Usually, one or more of the very large resident Lodge canines are lounging near the cash register.

The Trail Center dogs are very good dogs, and I always have to fuss over them.

Dogs are a big part of life in the Northwoods.  You’d expect bird dogs and water retrievers to be everywhere, and you wouldn’t be disappointed.  But the Trail is home to other kinds of working dogs -  sled dogs who are raised to compete as far away as Alaska and as close as the John Beargrease Classic.

For those who are adventurous and hardy, sled dog excursions abound along the Trail.  There are several kennels in the Grand Marais area with day and overnight packages available.  You can be a passenger or mush your own team.  All of this sounds romantic, doesn’t it?

Well, if ditching your cares behind and moving up to the Gunflint area sounds exciting, you’re going to need a job.  How about this one at Black Magic Kennels? We are looking for hard-working, winter and dog-loving handlers who are wanting a winter of adventure. Pay is room and board and percentage of ride income. Our kennel is located six miles from the end of the plowed road and ten miles from the power grid and phone line. Our cabins don’t have indoor plumbing so if a trip to the outhouse in the middle of the night at 20 below is something that doesn’t sound exciting…this job isn’t for you. If you’re yearning for an adventure and experiencing a team of dogs pulling you silently down a trail on a full moon night…this job is for you.

Dog-sledding not your thing?  If you’re a cross-country skiier, you’d love yurt skiing through the wilderness along the Banadad (Ojibwe for “Lost”) Ski Trail. The Banadad is the longest groomed trail in the Boundary Waters.  Hikers, birders, cyclists, ecologists, canoeists, horseback riders, and anglers can all find plenty to do along the Gunflint.

I happened upon an interesting excursion I wish I’d been able to take, a once in a lifetime opportunity.  Remember in our last post we told you about the Ham Lake fire in 2007?  You know, the one whose smoke could be seen from space?  Well, that big burn not only exposed the white veins of bedrock we told you about, but evidence of something even bigger:  a layer of rock formed during the Sudbury meteorite event over 1.85 billion years ago.

Nearly 500 miles west of the Ontario impact site, a sedimentary layer was exposed by the fire close to Gunflint Lake.  A billion years after the Sudbury impact (850 million years ago or so), a continental rift occurred with magma intruding into the layer.  “Additional iron formation fragments suggest the material was reworked by a tsunami.”  A University of Minnesota geologist led an interpretive walk to the site of two exposed formations in September.  How cool would it be to see geologic evidence of a meteorite’s impact, magma from a volcano-like earthquake resulting from a gigantic shift, and a tsunami all in one place?  As the ecosystem forms again, these formations will be covered over again with vegetation.

Whoa.  This would be  a lot to think about while you’re sitting on one of the barstools at the Trail Center Lodge, no?  Meteors, yurts, mukluks, long underwear, earthquakes!  Before you knew it you’d need another cocktail to calm your palpitations!

Not to mention all the stuff there is to look at on the log walls – taxidermy, old photographs, logging implements, camp utensils, old license plates, and funny bumperstickers all vie for attention.  As you look or even wander about the room, it’s easy to imagine yourself in your new Gunflint Trail life:  slinging hash, cutting bait, or making FedEx deliveries along a 60 mile stretch as your day job encountering all sorts of four- and two-legged characters.

When we finish our sandwiches this day and order another round, Pete decides the best angle from which to photograph the bear’s head on the wall in front of us is going to necessitate standing on the bar itself.  “Hey, can I climb up here so I can get a better shot of that bear’s face?” he asks.  “I don’t see why not!” comes the answer from behind the bar.  “Wait a sec and I’ll help ya up there.”  Whatever, just don’t step on my glasses.

All too soon, it’s time to head further up the Trail.  We frequently like to turn off at about Mile 32, where there remain about 5 miles of the original Gunflint Trail before the newer highway-like road re-routed through traffic a bit to the east.  Along this stretch there’s plenty of blueberry picking along the roadside, as well as young aspen forest coming along nicely after the July 4, 1999 blowdown.  If you stay on the main, newer Trail, you can pull off at about Mile 33, where there is an overlook at the Laurentian Divide.

All along the next ten miles of Trail there are swampy and boggy areas perfect, we’re told, for viewing moose.  We’ve never seen one along this stretch.  There’s continuing evidence from the Ham Lake fire and the 1999 blowdown – induced and natural reforestation, and regenerating species such as Jack Pine, aspen, larch and Black Spruce trees.  Many trailheads branch off on either side of the main Gunflint, perfect for birding, hiking and picnicking.  A couple of dramatic palisade-like overlooks reveal vistas of Magnetic and Gunflint Lakes as we descend in elevation.

Late in the fall a couple of years ago, we based our stay at Gunflint Pines.  Arriving as dusk began, we were shown into our rustic A-frame cabin looking across the waterscape of Gunflint Lake toward Canada.  Our hosts, Bob and Shari Baker, have been livin’ the dream since the 1980’s when they first met while working at summer jobs on Gunflint Lake.  Both pursued their education in hospitality management, and returned to the area full time in 1991.  They and their two boys revere their world: Where cell phones don’t ring to call you to work. Where evenings are spent gathering with friends, watching the Northern lights, playing games or chatting the evening away around a fire. Where “Neighbor” still means someone you can count on in a pinch and “Community” means more than just the place you live.

Pete and I settled in for the evening after a simple supper he cooked in our cabin’s well-equipped kitchen.  As the moon rose over the lake, we stood out on the deck and he snapped the photo at left.  All was calm, all was bright.

We went inside and I tuned the cabin’s lone radio to the Grand Marais station.   It was just in time for “Small Change,” the weekly call-in trivia game. Pete stoked up the fire in the corner woodstove.  I sat with my knitting while callers phoned in from all over Cook County.  Susan from Lutsen.  Mary from Devil Track Lake.  Harlan from off the Arrowhead.  Gary on his way up Highway 61 to Hovland.  Jim from Grand Marais.  It was a Saturday night just before winter, and it could have been any year within the last 50 on the Gunflint Trail.

I think of that quiet night often, the firewood snapping, the stove’s warmth heating up the cabin to ward off the night’s chill.  Voices over the airwaves with the lilting cadence of the North Shore – a musical way of talk that’s mostly Norsk inflection with a little Finlander thrown in for good measure.  Tomorrow there would be more things to see and more places to explore, but for now it was the end of a good day in a place where it’s hard to imagine a bad one.

We were all in on the Gunflint Trail.

Photo Credits:  Apture

Gunflint Lake at Night – Peter Wuebker

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In Paris and Key West, this is a seductive whisper, easily dismissed with deprecating gesture and rueful laugh as impractical.  In others, like Denali and Southport Island, I am powerless as the soles of my feet latch on to the earth beneath them.  While I am immobilized by this magnetism, an intricate system breaks through to follow my veins.  It courses upward along my spine, and then unfolds to burst from my outstretched arms, blossoming from my fingers toward the sky.  Somehow, in these places I discover I have roots, and I belong to them.

