tried that trick a thousand times since then.)

As every fisherman or deer hunter knows, the point is often you have to stop trying, lower your expectations, change your focus, disengage from the quest, and maybe invite the chaos to happen. I’m sure that happens in love and other arenas where I tend to be even less successful than I am as a deer tracker. 

To make matters worse, the writer Brené Brown minces expectations into two: “stealth” (unexamined, unexpressed) expectations versus “expressed” expectations. And the kicker is that both are the onramps to disappointment. “Disappointment is unmet expectations. The more significant the expectations, the more significant the disappointment.”

Luckily, my old go-to Pema Chodron backs me on this lowered expectations project. In fact, she even helps me to gift wrap it (thus relieving me of some of my late-Christmas-shopping guilt, too). 

“The way to dissolve our resistance to life is to meet it face to face.  When we feel resentment because the room is too hot, we could meet the heat and feel its fieriness and its heaviness.  When we feel resentment because the room is too cold, we could meet the cold and feel its iciness and its bite.  When we want to complain about the rain, we could feel its wetness instead.  When we worry because the wind is shaking our windows, we could meet the wind and hear its sound.  Cutting our expectations for a cure is a gift we can give ourselves.”

Pema chodron, _When things fall apart_

I’d like to say the dog at my feet, who just let out a disappointed sigh that I’m not quite ready for the morning walk, could be my teacher in this approach. But I know her disappointment. 

I’m more inclined to go with the Spanish (who seemed all too ready to meet the iciness and bit of winter with surprise — and very poor heat systems) when I lived in Spain. I love the fact that the verb “esperer” can mean “to hope,” “to wait,” and “to expect.” I appreciate that messy “no pasa nada” sort of blend that takes the edge off of expecting. 

Years ago, my fourth grade students and I queued up for what was sure to be a cheesy tour of an old gold dredge in Skagway, Alaska. “What’s the first thing you need for gold mining?” Charlie, the tour guide asked. 

Students shouted “A map!”  “A shovel!”  “A gold pan!” and the like. 

Charlie (who hadn’t read his Pema Chodron, but still…): “You’re all wrong! It’s HOPE. And Hope is FREE! Follow Charlie.” (Maybe I should have named Cedar Charlie.) 

It’s 8:34 am, and just about past head-lamp light in the woods. By my reckoning, Cedar, I still have time to twist this brood into some kind of conclusion. Brown suggests we enlist a partner to be our “expectation checker” to make sure we don’t set ourselves up for disappointment. (She also suggests disappointment is an opening to to allow us to really connect with one another on a deeper level. That sounds a little heavy for the Solstice.)

You ready, partner? Esperamos, I guess. At least we’re not going ice fishing.

A man and his dog took a walk in the snow.

That’s the only story I have to tell this morning. And it’s pretty much the only story of this entire blog.

We got snow this morning and Cedar was a little kid on a snow day. I sent her out at 6 am to do her business while I made coffee . When she didn’t come back, I had to track her in my slippers and headlamp. Her tracks were easy to follow even though it was snowing hard. Funny to “watch” her “thoughts”—up to the neighbor’s yard to check for cats. Nope… “OH, Look!”… stride lengths increase to a trot, and she meets some human footprints and dog tracks coming down the hill. Telltale “pet me, please” circle of tracks, and then she follows them. I found her, predictably enough, grazing on buried dog bones in THAT neighbor’s yard. 

As daylight oozed in, I started to get my outdoor stuff on, and Cedar paced back and forth in front of me in anxious zigs. 

Once out the door and up the hill, I realized we had “first tracks”on the Big Tree Trail. Cedar’s excitement, I imagined, was a lot like mine on those childhood ski days when we got to be the first to carve a slope. 

I caught a bit of Cedar’s mood and looked forward to seeing what stories might await us in the form of animal tracks. Apparently it was a slow Monday morning in the woods. 

On the way back, I mused on what story we had left in the snow. 

A man and his dog walked the entire trail and back. They crossed one porcupine trail made during the night. 

Elaborate, you ask?

A man and his dog walked the entire trail and back. They crossed one porcupine trail made during the night. The man had a short stride. His toes pointed outward. The dog had a normal stride. Sometimes it appeared to be running. The dog often went off trail. The man did not. The dog often came back to check on the man. 

What’s the significance, you ask? 

A man and his dog walked the entire trail and back. You might imagine that the man was loving winter, that he wondered what it is in his makeup that enjoys these long nights and short days, what ancestral memory he might be playing out. You might imagine, too, that he walked through some sadness, thinking about his distance from the humans he loves, or the icebergs in the lake that may be among the last ever, as the glacier (and winter) recede.  But he did keep on walking in that crow-footed sort of way, and his dog kept on crisscrossing the trail.  

Both of their tracks were nearly filled as the snow kept coming. But you could still see how the dog kept coming back to check on the man. 

I have a confession. Cedar and I have been listening to a self-help book. It gets worse: the title is Unfu*k Yourself. “How did this come to be?” you ask. 

Well I had one credit about to expire on Audible and there it was, a NYT bestseller, too. I listened to the sample and heard Gary John Bishop’s feisty Sottish brogue, saw that it was mercifully short, and thought, “Why not?” Cedar had no answer. 

