The Universe
It woke up as me.
Last Saturday, I woke up at 3am in a hammock. Some friends — old and new — and I had spent Friday hanging wood duck houses on land owned by the Army Corps of Engineers around Big Sandy Lake in Aitkin County, a service project organized by the Minnesota chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers.
Saturday was our day to hunt ducks.
After the project was over on Friday, I’d driven to a wild rice “lake” — more of a swamp — along with the guy I’d be mentoring the next day. When we arrived, at least a thousand ducks were circling the swamp, looking for a place to spend the night. We pulled the canoe off the top of my truck and paddled out to see if we could figure out where they were landing, and maybe even shoot one or two. We didn’t have any luck with that, but our hopes were high for the next morning. (I did bag a ruffed grouse that Crosby scared up out of the adjoining woods.)
As we loaded the canoe back on the truck, a guy standing in the parking lot warned us that there’d be other hunters in the morning. “Some’ll get here at 2am,” he said ominously. But nevertheless, he told us there’d be plenty of spots to hunt.
Thus the 3am wake-up.
My hunting partner had never hunted. He still hasn’t. He was along to observe, to learn; no license, no gun. (He took the above photo.)
We paddled through the muck by headlamp, put out the decoys, and pulled/pushed the canoe onto a bog. Then we sat for an hour, waiting for the sun to rise. Eventually, some ducks arrived, though not nearly in the numbers we’d seen the previous evening. I shot one and missed a couple others.
I waded back into the muck around 9am and gathered our decoys, returned to our campsite for coffee and tales, and then drove home, via the cabin where I unloaded and hosed down all the muddy items.
I was tired by the late afternoon. But Courtney had gotten us tickets to see her favorite band, Cloud Cult. So I took a nap and rallied, and we headed out to the Palace Theater.
A Cloud Cult show is more than a rock concert, as evidenced by Courtney’s tears during the band’s second song. It’s a genius mix of symphonic, anthemic rock, visual art, and penetrating lyrics. To wit:
This is how I'll leave my skull-sized hell
There's something big inside of me cracking the heck out of my shell
So stop caring what they think, cuz that has never done me well
Know that I am me and not the stories that you tell
And if you beat me down, I'll love the heck out of myselfToday the universe woke up as you
Today the universe woke up as you
In earlier days, I would have poo-pooed Cloud Cult as “new age woo-woo,” and avoided them. But that’s only because I was small-minded, locked into an ideology provided by my religion. Trauma and loss has pried open my spirit, just as it has for Cloud Cult’s leader, Craig Minowa (he’s lost a son and a marriage). And I daresay, it’s pried open a lot in me. I am quite sure that Courtney would not be with the earlier version of me, nor would many of my friends (and maybe even some of my family).
A friend called me after my post last week, a friend who’s known me for at least 40 years. “I don’t recognize that old version of you that you write about,” he said. His point was that we’ve journeyed long together, that we’ve both evolved and remained friends through the evolution(s).
I don’t disagree with him. And yet…
Later this month, I’ll go to a conference with 600 people, progressive Christians, many of whom have an idea about who I am, an idea that was formed in earlier days. Some don’t like me. I know this based on emails I’ve already received, and from my experience of a handful of folks walking out of my talk last year. So on my drive to Denver, I’ll play Cloud Cult and listen to Craig’s words:
So stop caring what they think, cuz that has never done me well
Know that I am me and not the stories that you tell
And if you beat me down, I'll love the heck out of myself
Of the 2,500 people in the Palace Theater last Saturday, I may have been the only one who opened the day duck hunting. And I love that, strange as it is.
I get to tell the story of who I am, of who I’m becoming.