The shores of Lake Superior are sacred in this way to me, as they are to others.  Immortalized in Longellow’s Song of Hiawatha, Gitchigumi (Big Water) was named by the Ojibwe.  Their ancestors have hunted, traded, fished and mined the Great Lakes for 10,000 years.  Forcing out other peoples such as the Sioux and Iroquois, the Ojibwe were positioned in the mid-18th century to capitalize as middlemen on the region’s rich resources. 

Anishnaabe Chi Gaming (Ojibwe’s Ocean) led to inland trails where trappers disappeared for months between ice in and ice out.  Emerging heavily laden with pelts at season’s end, woodsmen rendezvoused at places like Grand Portage and Sault Ste. Marie with agents of the North West Company.  Newly flush with cash, avid traders celebrated their year’s work before going in again.

Northeast Minnesota’s Cook County remains a gateway from which you can go all in to the wilderness from the shores of Gitchigumi.  There are four main interior roadways that carve the county into sections, scratching the bedrock like a line from an arrow or knife’s point.  These modern Trails are built on top of the trappers’ routes inland to what is now the protected Boundary Waters Wilderness.

The two most southerly Trails are the Sawbill and the Caribou, originating within a ten mile stretch between Tofte and Lutsen, before proper townships give way to the remainder of the county’s million acres.  The northernmost is the Arrowhead out of Hovland.  These three start out with sturdy paving, but quickly change to packed earth in a matter of minutes.  They fade to nothing at romantic points like Little Johns Crossing and Carbine Road, or The Grade between the Cascade Lakes north of Babble.

Of the four, the Gunflint Trail, out of Grand Marais, goes the deepest.  Purposefully plunging almost 60 miles inland from Big Water, the Gunflint skirts and teases the Canadian border before diving deeper within the wild places, only to abruptly end at an outcropping of rock over an inlet to Saganaga Lake.  This journey reveals our paradise, my sacred place.

Climbing several hundred feet almost immediately from the village harbor, a backward glance from the Gunflint toward Grand Marais displays the splendor of the Ojibwe’s Ocean.  Grand Marais is the only incorporated municipality in Cook County, has its only traffic light, and with a census of about 1100, accounts for approximately 20% of the County’s permanent residents.  Almost immediately, the Gunflint’s first major bend will conceal this vista and recognizable civilization.

“To plunge” is defined as “to penetrate or enter quickly and forcibly,” and so the Gunflint casts us abruptly into the wilderness.  Recently named a National Scenic Byway, the Gunflint Trail’s route is through an overlay of national and state forest preserves, culminating in a portal to the Boundary Waters.

The further in we get, the more wonderful I feel.  Along this journey are favorite points I can tick off on the fingers of my hand, as well as vistas that confirm the scarring and upheaval from glacial activity over 11,000 years ago.  Each is a piece of patchwork in my tapestry of knowing that here is where I belong.

A city slicker’s first impression might be that there’s a whole lotta nothin’ going on along the Trail.  Even though thousands of visitors arrive along the North Shore each year, Gunflint residents fiercely guard this fallacy.  Wearing my Gunflint Trail sweatshirt, I have been accosted by strangers in places as far away as Boston and Appalachicola, who admonish me for publicizing.  “Don’t wear that!” they’ll plaintively plead.  The bartenders at our favorite watering holes in Grand Marais will bemoan the influx of “trustafarians” – those members of the Lucky Sperm Club who made their money the old-fashioned way by inheriting it and have no sense whatsoever – that descend upon the wilderness with high-falutin’ we-know-what’s-best-for-you ideas.

Cook County’s landscape is harshly framed, not only by the seasons, but by geological characteristics such as rock formations scraped clean by prehistoric ice movement, and high peaks comprised of glacial flotsam.  Regular rejuvenation occurs via the elements of fire and wind.  Forest fires and mighty “blowdowns” identified by year (e.g., “the 1999 blowdown”) cull the old growth and replenish the soil to support the new.

In 2007, the Ham Lake fire, whose smoke could be seen from space, devastated the northern shore of Gunflint Lake, skipped across the trail to burn in the Poplar Lake area, and then was finally arrested through the combined efforts of local volunteers and professionals flown in from other regions of the country.  Fire-fighting, we learned, is an equal opportunity volunteer position, as evidenced by co-ed teams, all members brawny and determined.  Boy or girl is of no matter when your home is endangered.

On one of our visits, the summer after the Ham Lake fire, whose effects revealed veins of bedrock like white gashes through the blackened landscape, we witnessed this timeless renewal first hand.  Pete’s photo reveals new growth arising from the ashes here just a few months later, proving the phoenix-like qualities of the Gunflint’s ecosystem.

Just past the George Washington Forest between Mile 11 and 12 is the turn-off to Trout Lake.  It is here that we routinely commandeer a wooden fishing platform and fish the day away.  We’ve been lucky on some days to catch enough for our supper.  Other days, not so much.  If it’s a not-s0-much day, we’ll continue down the trail.

Around Mile 22, we stop and turn left into a small dirt parking lot.  We’re looking for moose.  An easy path makes a loop up a hillside and then down into a small remaining Boreal forest where another handy platform has been constructed overlooking marshland.  We’re told moose are “always” in the vicinity.  Right.  Pete’s photo at left documents our closest encounter with a moose in this area.  Perhaps the forest has eyes and sees us coming in time to leave us its own kind of road apple harvest, eh?

On the site of an old sawmill and logging camp on Poplar Lake, around Mile 29, stands the Trail Center Lodge.  Started by hardy Finns in 1938 out of a logging boom that began further inland in the 1920’s, the sawmill operation spawned a community numbering in the hundreds.  These days it’s a popular stop midway down the Trail.

Photos like these remind me why the Trail Center area is my kind of place!  When life can be harsh it helps to have a sense of humor, no? 

The Trail Center is home to visual whimsy of all kinds, as evidenced by its own Easter Island-like garden statuary.  Pete thinks this is an Indian totem.  Umm, no, honey.  I’d say this was a tribute to Kim Basinger’s lips or something.

Here we have a living memorial to the Energy Crisis.  Remember when it was normal for country and wilderness folk to have their own gas pumps?  This is what you might call a re-purposed visual reminder of the ineffectuality of government policy.  Or maybe all these people should convert to hybrids?  Let’s see somebody put tire studs on their Prius up here.  That would be funnier than the guy who won the long underwear contest. 

And this particular building has been responsible for some of Pete’s best sales in his Zazzle store.  He made it into a “We’ve Moved” greeting card.  Would you buy a cone from these people?  This is some serious folk art here!  Not to mention the sun umbrella for UV protection.  They’ve thought of it all!  Come on over, pull up a chair and sit a spell!

When we have an off day at the Trout Lake fishing platform, we can always run across the street from the Trail Center Bar (voted a best bar in America by Esquire, don’tcha know) to the Ugly Baby Bait store to replenish our supply.  Ugly Baby’s proprietor, who actually grew up to be quite handsome, is livin’ my dream on the Gunflint Trail.  A couple of years ago, he just off and packed up his family from the Twin Cities and moved them up here, seeking a peaceful, more grounded life.  I know!  I’m so jealous!  Here we are on their porch.