It occurs to me, as we near the end, that Cedar has Bishop’s seven assertions nailed. In other words, if we take away the occasional bout with the dog run, or a likely scar from dog Ace trying to have a taste of her brain, she’s pretty much Un-fu*ked already. 

• I am willing. (Oh yeah.)
• I am wired to win. (My nose meets your elbow at the table and no more typing for you.)
• I got this. (Dummy 50 yards out in 20 degree weather and 3 ‘ seas? No pasa nada.)
• I embrace the uncertainty. (Whatever that means, I’m down.) 
• I am not my thoughts; I am what I do. (Take my lead, Dad. It’s easier than you think.) 
• I am relentless. (Need proof? Let’s play fetch. Better yet, move one muscle away from the laptop and watch me JUMP.)
• I expect nothing and accept everything. (You’re one lucky MoFo [*ker], Dad. )

Okay, even if my Mom weren’t reading this, I’d have to confess here that I had a pretty great childhood. (Thanks, Mom and Dad.) I’m privileged. I even got to go to college with the rich kids—a gift that keeps on giving, and that I try my best to share with others. I don’t really think of myself as needing to be unfu*ked, but I do realize if I am tangled up in some mental version of my own dog lead, I’m likely the only one who is going to figure it out. 

The “I am wired to win” bit in Bishop’s book is funny. He is downright unsentimental, and what he means by that, I think, is that most of us are “wired to win” but at the wrong game. We need to adjust our expectations of ourselves and others to unmask that we’re winning at being stuck in the status quo. Well, fair enough. (Be warned that Bishop has a bit of a “bootstraps” approach and turns to unsavory characters like Machiavelli and Schwarzenegger for inspirational quotes.)

So as I ponder that little game-change, I want to relate something touching that Katrina recently relayed to me. She suggested that Cedar “brings out the best in me.” Two reactions here (beyond my thanks for that lovely thought): 1) Ongoing apologies to the rest of you , and 2) as Katrina well knows, that’s not an easy job. 

For now, dear reader(s), know in these dark days of December, I’m doing my best to take it on myself—well, with my willing, relentless, accepting, and impressively unfu*ked companion. 

The first little creek we cross on our big tree walk provides a cautionary tale. Really just a trickle a week or two ago, it’s now eight or ten feet wide, and not frozen solid. This is the stuff of Iditarod nightmares and “To Build A Fire” moments. It’s also just a minor nuisance and a minor marvel on our walks. 

Apparently two conditions need to be in place for overflow. The ground below the flowing water needs to be frozen so there’s no absorption there, and the water needs enough “head” or hydrostatic pressure to rise through what would otherwise be a solid, frozen surface. 

We’ve spent a good chunk of the weekend out on Mendenhall Lake, feeling safe in part because so many others have been out recreating, including the Nordic Ski Club groomers, using grooming machines to pile up snow for classic skiing tracks. 

My buddy Marc showed me some crazy photos of overflow and refreezing that had formed on the lake prior to this snow. This is the area where a Nordic Ski Club groomer went through the ice several years ago. He belly-crawled away from his mostly submerged snow machine.  The volunteer groomers intended to arrange for a helicopter to hoist the sunken machine, but when fog foiled that plan, they used some ice screws and a come-along and dragged it to shore. “We were overthinking it,” my friend Peter was quoted as saying regarding the helicopter. 

Marc’s theory is that the wind coming across the lake from valley above the Nugget Falls area is the culprit, as gusts flex the surface ice sheets allowing water to come up through and disrupting solid freezing. Another groomer theorizes that water levels drop when the lake is still draining (via Mendenhall River), yet the ice holds fast to exposed shoreline, causing surface tension and rifts.

I can tell you this: Cedar and I were overthinking nothing this weekend. We skied across the ice. It held.

And the only thing overflowing in my kitchen right now is the peace (Lord help me) of a relaxed, snoring dog. 

“There are in our existence spots of time,
That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue…”

William Wordsworth”The Prelude XII” (1805) [Lines 208-261]

When I was a kid, I thought Wordsworth had it all figured out: He saw the cool harmony between the natural world and the spiritual quest of man… it all fit together somehow. I remember my English teacher describing the idea of a “spot of time” as an epiphany. 

I’m not sure I ever truly figured out what a spot of time is, but it occurred to me this week that the 24hrs between November 30 and December 1 have “distinct eminence” for me, and not at all in the way the old Romantic suggested.

On November 30, 2018 I found myself trying to run, barefoot, down the stairwell from the 18th floor of the Sheraton Hotel in Anchorage. I had to stop after only a few floors because I was exhausted from getting knocked against the walls and trying to keep my balance in the near darkness while the fire alarm blared and the building’s girders moaned. I was carrying my shoes, luckily, because it was COLD outside.

On December 1, 2020 my buddy Steve rang the doorbell to alert us that the creek I had been monitoring most of the night in the back yard was nothing to worry about, at least compared to the torrent of water and mud running across the front yard and under the house in what we would name Mudageddon. (The same “atmospheric river” event killed two people in nearby Haines.) 

So, at the risk of welcoming December like a matador with a red handkerchief, I’m happy to report that I’m fine with missing this year’s Welcome-to-December anti-epiphany, in exchange for smooth-ski and happy-dog tracks, across the lake.