JEWELS ON THE WATERSHED

Gipper runs alongside the asphalt until he’s a speck in the tawny distance.

By: Jacalyn McLeod

My dog, Gipper, bounds down the hill with his white plume tail rising and falling like a ship on the waves.  Up and down, cresting and troughing, he runs alongside the asphalt until he's just a speck in the tawny distance.  Since our walk has taken us through the association to an undeveloped street where only quackgrass and sumac grow up the slopes on either side, I like to let the Gip go off leash.

 "Run, man; run as fast as you want."

Up and down the buff ridges he flies, laid out parallel to the earth, no paw touching, until he breaks towards me and tumbles down the hill, trying to find the ground, his shiny smile ear to ear.  As constrained and lawbound as our lives have become, this dog freedom seems right and good.

The cul-de-sac at the end of this undeveloped street borders a rangy natural meadow which flows out onto Bluff Road and East Bay.  The meadow looks like a golf course without the course, or an equestrian valley without equines.  It's just drumlins with fir trees and a shallow valley stretching north to nothing.  I've had many dreams for this field, all towards keeping it as untouched as possible.  No art could satisfy my eyes like the scruffy poke weed, mullein, and honey locust growing naturally.  How is it that we see beauty in dying weeds, "trash" trees, and sticker bushes?

As I walk through thistle along the two-tracker path and hear the aspens rattle like pods in a rain stick, I think of the value of this land and the possibility that bulldozers will come one day.  The trees will be felled, wild grapes plowed under; the ground churned a uniform brown.  New houses will come, and more people, destroying this soul-refreshing asymmetry.  We have laws to prevent such things.  But my hard question is; should we?

Jackie's Meadow is an equestrian valley without the equines.

Disraeli, a wise man, said, "Change is inevitable in a progressive country." If this is true, I caution myself not to fear it. To fear the future is to believe things will not come around right again; to fear is to have no faith. Change is progress; movement forward.

Transitions sometimes don't look like improvement, or feel like progress because they are painful. Like a beautiful field being destroyed, it is disruptive and ugly. I think back to the most emphatic change in my experience, that of my family moving here to Traverse City. As new parents, my husband and I indebted ourselves to come from California for quality of life; but what we found was the deprivation of poverty. We wanted our two children to grow up in an atmosphere of safety; one did. We wanted to live where traditional values of simplicity and integrity were exhibited in our community; we found that, but superstition and rejection as well.

Twenty years later, I can easily assert that what seemed to be the destruction of our well-conceived plans was actually the creation of something brand new. What we gained through discomfort could not have been forged in the security of the status quo, and what we mined through hard emotional labor were diamonds.

A wise woman, Abigail Adams, said, "It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed." My husband's heart, mind and emotions were the carbon compounds upon which the pressures of life multiplied. There was a time when I wondered what I would find when the crushing weights were removed; character or a quenched spirit.

Poverty taught my husband dependence upon others, breaking the lie of independence in anonymity fostered by city life. He was humbled with gratitude when members of our church came unannounced with groceries. Friends and friendly banks provided loans to bail us out of financial straits time and again. When we couldn't pay for a tow-truck, our neighbors didn't think twice about getting their shovels and helping him dig our car out of a snowbank. We had never experienced such routine, selfless assistance in the city. My husband's pride broke, allowing others to see his weakness, and him to see he was just like everyone else. Prosperity eventually came, but the character work had been done.

When one child slipped through the cracks of the school system, the social system, and into the law enforcement system, we found ourselves in a private program about restoration. The main focus of healing and help was my husband, because only through his concerned strength could stability and accountability come to our family. He grew from the breadwinner into the leader, and began to care about the details of my life and our children's lives. His attention made us feel valued.

As the sun shines hard through the hemlocks and red pines the pressure of this land creates jewels.

When we first arrived, the provincial ignorance of a few misguided new acquaintances spoke loudest to our ears, assuring us that no good thing could come from California. But we now understand that what we heard were the echoes of our own pride, fear, and prejudice coloring our perceptions. Like most people's ethnocentric preference, I thought my hometown in California was the finest place on the planet. The good folk here countered that Traverse City was best. Without our transition to life in northern Michigan, we may have continued in the mistaken notion that one location is better than another, when in reality it's not the quality of the place, but the quality of the people.

We have come to know quality people. The lie that we were rejected has been exposed by the loving care of the best friends and neighbors we have ever known. Through high times and low, we have been surrounded by the wagon train of spiritual brothers and sisters willing to share our burdens. These people, from disparate backgrounds and walks of life, were drawn to us as we were to them seemingly by a force outside of ourselves. I will never forget the architect sitting with my husband and our bloodied, combative child in the back seat of the car, while the airline pilot drove the scared bunch of us to the hospital. They sat in the waiting room with us; their wives arrived bringing food and comfort until the crisis passed. These are northern Michiganders, formed by the same pressures which now mold us. Under their tutelage, my husband and I have learned great lessons of life, which we now purpose to pass on.

The sun shines hard through the hemlocks and red pines on the ridge, contrasting the cool-winded smack of Fall on my cheeks. The foxtails bend their furred heads in a breezy wave. If our growth is what change is all about; if our progress is towards a maturity that would forfeit our comfort to strengthen others, then may change come quickly and often, because everyone benefits. Should we prevent the field from being plowed? My eyes, looking upon this great natural vista, are not sacred or deserving that they should preserve this to deny another the chance to live here. I have a sense that my desire for this sight to remain comes under the heading, "You don't know what you ask."

I hear the sound of ground-breaking machines somewhere in the distance and shudder at what trees have been destroyed to make room for more homes. Certainly, we'd all prefer never to hear construction trucks again; that the only plowing be of crops which render continuous, prosperous harvests. But who am I to say no one else can live here and experience the possibilities of maturity and lifelong friendships? Who are we to say you cannot build, make a life on this peninsula, learn the brotherhood of the weather, the wisdom of descendants, the cycle of harvests, the nurture of big water? Most importantly, can we deny to others the diamonds of people scattered about in plain sight over the watershed, waiting to be discovered? We should welcome new people with open arms. We all win because the pressure of this land creates jewels. My husband is the newest. Let us invite others to mine.

Jacalyn McLeod is a former president of the Grand Traverse Writer's Group, published poet and screenwriter, whose evangelical stories delight radio listeners throughout Europe and the Middle East.