Now that we’ve stopped halfway up the Trail, we’re not going to go anywhere without eating.  And we’re going to swap some stories with whoever we meet inside the bar.  Last time, our barkeep was a lovely woman from Jamaica.  When we asked her what she was doing all the way up in the wilderness, she replied, “I’ve got absolutely no idea.  When I got here, it was so cold, I couldn’t breathe!”  “When was that?” we wondered.  “May 1st” was the reply.  LOL!

We’ll leave you til next time when we travel up the rest of the Trail.  In the meantime,  enjoy some tastes of the Trail in these videos:

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Becky has a sparkling personality, and quickly became a beacon on Seth Godin’s network, Triiibes, where I first encountered her talents.  She is engaging, curious, supportive,  interested and interesting.  Her ability with words is prolific and enviable, and it’s not surprising she is an award-winning journalist.

What you may not know is that Becky was a homeless person just three short years ago.  That she descended into invisibility with breathtaking speed is her observation in this, her take on the subject of homelessness:

(Subscribers, click in to view)

As of a couple months ago, Becky has resumed living in her van.

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Our daughter, Robin, has been dating her boyfriend since the beginning of the year.  It’s a great match, as Robin is studying to be a veterinary technician and wants to specialize in large animals.  Scott lives and works with his parents on a dairy farm down by New Prague, Minnesota.  Robin, who likes cows and loves horses, is in hog heaven. 

On Saturday, we drove down to New Prague to introduce ourselves to Scott’s parents (and no, we didn’t pull any of the stunts I’d threatened my kids with for years – I probably should have, just for fun), to see the farm, and to pick up our pig.  A couple of months ago, Scott asked us if we wanted a pig – meaning he would raise it and then we could have the meat.  We readily agreed to the plan, and now it was time to see the butcher.

But first things first.  Scott’s family farm is quite an operation.  While citified civilization – housing developments and gentlemanly ranches with McMansions – slowly creeps up around their acreage, they’re active dairymen who also grow corn and other crops.  Scott attended the University of Minnesota for a couple of years studying agriculture, but he quit because he was needed at home, and because, as he puts it, “I was paying money I couldn’t afford to pay to learn stuff I already knew.”  Who can argue?

When we pulled up, it seemed as though the middle barn was surrounded by a village of igloos.  These structures are white polyethylene calf nurseries.  Each one held an only weeks old calf.  These snug little homes keep the animal’s bedding and feed dry, and also conserve body heat to keep the babies warmer.  The result is stronger, healthier calves.  Calves are eating, pooping, and sucking machines.  They will limit the capacity of an active, milking herd if they remain with their mothers, and if they’re sheltered together, they will suck on each other.  They also like to suck on zipper pulls, fingers and sleeves.    When they’re kept in a dome, it’s easy to see if an individual calf isn’t thriving.

Scott’s family’s cows are good milkers, but not free range animals.  The farm isn’t certified organic, although it comes as close as it can while still treating illness with antibiotics.  Scott’s father believes ultra-organic practices result in sicker, shorter lived animals.

Robin pointed out several of their show cows on our tour, but like real city slickers, we couldn’t tell the difference.  The farm has 180 head of milking cows, mostly Holsteins (the black and white ones) but a few Jerseys (my favorite – caramel color with big brown eyes).  Calves are being born every day; we saw half a dozen who were one day old and yet to be put into their igloo-like domes.

As we slogged through muddy pathways from building to building, Robin pointed out horses and heifers.  The milk truck pulled up while we were on our walk, and hooked up to the side of the milking barn as Scott, his mother, and his father finished up the last few.  They milk at6 a.m. and 6 p.m. daily.  I couldn’t help but notice they were finishing up at around 11:30 a.m.  There’s a reason it’s called a working farm.

We chit-chatted while a dozen barn cats and kittens wound themselves around our legs and jumped from hay bale to manger.  Yes, they are good mousers and so are the dogs, we were told.  What farm would be complete unless there were a couple of big, friendly dogs loping around?  Yes, all the pigs had gone to the butcher, so there wasn’t any hope of seeing just what our piggy looked like.  Not that I didn’t have mixed feelings about that.

We are not about to quit eating meat.  It’s quite one thing to purchase it in the store without any regard to its provenance, though, and quite another to see where my dinner was raised as a living, squealing thing.  I felt good seeing animals that day that were cared for and well-fed.  I felt sure our piggy had been, too.  Scott mentioned he would have steers available for purchase next fall, and we liked that idea.

Locavores, according to Jennifer Maiser of Eat Local Challenge, are “people who pay attention to where their food comes from and commit to eating local food as much as possible. The great thing about eating local is that it’s not an all-or-nothing venture. Any small step you take helps the environment, protects your family’s health and supports small farmers in your area.”

Pete and I know there is abundant goodness in the foods produced in our area, whether plant or animal.  We love eating out of our garden all summer long, and preserving to enjoy its tastes through the winter.  We regularly shop at the Farmer’s Markets, and we seek out locally-designated food at our grocery.  Except for some free-range chickens, however, this experience was our first real foray into purchasing locally-grown meat for our table at home.

Evidently, we’re late to a party that’s been going on forever.  As we headed out of New Prague toward Heidelberg (in Minnesota it is possible to traverse the European continent via place names in a matter of minutes), we turned into Odenthal Meats.  Randy and Laura Odenthal’s store and plant is smack dab in the middle of a couple of corn fields.  A Google search quickly turned up other organic meat producers, Sheepycorner.com and PiginthePatch.com, among Odenthal’s many partners.  The commitment is to wholesome, healthy, local food as part of the economic and physical environment.

Pete had to work out some specifications on the sausage, hams and pork loins that were coming from our pig, who weighed 293 pounds before he was dressed.  Randy figured our cost will be around $175, a flat processing fee on top of product by the pound.  We pay Scott an additional amount per pound.  Based upon our imprecise calculations on the back of our Mapquest page with a pen that was running out of ink, we figure when all is said and done our pork will average about $1.50 per pound. 

Odenthal wraps and flash freezes your cuts for you.  Your sausage (Italian, summer, wild rice, smoked, whatever) is made fresh to order.  Now that Randy had our wants, he’ll finish processing everything to be ready in a couple of weeks.  This day we took our ribs and chops.

On the way home I thought about all the care that had gone into what would be our food.  Scott had worked hard to care for our piggy from the time he was very wee.  Randy Odenthal’s commitment to quality processing ensures that healthy, humane methods result in a superior product.  Plus we were contributing in a personal way to the livelihoods of great folks who live in our area.  Before the global economy, this kind of transaction was commonplace in society.  Going back to a shorter chain between producer and consumer is transformational, and allows sustainability into local communities.

Since our trip to the farm, we have dined on thick, juicy pork chops on Saturday night, and for Sunday dinner we enjoyed ribs rubbed with herbs and spices.  Pete baked acorn squash we picked from a vacationer’s garden to go with our salad.  And our dessert was fruit crisp made with preserved fruit from our freezer.  (We’ve got to make room for the rest of our pork!)

