Fireworks and forests

Wednesday, July 3, 2024

The morning starts with coffee with Dr Joe. It's a warm and encouraging time with a respected former colleague. In the lodge, many animal heads hang from the lobby walls.

One encounters many cultures - and this one values hunting for meat and displaying the trophies of a kill.

A stuffed raccoon sits on a stairway ledge. There are also fish preserved in the stairwell.

Our cabin is cool due to the trees that have grown around it.

In the evening, we celebrate birthdays. K is turning 13 later this month. L turns 11, the others are 2 years behind.

We light the appropriate number of candles on each child's piece of cake. Thanks R for buying them and the cake! so we can celebrate as a family.

We pray together and call it a night.

Thursday - USA Day

In the morning, we head to the Historic Point for the annual family pictures. Our tradition is that whoever comes to the cabin will take that year's photo.

Kirsten is the first to leave. I drop her at the airport so she can fly home to Texas. She has a layover in Chicago, making a long loop for the airline convenience.

The camp hosts a parade in the afternoon. Bikes and golf carts loop around the main streets. The grandkids decorate their bicycles and senior dress up their golf cards to celebrate their country.

A walk takes me along the banks of the Flathead River.

The river is still too high for the gravel bars to be exposed. A few more weeks and people will be sitting and fishing on them.

There's a great variety of cabins, from old shacks to modern log homes.

I spot a Harley, one of many we've seen parading through the Canyon. The public roads are beautifully maintained so many bikers cruise between eastern and western Montana, admiring nature.

There's July 4 madness in the canyon, an event renowned for shooting off fireworks at night. Our family has done this for nearly 30 years. I went the first year and declared myself off limits for the flashing lights and booming explosions. The kids love it. They go off to spend their allowance with their dad and come back excited to participate.

Our son T takes videos of their enjoyment. "It rivals professional shows in intensity and color, if not in art," he remarks later. 

They're home before midnight but the booms and flashes end shortly before 1:00 a.m. I relax in our warm bed, thankful I don't have to get any closer to the "fun."

Friday

A minor earthquake shakes the cabin at 3:45 but I'm awake already. Two or three trans-continental trains rumble along the far hillside over the river in early morning each day. Their whistles oscillate across the valley.

Jer and R leave before noon. We say goodbye before we head into the last session of "Ephesians with Dr Joe." It's a good wrap-up of the apostle Paul's advice to love deeply - God first, worshipping him through prayer and understanding. Then we can love people through thoughtful service and kindness.

I'm late to the cabin for lunch after a conversation with the next generation of global workers. We encourage each other to persist and persevere in good work. Then I crash into an afternoon nap as usual. I wish I had energy to hang out and do the mom-and-pop things with the family but I need sleep. 

The kids and their mom splash at the pool in the next town (more work for their mom and fun for the kids). W and T run errands. In the evening, their family packs up to leave in the morning. W and I catch up on work and messages at the park across from the Lodge. In Indonesia, we have long-needled pines on the hillsides. But I miss the short-needed firs on the mountain slopes of Western Canada and USA that smell like Christmas all year along.

The Roomba vacuum circles the rooms, picking up lint, dust, and scraps that our sweeping leaves behind. When it runs out of power, I empty the full bin, plug it in to charge for another round, and send it off in another area. It goes back to Seattle in the morning, too.

We enjoy Snack Stand burgers, tater tots, and huckleberry ice cream. Golf carts line up so the elders can hang out in the big tent, too. At one point, I count 16!

Saturday

The meetings are done. The camp is leaking participants who are going home. Plenty of campers are spending a few extra days or months in this beautiful area. I've gone nowhere for a week and don't know if I'll explore or just relish the quiet time. 

M packs and loads up the car, T affixes the bike rack, and 

T and Opa help a little girl whose bike chain has fallen off. The chain is dragging but there are a few more adjustments before she pedals off. The young boys gather around to watch - a new skill in process for them. (The next day, she swings by to tell me her bike is working very well.)

Once the house is quiet, laundry takes up much of the day. I remake the beds so the rooms are guest-ready for the next group. I may dislike housework when I have to do it alone. But with the family buzzing around and lots of helpers during the week, we washed up together and it was a fun chore.

Extra bedding is returned to a donated cabinet that was so sturdy that I couldn't toss it. But it was also so ugly that I customized it by cutting white "Mac-Tac" into birch trees 25 years ago.

On another side of the room are books and games from our family's childhood collection. When Blockbuster video stores closed, we acquired a $25 shelf that works just fine.

I fill a big cup with water and walk outside the cabin with scissors in hand. It's 5 minutes to a wildflower bouquet ... quick and satisfying.

My priority 25 years ago in drawing cabin plans was maximizing usable space. There are 2 bunk rooms with 4 extra-long twins in each. As hoped, the youngsters claim those when they're here.

But I probably should have planned a staircase for people aging and those with physical challenges. Instead, there is a big storage closet under the steps, Most of us acclimate to the alternate treads but there's a creak-creak as we run up and down. W has a solution: he replaces the 15+yr old wooden braces with angle irons. He drill holes in the metal. Then he sands the pine treads. Before:

After:

Can you spot the 5 finished steps? The rest will be done soon. He seals the pine with water-based poly-crylic.

We attend a weekend service at the Canvas Church in Columbia Falls in the evening. 

It's a small but enthusiastic Gathering.

Sunday

We sleep in and watch our Indonesian church service online. The congregation is saying goodbye to Shibli, who has served on the IES Bandung team for more than a year. He is returning to Uganda this week. 

