Martha Martha!

After spending 4 weeks in the woods, away from the routine of life in the city, I find myself lumbering to find my feet.  A curious thing happens to time when we're at the lake-- outside of the realm of cell-phones and internet access. The first day I arrived I found myself uneasy and at odds with the "lake effect."  This happens every time I go up there.

At the lake, all those insignificant moments at home which are brief pockets of footing in my day (for checking email or making phone calls or running errands) are suddenly left untenanted. Time, rather than collapsing to fill these vacancies, somehow expands, and my whole existence is suddenly open, stretched full of clean, fresh air.  Each moment is significant, as mundane activities carry equal value to everything else.  Anything is possible, and nothing needs to be done instantly.  An entire week happens before 10a.  And when I try and reflect on what on earth I actually did that day, I can't immediately remember.

The boys would awaken as usual at the crack of dawn, eager to get outside and charge the day. I would come inside the cabin after a morning of drinking coffee, reading and frog catching ; breezing by the kitchen clock I would be shocked. "It’s only 10a!? How much more could happen in a day?"  Conversely in the afternoons, I would find myself equally surprised. "What!? It’s 4p already!? Where did the day go? I should start making dinner..." Such is the the incongruity of our existence at the lake– time bursts out at a snail’s pace.

The first week we arrived, we were admittedly, pretty busy. My brother’s wedding was less than a week away. Since it was going to be an outdoor wedding on the front lawn, there was much work to be done to the grounds. We spent the first few days generally getting everything ready to host the 50 or so people who would be visiting for the weekend. This included getting boats and fishing gear ready, cleaning up the docks and out door decks, weeding flower beds,  and planting more flowers.  

Then there were the miscellaneous "light" landscaping projects. My brother, being the groom with a mission, decided to embark on a new stone stairway for the back fishing pier. What initially seemed like moving a few rocks, turned into moving a whole hillside, complete with about 30-40, 50+ pound boulders.

A man possessed, my brother worked furiously for two days on his simple little idea. "More rocks! I need more big rocks!"  The boys had a great time "helping" to dig, challenging each other with building up their muscles. I would check in on them, make "the men" lunch, and kept busy with various cleaning projects.

After the stairs were finished, my father made the suggestion that we move some of the log benches at the front swimming pier down to the beach and make some sort of seating area/fire pit.  Somehow I was brought in to consult, and eventually started digging up the beach alongside my brother.  A few shovel strokes into the sand, I immediately hit a big rock.

And then, like some uncontrollable genetic force, I felt my brother's fury from the day before as I hurriedly tried to find the bottom of the boulder. It was a big one. Once freed from the earth, I crouched down around it, hugging it with my whole upper body. Then, like a free weight-lifter, I hoisted it up, and then hurled it on to the embankment. There was something really satisfying about throwing that big rock. I started digging again, finding more and more boulders.  "We need more rocks!"

Seventy-odd years ago my great-grandfather had built terrace upon terrace of stacked, granite boulders. I always wondered where he got them all, until my brother and I started digging up the beach together. The very earth we had walked and played on our whole lives was in fact a hidden quarry of huge, impenetrable chunks of history. After about an hour of birthing boulders I found we had a sizeable pile gathered. My brother began criticizing my "retaining wall."

"Ok, sis, well, uh, that's not exactly what I meant by 'finishing out that wall...I mean, it's uh, a good pile there, but I think we should, ya know, stack them up..."

"I know I know! I'm just getting them in the vicinity. Then I'm going to sort them out and stack them."

"OK, I was  just checking."

By lunch time we had dug out enough of the beach to roll the large logs into a kind of "north-woods sectional."  I had stacked up my retaining wall to everyone's satisfaction, and we then finished it out by circling up a ring of smaller boulders for the fire pit. We were exhausted, but had a great time working together. My dad's wife had worked hard in the gardens all spring, and all the flower beds and boxes were bursting with color.  A pretty impressive feat for zone 3; I don’t remember the grounds around the cottage ever looking so lovely.

As we were winging and stacking big rocks I couldn't help but think about some of the many Old Testament stories which involved building altars and gathering stones as markers for remembrance, or how the psalms and scriptures often refer to God as a rock...

Maybe that's why I found stacking up my little wall so satisfying that day. I was unearthing something greater than myself, a piece of God's eternal nature. I felt like I was taking part in making something that had real permanence. How much more tangible become the scriptures when I remember that God birthed for us the ultimate "cornerstone" in Christ, and began building a living house of worship, for the real wedding feast.