While we’re not complete locavores (that would mean giving up coffee and sushi, wouldn’t it?), we’re glad that we can enjoy fresh, tasty food and support family farms and businesses.  Eat Local Challenge says we all can do our part by

• visiting local farmer’s markets and lobbying our supermarkets
• purchasing from CSA’s (community supported agriculture) – Kim Woodbridge has reported all spring and summer of the bountiful supply of fresh food from her Philly-area CSA
• preserving local fruits and vegetables
• buying from local vendors
• finding out which restaurants use local sources
• determining true origins of our food, and
• visiting local farms

If you’re not sure where to start, visit websites like Local Harvest or state or region specific sites that yield up from an internet search.  Local food co-ops and organic grocers like Whole Foods or Trader Joes often have extensive local sections.  Even large grocery chains have recognized the demand.  When we think about how we think about food, we serve ourselves and our communities with the best the planet can offer.

Are you or have you thought about becoming a locavore?  Would you take part in an Eat Local Challenge (click here)?

Image Credits:  Apture

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The rose Pete gave me years ago as a birthday present has been reincarnated in several locations.  I’ve transplanted it several times, nearly killing it once, pruned damaged canes back past what seemed like points of no return on more than one occasion, and generally fussed about it in my mind every year.  It has endured mildew and grasshoppers, as well as being jostled back and forth during garden and household moves, but in this last location it has thrived.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a rose bloom into October.  A few days ago, I suggested that Pete should take some photos of the multiple buds on each of its prolific stems.  I was going to call the blog post “October Roses.”  We bring you these images instead. 

It’s going to be a chore protecting this rose in my typical way this year because of its height and girth.  In years past I have girdled it with plastic webbing, creating a 4 foot tall cylinder about 24 inches in diameter.  I then fill that with leaves to shield from icy winds.  Others with hybrid teas or more fragile varieties are fond of the “Minnesota tip” method, or covering their plants with foam cones – not so attractive, but since when is any kind of life-support concerned with being esthetically pleasing?

When we leave this place, I will be unable to take my treasured Eastern redbud which sits right next to my rose.  But I will abduct my rose away from any newcomer to this house, and abscond with it to wherever we end up next.

We’ve enjoyed so many meals and dishes from Pete’s garden this year.  I read in this morning’s paper how there is a national shortage of canned pumpkin.  The major player in that market plans to begin shipments to grocery stores this week.

I’m married to a man who wouldn’t use canned pumpkin if his life depended upon it.  Instead, he will drive several miles to pay 99 cents less for pie pumpkins.    Pete can bake the meanest pies, and when he does, we often have pie for breakfast (deserves italics, don’t you think?) the next day.  It’s been a banner year for all kinds of pumpkins in our garden.  I’m happy we have no shortage.

This is the end of tomatoes, though.  Gardeners in the East have complained of wet conditions and lousy yields (see Margaret’s post: Wet Year Tomato Troubles: The Plot Sickens).  We’ve been luckier in Minnesota.

Last week we were invited to harvest from a magnificent garden whose vacationing owners had called back home with instructions to “take whatever you can because if you don’t, the frost will.”  That homeowner grew her tomatoes not by staking or hanging the plants, but just letting them creep along the ground in the same way gourd and pumpkin vines normally do.

It seemed strange pulling aside a tangle of vines, but underneath them were about half a bushel of juicy treasure which Pete promptly turned into marinara sauce.  It’s common protocol to return any harvest favors with a gift – in this case, the present came in pint jars.  These Romas probably won’t end up that way.  It’s hard not to mourn what might have been.

“Hardy” chrysanthemums are a staple to Upper Midwest flower gardens and fall holiday displays.  We’ll see how hardy mine are in the days to come.  Right now these seem strong and valiant.

Yesterday brought another visitor to our garden, but alas, not an opportunity for a photograph – this one is from Apture.  I was called from my desk to our back window mid-morning, where a sharp-shinned hawk like this one was uncharacteristically standing on the ground.  This guy was availing himself of our chipmunk population, and had a hapless rodent in his talons.  Hooray!  Only about 30 more to go!  We’ve also had a half dozen baby red squirrels on the ground below our feeders.  I’m afraid that since they have no fear of Daisy, they’ll be lunch meat.  Oh well.  How can something as cute as a tiny baby red squirrel grow up to be so obnoxious, anyway?

Thinking back over the years I’ve lived in Minnesota, I can remember warm and sunny Octobers (such as depicted in this post from a year ago) where it was possible to trick-or-treat in shirt sleeves or the flimsiest costumes.  Other years, not so much.  When my daughter was almost two, we had over 36 inches of snow on Halloween night! The frozen jack-o-lanterns emerged the following spring.  I’m actually a fan of global warming – early snow just isn’t civilized.

For the past ten years, the advent of cold weather has also signaled the onset of the busiest part of my business cycle.  Since that business was sold earlier this year, I’m looking forward to some of the more traditional holiday pursuits I’ve enjoyed in the past like baking and entertaining.  This change is good. 

What’s happening in your neck of the woods now that the seasons are changing again?

Photo credits:

Garden – Pete Wuebker

Hawk – Apture

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We’ve been having an extended conversation with Dot Hage, of Deeper Issues, on the subject of retirement.  As in lack thereof, as in coming to grips with finances, as in realizing traditional retirement funded by investments and Social Security is someone else’s reality.  If you’ve missed the previous installments, they are:  Part 1 (PassingThru), Part 2 (Deeper Issues), Part 3 (PassingThru), and Part 4 (Deeper Issues).

Our lively discussion has revolved around the various activities Pete and I are working on to supplement our income.  Our strategy evolved as we assessed our financial realities as part of being closer to accessing Social Security benefits (which we would like to defer as long as possible in order to net a higher monthly benefit).  In her latest post, Dot visualized, “Since I’m making over $5K a month now, plus a good set of benefits, $5K a month from online work would at least cover some of that, and perhaps social security could cover some of the bennies I’d be giving up. . .“

Lots of “Retirees” Are Really Still at Work

Coincidentally, the September issue of AARP’s Bulletin contained an article called “No Rest for the Weary”, citing a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:  Social Security records show that the average age for Americans to claim benefits is 63.9. But they are working longer than that—many need the money. In fact, the percentage of workers over 65 is increasing faster than any other age group, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS reports that between 2000 and 2008, the number of workers 65 to 69 rose 25 percent. Even greater increases were cited for those ages 70 to 74 (32 percent), 75 to 79 (38 percent) and 80 and over (67 percent, to 500,000).

These data represent more than a transitional shift, but rather a monumental reset arising out of a cocktail of losses.  Retirees and workers alike are joined by the inability to fund investment vehicles due to a variety of financial and employment-related factors, health care costs, as well as consumer debt.  Now, just when we can foresee time freedom by approaching what we know as the traditional age to cease working, we don’t have the financial means to do so.

The AARP article quotes Steven Sass, who co-authored Working Longer: The Solution to the Retirement Income Challenge:  “The financial underpinning of retirement as we know it is contracting.  Workers have not saved enough to offset these contractions.  The only two options, at this point, are to eat less or work longer.  There’s no more coming to you.”

However, this isn’t exactly a new phenomenon born of the current recession.  An article in the Mississippi Business Journal from 2004, cites the fact that many seniors are working, sometimes at multiple part-time jobs, to supplement their income.  My own parents, who retired early for health reasons in the late 1970’s, were constrained at that time by additional income restrictions against their Social Security benefits.  They had to keep track of every penny my dad earned doing handyman jobs to avoid exceeding the threshold that would have reduced their monthly allotment.

Financial Concerns are Prevalent

Demographics aren’t on the side of boomers, who are retiring at the rate of something like 20,000 per week. Political posturing and associated data on the pending insolvency (everyone agrees it’s pending, not everyone agrees exactly when it will be insolvent) of Social Security aren’t close to being reassuring.  In a Scottrade survey quoted in St. Louis Today, “only 32 percent of respondents told pollsters that they expect to be able to retire — ever — compared with 39 percent in a similar survey last year. Sixty-seven percent of Baby Boomers, and 64 percent of the younger Generation X, said they’re concerned about having enough money for their golden years.”

“Concern” over money matters has led Pete and me to our online and travel business activities.  Dot forthrightly shared her concerns about feasibility:  I guess I was looking for reassurance that it was indeed possible to work online full-time. Whether *I* can pull it off is another story. I know it takes a lot of work in the beginning, but I don’t know how much I can do until I try it. If it feels like fun, I can do more than if it’s stressful. . .

Could There Be An Upside?  Please!

There’s an additional benefit to the “fun” of continuing to work in your golden years.  The Feeling Up in Down Times blog tells us,  “Experts from King’s College London analyzed data from more than 1,300 people with dementia. They found that for people who delayed retirement, each extra year of work was associated with approximately a six-week delay in the onset of dementia. [Note to self: that means if I work twice as long as I expected, that means I won't be a nutter by half.  Or something. - Ed.] Simon Lovestone, one of the paper’s co-authors, suggested that “the intellectual stimulation that older people gain from the workplace may prevent a decline in mental abilities, thus keeping people above the threshold for dementia for longer.” Cool! 

What Needs Our Greatest Attention?

Gary North offers a harsh reality check:  “Most working Americans will not be able to retire. They just don’t know this yet. They don’t want to think about it.” His 8-Point Check List is not only a good exercise, but a tool to determine where your vulnerabilities require the most urgent attention.  Dot is realistic about some inevitable realities:  I’m expecting my medical bills to only get worse as I get older. Not that I couldn’t live on less, but wouldn’t it be nice not to have to?

Simplification in retirement used to mean downsizing to the 55+ golf course community in Arizona, or maintaining a snowbird lifestyle (disappearing from northern climes at approximately this time of year).  This reality often involves less simplification, especially with advancing age.

Consider Pete’s family.  His parents keep their main residence in a Minneapolis suburb.  They were in the habit of moving up to the sprawling lake cabin for most of the summer, and spent the coldest 8 weeks of the year either at their Florida timeshare on Sanibel Island or trading it for an alternate warm weather destination.  Managing their affairs and ensuring things are “kept up” can be complicated, whether its ensuring there is a vehicle for Grandpa to use when he’s on his own up at the lake, or renting the Sanibel unit to cover its annual fees.  Health issues currently tether them in Minneapolis, closer to their preferred providers at the Mayo Clinic.  Adjusting to these more recent constraints has added insult to the injuries they’ve suffered in their investments.

Can We Simplify and Live More Frugally?

Pete and I have begun to assess our own simplifying with the above in mind.  Our current lifestyle and financial profile is tied up in “feeding the beast.”  This is my term for the expenses and activities associated with our house.  For instance, when we decided to supplement our heat with wood, it meant signing on for more work: locating wood sources, setting up a staging area to properly age it, splitting it into appropriate size for cording, hauling and stacking two cords each year up closer to the house for convenience, etc.

The lawn and garden care is something we still enjoy, but only to a point.  The property tax and city utilities expenses are very high in comparison with my former home in Deephaven, where my water came from a well and the village serviced residents on a different scale than our first-tier suburb does now.

Some boomers are dispensing with lifestyle in favor of frugality.  This blogger downsized to an RV, reporting,  “One of the first things I noticed was that monthly/long-term park fees were about a third of what I had been paying for rent in my house. And most times the park fees included water, sewage and electricity – all of which I’d paid separately when living in my house. The park folks also mow my lawn and trim my trees. Granted, many parks these days meter electricity – but even that monthly bill is far more reasonable than it was in my house. After all, how much power does can it take to live in a 33’ RV?”

Some Parts of This are Really Scary

Dot was forthright in her assessment of her feelings to me in a recent email: One of the biggest obstacles I’ve faced during this series is/are my feelings about business. I’ve never wanted to know anything about business until now when I have to. The word “corporation” brings up images of huge companies doing things that harm nature and the little guy. The few times I’ve tried to start a crafts business, it was clear that I was afraid of making the right decisions. So I’ve had to talk to myself repeatedly about doing things with my own values, not those of the “big, bad” corporations.

I also know that “working two jobs,” which is what this is when boiled down, will be very hard for me. It will take a long time. . .I think it would make most sense for me to start with Zazzle. . .

How Do We Plan and Set This Up?

Dot has rightly concluded that this transition is a process, with short-term and longer-term objectives.  She’s got a handle on what it will take:

I can set up an efficient eBay operation. I have a ton of things I’d like to get rid of – an entire spare closet full of clothes that don’t fit and four bookshelves full of books – I just haven’t wanted to bother. But why not make money from them if people will buy? I have lots of mailing envelopes, packing tape, etc., from selling a book here and there, but things are scattered all over the house. A more efficient operation will be essential to keep down the amount of time I spend on my “second business. . .

Once all the eBay stuff is sold, which may take a year or so, I’ll have that off my mind and hopefully have a lot more space. Along the way, I can create some more Zazzle stuff, and then to creating niches, linking them to all the social networks and adding advertising, including affiliate links. Whew, lots of work ahead.

Indeed, lots of work will evidently keep not only the wolf, but Alzheimer’s away from the door! 

I also plan to continue my education by finishing the ShoeMoney course and checking out the other links you sent. Keeping active and engaged, while learning new skills and information, is empowering.  Pete is fond of saying, “As long as you’ve got a project going, you’ve got something to live for.”  Those who are naturally curious and interested in learning can usually find ways to transform knowledge and build skills into a more self-sufficient lifestyle.

The more I learn, the less scary this will be. Dot closed her latest email to me with this courageous sentence.  It is scary to face an uncertain future.  We’ve been lulled, perhaps, into thinking our futures were more secure than they actually might have been, even with no recession or statistical woes.  Self-reliant competence, we’re coming to find, is the best remedy against fear.

It’s been a lot of fun traveling with Dot over the past few weeks as she embarks upon this journey.  We’ve gotten to know each other better, and I, especially, have enjoyed her perspectives.  It’s been interesting to see how some of our ideas apply (or don’t) to her circumstances, and it’s heartening to know others are in a similar boat.

Since this series began, I have begun meeting with several women who are in our travel business, and together we will be exploring and developing strategic plans for online business endeavors using the Shoemoney weekly series.  We have committed to using the checklists and will be working on our own niche website operations together.  This process has elements of the blind leading the blind, but we’re optimistic about finding a path toward achieving our goals.

Dot, Pete and I would all love to hear your responses in the comments section, so we’re throwing it open for questions, anecdotes, whatever you’d like to share.  With more and more folks coming to similar conclusions about what their futures hold, this topic is here to stay.

What say you?

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In this post, we’ll take up where Dot left off in Part 2 with excerpts from our email conversations.  Her responses are in italics, and my responses to her responses are in blue. Dizzy yet? 

About collaborating – that’s not only a great idea, it might even make a great niche! A new blog topic – disappointment about Social Security, loss of our dreams, the bad economy, what we can do instead, where does that leave us, etc. I have a 75-year-old friend who is doing fine. I could possibly interview her on what steps she’s taking to protect her income, or on how she set it up (for the younger readers). One thing she did was buy a bunch of CDs (the bank kind) that came due 10 years apart, so she’d be able to travel each time one came due.

I’ve seen CafePress before, and went to visit Pete’s Zazzle site. I like the idea of photos on products. There’s only so much wall space, but clothing goes on forever. I like the tote bags, but my Borders $5 one is still going strong. $30, phew! Well, I’m not the consumer, I’m the trainee. I’d like to do cards, but who sends cards any more. It’s all email. Hmm. You guys are so full of percolating ideas! I wish I had someone to share this with, so it might feel more fun.

The tote bags are not big sellers. Cards sell – but only the ones that are sent in multiples – like new home, save the date, and now they’re coming out with invitations – those should be good. It’s like trading stock. You do the same amount of work trading auntie’s two shares of IBM as you do 200,000 shares for Wells Fargo – or so my ex told me.

Now. Here is something hilarious. Pete has made over $2K selling his comic books on E-bay. I bitched about them and said get rid of them and this gnarly old trunk they’re in – taking up too much space. So he posts this long whiny narrative about how his wife is making him sell them, and these collectors respond with how their wives hate their comic books too and then they bid them up and buy them from him! Too funny.

About Pete’s comic books, that reminds me of the time a guy tried to sell a wedding dress with a big sob story, and he wore the dress in the photos. Sure gets attention.

Do you have any collectibles or dustibles that you could sell on E-bay? My niece bought a garbage bag full of Legos at a garage sale for $4 and sold them for $120 on E-bay recently. Also she sold a $4 pair of garage sale designer genes for over $100.

Same niece sells her crochet hats in an etsy.com store, and an online retailer just placed a bulk order from her for resale. . . Do you have a craft or handiwork? Slower way to make money depending on what it is. But if you’re creative it’s a great outlet for your art. All kinds of artisans are on there.

I always thought that people who did CafePress and etsy HAD to work at it full time to make any money. Guess I was wrong. I tried to sell crafts years ago but I’m usually not good with the trends and also I can’t sit and do that stuff for too long. I crochet, used to knit and sew a lot, and right now I’m doing (shhh) plastic canvas, which you can’t even sell at yard sales. Small crochet items might work, but only a few at a time.

Your niece has a good eye for what to sell. Legos, who’da thunk it?. . .

I don’t have any great collectibles, except my hurricane lamps, which I’ve been meaning to sell on eBay. I’ve tried to sell books but it’s just too much work for the profit you get. When I get home from sitting at the computer all day, it’s hard to sit at the computer some more. My limits are both time and energy.  I posted the link to my niece’s etsy store on Facebook. The little hats she can do in less than an hour. That’s not a bad return.

We are experimenting with Google Adsense on our sites. So far, we have made $1.60. HAHAHA but it begs the observation that affiliate sales and cross-selling to our other businesses is something that we have not maximized. As you mentioned in your recent post, you started your blog to serve one purpose. But Dot, it could serve all types of purpose, not the least of which is a vehicle from which you could hub your extra-curricular, money-making activities.

Yeah, Adsense. We’re not supposed to talk about what we make. I had two people buy something when I first put up the ads, but nothing since. Mike Goad makes some quite good pocket change on his site for trailers. That’s a big ticket item he can talk authoritatively about. Are you an Amazon affiliate? We are, and have thought we could work that better, too. Yeah, I’m an Amazon affiliate. I put that on my new Resources page. They pay better than Adsense, I think, but people have to be crazy to pay full price for books.

We are actively working our travel business, for example: PassingThru Travel. We have yet to even fully tap the reach the blog has. I want to build an email list on travel-related topics. That’s in my plan. With our travel business, we can sell product (wholesale travel club and booking website) to people, we can get commission off their travel bookings on our site, or we can also sign them up for the business opportunity and they can in turn sell it.

People have varying opinions about network marketing. For us, with our interests, this made sense – we love to travel, and we like to hang out with people who do, too. The positive energy is remarkable and uplifting by comparison with the rest of the messages in this economy.  If you are looking at a network marketing opportunity, consider the following aspects:

• you have to love the product
• the product shouldn’t ask people to change their habits (like take this supplement, or use this make-up that makes your face break out, or whatever)
• avoid having to pay up front for merchandise samples
• steer clear of having to distribute physical merchandise.

I wish I had given my blog a better name for other topics. People always start out wanting their domain name to help advertise their site, and then later, it becomes a burden. Something like Blue Duck would have worked much better – could be anything. But I could still hook things onto there. I’m working on hooking my genealogy site onto it,. but that’s tedious work. I like Deeper Issues, I think it can be whatever it wants to be.

We have been discussing e-books. I have made my first one – for my friend John, consisting of the series of blog posts we did for his Alaska trip. I did it as a gift to him and to see if I could proficiently design one. Now we are going to work on some others, and set them up within an affiliate system like e-junkie. We have been sorta scared about this one – but it’s time now. We have knowledge to share, and perhaps we can cross-market with squidoo lenses and on our blogs.

Books could be fun. I’ve even thought about making books, as someone else does on Etsy, from homemade paper, but that takes forever. Better to make e-books.

We also haven’t ruled out more blogs – I am a big fan of Shoemoney’s 12 week FREE series on how to get started with niche blogs – check that out: shoemoneyx.com. Let me know if you can’t find it and I will send you the 12 pdf’s. This is the most comprehensive blueprint to internet marketing I have ever seen. Step by step. Not rocket science. Written for real people.

I went to ShoeMoney but a search didn’t find the series. It does look like an interesting site, though. I will send you the series. There are 12.

The huge stumbling block is time. We are having lots of fun at all of this, and we find ourselves working a lot in our home office. Because it’s fun, it doesn’t seem like drudgery and we are setting our own pace. I think you could, too. Get started now, even if it’s baby steps. A couple extra hundred a month is nothing to sneeze at.

I was thinking last night that one thing we Baby Boomers are going to be seeing a lot of is death. It may sound morbid, but I was wondering whether there was a way to invest in stock for a funeral home chain.

Adventures in Customer Service. A lens on that would be good. No one would ever see it, though, until it’s too late. I do think you’re on to something with “Issues that aging boomers are starting to think about.” Funeral and DNR directives, “death panels,” medicare and medicaid, accessible architecture and interior fixture modifications, the differences between assisted living setups, co-ops vs. renting, downsizing. Those are great ideas. The biggest problem is, boomers are mostly not bloggers, so I wonder how online they are at all. It’s a huge audience, but where to reach them? I’m excited about this!

“Through a glass, grimly.” Hah!  I like that!

Our Akismet plug-in is a little work horse, intercepting and filtering spam comments numbering in the thousands now.  After a couple of our regular commenters wound up in there recently, I started scanning the folder just to make sure I wasn’t deleting someone who didn’t deserve it.

Certain lyrical phrases from lengthy spammers popped out at me during my reviews.  They seemed like alien poetry. I remembered that Jannie Funster shares her hilarious typos with us from time to time in her “Bord on a Wire” series, and I thought voila!  We’ll post some of the poetry I cut and pasted from spam comments in our Akismet folder!  And, we’ll see what Apture matches with them!   So without further ado:

I reasonable recently arrived home from a long road throw off and found that my harmony was here ok and secure.

Thank-you on your aid, the whole shooting match has arrived without any hiccups

I’m cheery with my Cialis Systematization, my whife loved it -

his skin judging right bones here had studied

This pink quilted Chanel tote purposefulness prevail upon you look like you well-deserved stepped out of the pages of Vogue.

What you imagine in the pictures is what you commitment get.

Tree were tubers they the names hurled them

I received the neatness exactly fine. They production Great.

Gracious postal service!!

hurting mortal becomes positive balance

the flowers which has ends together how alien

passengers funneled their nest

how trees aglow seemed impossible

Maidens could off the verride code something stronger

the remnant computer was worse risk

And this glowing testimonial for breast enhancement products:

TestimonialsWomen

“My teats encourage been thru all things with 4 children that all emotion fodder in 5 1/2 years. I had to do something. My participant offered to pay for surgery but I tried knocker Actives™ dawn. sumptuously, they aren’t bank balls be associated with go-by you, but there mine. I’m cock-a-hoop and my accessory is exhilarated and we’re $6000 richer. You’ve got a adept productivity.”
- Jill and Tony, San Diego, CA

Gosh, Jill and Tony, with those results our accessory would be all exhilarated, too!  Here’s to adept productivity on a Monday! 

. . . learning that my social security income if I retire at age 66 will be only 25% of my current salary. If I wait until I’m 70, it goes up to a third of my current income. I checked this out a long time ago, but I read the monthly income as weekly income and assumed I was fine. I’ve always been phobic about money, so I guess at the time I was feeling so much anxiety I read it wrong.

My pension savings, assuming the stock market goes back up, are not nearly enough to make up the difference. So, I may be working for the rest of my life.

I responded in the comments section:

. . .Pete and I know what that’s like. It made for some significant changes when we realized we, too, would probably be working forever. We decided that had better be at stuff we liked doing, so that it didn’t seem like…uh..work.

We’ve originated some side businesses online and through networking. You might want to investigate some similar options now to supplement your income, and then replace it when you are required to opt out of your job. If you need any suggestions or recommendations, I’d be happy to help.

There were a number of supportive comments on that post (including one from Jeanne, who lives my nomadic RV fantasy).  I didn’t expect to get a request for further conversation, but it came from Dot a few days later:

I’m officially requesting advice. As in, I need all the help I can get. I’ve never run a business and have a mild case (formerly severe) of money phobia. It’s so nice of you to offer to share some of your experience with me. . .

I re-read the email several times and got scared.  Here was someone asking me for advice about business – not about the business about which I’m more ostensibly qualified to respond (my communications position where they, uh, actually pay me).  Had I inadvertently created an impression that we knew what we were doing?  We certainly don’t profess to be John Chow or Shoemoney, thankfully. But still.

I kept thinking, “I only know what I know.  How do I know it would be good for her?”  And then, the answer came:  I didn’t and don’t know if what we’re doing could be good for Dot.  All I know is that it’s currently providing an assist to us.   I just didn’t want to inadvertently put ourselves out there as some kind of online business gurus, because we’re certainly not!

If knowing about what we’re doing could provide an assist to Dot, well, that would be a good thing.  She needs one, and she needs to get started because she’s got about 10 years before she’s got to retire.  This is the exact same process Pete and I went through when we assessed our situation prior to and during the first year of our marriage.

The more we looked into things, the less pretty they got.  It became abundantly clear that neither of us had married for money.    It was even more clear that I had married a reasonable, practical man who didn’t get caught up in the net of recrimination or excuses.  Praises be!  We were in this together, kind of like a couple of mules pulling the same wagon.   I could work with it.

We figured we had limited options:  about 17 years and then the oldest of us (uh, that would be me) would begin drawing Social Security.

The monthly income from that was, in a word, grim.

It wouldn’t even cover one of the mortgage payments.  I could see myself taking in boarders if something happened to Pete.  Ick.  By the time my youthful husband retired (at 70 as well) our monthly income would max out in an amount equivalent to our current first and second mortgages.

So we had seventeen years in which to come up with a get-rich/make-it-all-back-and-then-some scheme.  The trouble is, we had no idea what that might be.  It was a recessionary economy.  Whatever we did would need to be relatively risk-free, as in we could afford to lose the money we could invest.  Which wasn’t much.

It was realistically clear we needed to consider that we were not going to have the vacation-like retirement our parents enjoyed.  Our 401Ks had dwindled to 201Ks and were now hanging out in the general vicinity of K, with no numbers.  We were pretty much going to be working until the day we dropped.

It was also clear that eventually we would have to sell the house.  The sooner the better, thought I in the midst of housing market stagnation.  Curses, foiled again!  The cherry on this sundae is that it needs additional remodeling – mostly cosmetic except for the kitchen, which requires a hand grenade.  Ick.  I am not convinced there is enough lipstick for this voracious porcine wonder.  Real estate’s nosedive coincided with our needing to sell, and precluded us from taking advantage on the buy side.  I’ve come to think of assets as not so asset-like.

Was I really willing to share those disappointing details with someone we know only through online interaction?  At the very least they could provide cover for our less-than-guru stature.  I thought of a post that we put up about a year ago, that still accounts for sizable monthly Stumble traffic.  I went and re-read that post.

When I finished, I knew:  I couldn’t not share what little we’ve learned.  All information, if truthful and un-garnished, is useful.  I realized that by helping Dot out with what I could provide, I would probably go through an evaluation process of my own.  The result might be better goals, an improved strategy, and more information from which to make these decisions (due to devouring all sorts of online resources in the interim).  And so, I responded:

About the money and side business thing. I’m going to apologize in advance for thinking this way, but I’m thinking our communicating back and forth might make a wonderful series of posts. To this day, we get stumble-upon hits, over 100/month, on “Proceeds,” a post from last year. Here it is for back-story, if you’ve not already read it: Proceeds. . . .

What followed was a friendly, lively back-and-forth exchange that did, we decided, make for a wonderful series of posts.  We’ve decided to share our emails with you, and to be as candid as possible about every aspect of the process.  To me, this feels somewhat like traveling through the dark in a rope line, but I’m definitely game.  Why not come along for the ride?

Make sure you subscribe to Deeper Issues so you can read about Dot’s reactions and thinking as we make our way through this together.

Photo Credits:

Front Yard:  Peter Wuebker

Employee Pension Plan:  Tobias Higbie

All Others:   Public Domain

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As I mentioned in the comments, there is huge spirituality in this realization. All the major religions and spiritual traditions reference the act of surrender as a means to obtain a higher level of awareness.  In Christianity, we surrender to Christ.  In turn, Christ requires that we serve each other in our relationships (a sometimes controversial form of surrender).  In Islam and Judaism, we surrender to the power of Allah or Yahweh.  Asian religions revere the greatness of Buddha and Confucius.  Zen thinking acknowledges the great power within paradox. Even 12 step programs have a basis in surrender.

Megan found freedom in surrender, which on its face seems a paradoxical statement.  The shift began, she writes, through a change in priorities:  I became less inclined to seek things and more inclined to seek inner peace, gain a better understanding of my God-self, and come from a space of love in all that I do. A fairly common objective held by those who seek understanding of themselves and their place in the world.

But a more radical transformation would soon take place:  The thing I hadn’t thought to do, though, was surrender. . . As a result, I kept spinning my wheels more and more until I was so jammed into the very state I tried to get out of that I had a minor breakdown. We’re taught that action cures all ills in modern society.  If something is wrong, we need to keep working on it until we fix it.  If we’re sick, we try different types of cures.  If there is injustice, we legislate against it.  If we are scolded, we muster a defense.

The problem with taking a harshly proactive approach is that things often don’t respond in the ways we want. Business marketing is a perfect example.  “All marketing is,” my husband has told me on more than one occasion – and he should know after doing it for about 30 years, “throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks.  Sometimes nothing you can think of does.”  This sounds familiar.  Didn’t I hear in the NICU from my son’s neonatologist that, “we don’t really know what’s going to work until we try something.  Then if that doesn’t work, we’ll try something else.”  Rinse and repeat.

I’ve noticed some recent changes to challenge the methods that involve trying so hard, along the lines of what Megan wrote about.  Instead of broadcast marketing, where you throw something out there in fine tradition of direct marketers everywhere, there’s been a modification toward relationship development and responding to what need the potential customer expresses.  This feels more right, though it might take longer to develop a trusting relationship.  The move toward more holistic ways of healing involves a kind of listening to what our bodies want to tell us, as well.

Surrendering from what we think might be the answer to the evolution of an answer through listening is the same as what Megan described in her breakthrough:  I used to look at my dreams – the things I thought I wanted – and see them as something to strive for; something outside of me. But now, as I look around with a fresh set of eyes which love the very moment I’m in no matter what that moment is, I see how my heart’s desires have evolved. Wherever I am is exactly where I want to be. . . Whatever is, is my dream.

Sometimes our biggest breakthroughs or rewards come when we stop trying so hard, and surrender to a force, which, I believe, has greater gifts in mind for us than we could ever imagine.  My business partner and I, slow learners that we were, realized this on a multi-year continuum.  We would beat ourselves against the wall striving and working constantly to achieve a new milestone, get that next client, resolve a problematic situation, acknowledge our frustration with the slowness in which everything was happening.

We expended considerable amounts of energy, so much so that often we found ourselves at a point when we each had no further reserves.  It was then, and I’m ashamed to say this was a repetitive cycle instead of a single realization, we had nothing more to give.  We surrendered.  We literally would say, “We’re putting this in your hands, God, because we’re fresh out of ideas.” And the breakthrough or game-changing moment would occur.  We would say, “Well, we should’ve gotten to that point a lot sooner!”

Yes, we should have kept that point in mind.  There is a greater reality than the one we fuel with our own efforts. When we let go, the thing we most seek is often given to us as a gift by the great power which knows all.

Pete’s late sister, Margaret, on her own path to enlightenment, knew this very well. She wrote, “When I am on retreat, there’s a sense of release, of lightening up, of letting go.  I’m able to live fully in the moment instead of experiencing things secondhand, lost in thoughts and stories.  This direct contact with my experience returns me to the natural vividness of life I remember as a child. Colors, foods, and emotions all take on a richness unique to life as a yogi.  It’s as if I open a window to seeing more clearly the true nature of experience.”

Margaret strove for clarity and presence, and found it through surrender. Megan went from caretaker to being taken care of.  Instead of having to constantly be on guard from threats, Megan came to a place of openness. She accepts and experiences a more vivid reality, like the one Margaret described years ago.

Associating with the powerful spiritual force and openly accessing the “better” self through that association is called “consecration” in Christian terminology.  Generally, the term is used during ordinations of hierarchical placeholders and acknowledgment of the holy aspects of sacramental objects, icons or artifacts.  Places are also consecrated – buildings, cemeteries, etc.

I believe ordinary people – like you, Margaret, Megan, and me – can choose self-consecration through surrender. It is then that we may find ourselves in a holier, or as Margaret described, more vivid place.

Megan went on to say in the comments section that the transformation was magical and miraculous, in a very zen-like description:  I couldn’t surrender until I did. I didn’t know how to just be until I was. I’m rather obstinate, and while I understand concepts and how important some things are, until I’m ready to live them, they stay very cerebral. The good news is that the Universe is always willing to nudge me where I need to go when I need to go there. I didn’t love what I was going through at the time, but looking back I couldn’t have learned about surrender and acceptance any other way.

We have to do, to learn.  For complete freedom, we must live in the now.  This entails an acceptance of what is, and transforms our state of being to the greater richness Margaret observed in the inter-connectivity of our experiences.  Thus, creatives might be more prone to access the state of “flow” in the higher functioning spiritual environment that surrender affords.

Robin Birch, in Let’s Live Forever!, writes, “I believe all parts of us are God’s expression… body, mind and soul (”God” to me meaning the universal source of creation).” Her take on surrender is similar.  Stop the resistance and look at the thing which may be your undoing: If we work through an issue “pushing our buttons”, we find that the love and connection that is naturally there anyway can shine through—our hearts open, and the differences between us become inconsequential. We are accepting a part of ourselves we had been denying. We feel different—we feel more… alive. Surrender, consecration – in associating with the love and natural connection = freedom.  Freedom from difference, denial, negativity, and inner strife.

As I wrote in support of Megan’s revelation:  We stop trying so hard. And in the absence of striving, we are more highly capable. We ignore the ego, who is the source of friction. We are a molecule in the stream of life. It’s as though the bonds loosen, like Houdini’s, when we relax. The reality of who we are then bursts forth in joy. In our acceptance, we become new again. And then we can be.

What do you think?

Photo Credits:

Descent with Imagination – Colin Purrington

Torah Scrolls – Wikipedia

All other photos - Peter Wuebker