Before noon, we head for the Whitefish weekend art show. I'm surprised by what's available - this is no craft fair.

The boutique and specialty stores on the main street have prospered in the years we've been away. Look at this kitchen store!

We visit a few galleries. The skill level of artwork is stunning.

Someone wants almost $800US for a block of wood with oil paint slathered on it. We'll pass.

The window boxes are full of nursery flowers and wildflowers.

We eat hot pizza for lunch and cold pizza for suppertime in the cabin.

The sun's still up when we wrap up the day after 8:30 p.m. We catch up online and on calls and pray for those who request prayer.

Read more:

*Happy are those who consider the poor; the Lord delivers them in the day of trouble. Ps41:1

Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. Hebrews 13:16

Moravian Prayer: O listening God, we confess that too often we overlook the needs of the poor, caught up in the web of our own challenges and concerns. We ask for the brilliant light of Christ to break the darkness of our selfishness, discovering that happiness is found in meeting others’ needs, just as did our Lord Jesus. Amen.

Montana Musings, July 13

Our niece Adelina in the LR

Have you ever felt like a foreigner though you’ve been close to home? Montana is still a state of frontier memories, of small towns filled with cowboy art and ranching stores. It’s a world away from the coastal cosmopolitan neighborhoods of Seattle where we live. The thunder rolls between the mountains in the middle of the night, black without the lights of city streets, as I write.

I’ve taken two weeks away from blogging, overwhelmed by W’s building projects and people coming and going. W got a head start at the cabin, arriving a few weeks before I did. He thrives on a plethora of projects while I need solitude to recover my balance. I drove from Seattle to Montana after a spring that included a dissertation and graduation, nearly four weeks in Israel and Jordan, a week with my lovely granddaughter and her mommy, and a trip to middle-Canada for a family celebration. I felt ready for a change of pace.

Our cabin sits near the western gates of Glacier National Park. The air is crisp and the water is pure. The tall-treed mountain slopes tower around us and the Flathead River flows less than a quarter-mile away. We’re smack in the middle of a natural wilderness, near the bighorn sheep, bears, wolves, and deer that populate the park. W’s been working on the cabin for 15 years.

Blockbuster's repurposed shelves take shape

The cabin structure is sound, the rooms are trimmed, the bathrooms are in, and the front steps are built. A few things left to do include door handles, bathroom shelving, towel racks, closet doors ... little stuff compared to what W’s built. The walls are still mostly empty of art and the furniture is second- or third-hand. The mattresses range from comfy to lumpy. But the reclaimed wood floors are spectacular and the walls are painted.

We love the people at the Bible camp where our cabin is located. They are friendly, welcoming, and mostly small-town pastors and church attendees whose families have come to camp for generations. We’ve been spending summers here for 19 years. For many of those, mostly seniors and middle-agers like ourselves filled the campgrounds. The past five years, a new crop of youngsters and their 20-to-30-something parents  have played at the playground or ridden bikes on the gravel streets where our kids used to roam. It’s a rediscovery of a treasured community, the kids of yester-year returning with their own children.

Shelves almost done

The little glacier-fed Lion Lake, filled with crayfish and local swimmers, lies a few miles from camp beside the road to the 500-foot-high Hungry Horse Dam, a spectacular feat of mid-nineteenth-century engineering. Yesterday, I dropped our son Jonathan, my Edmonton brother Will, and his kids Lem and Lina at the lake for a few hours while I went grocery shopping.

In the evening, we ordered American-style meals at the Back Door Restaurant in Columbia Falls, a popular hangout for locals. Except for Lem, an eating machine at 17 years of age, we chipped away at the edges of our meal, overwhelmed by the huge portions of fat-rich foods. We took as much home as we had eaten. Around us, tables crowded with diners polished off their plates and asked for dessert, too.

Ziggy, with the hard-working builder
resting on the sofa upstairs. Shelves
are done!

Most of our family is here this week. I’ve cooked more meals in the past two weeks than I ever make at home, trying to accommodate various adult tastes and diets. No beef for one. No vegetables for the other. Certainly no whole-grain breakfast muelsi for another. The rich foods and lack of fiber of the normal American diet are catching up with me: my body feels toxic, sluggish, and without energy. Next week, I’ll cook healthier food with relief.

As the cabin settles into “finished structure,” I hope to unwind from years of study and writing projects. Especially, I’m looking forward to solitude for prayer and meditation on scripture. My husband is energized by constant interaction with people. However, I’m counting on quiet time and the great outdoors for renewal before heading back to city life and obligations in the fall.

Jeremy, Kirsten, and Rebekah chatting on the sofa

One idea that keeps reoccurring this summer is how scripture calls us to self-control, never to control our circumstances or other people. As I get older, I prefer orderly spaces, tidy rooms, and uncluttered schedules. My habit of reading several books at the same time, of spreading papers across a table for research and writing, and my strong curiosity to explore new things function best without a chaotic backdrop. This week, as W moved the saw outside from the back hall, gathered the tools from the tables and corners of the rooms, and took the piles of wood from the kitchen, I felt my breath begin to deepen and my body to relax.

Jesus never promised neat surroundings and untrammeled relationships. We live in families and among friends with their own ideas and preferences of “normal.” Accommodation of others is part of ongoing self-control.

Even in Montana, where keys are left in unlocked cars and little kids run around without parental super-vision, stuff happens and we learn to lean on Christ for rest and refreshing. He remains the same, in familiar or foreign surroundings.

Hope you’re enjoying summer, wherever you are, too. (I’d love to know where and how you’re living it.)

Read more:

Heigh ho and off we go! Again.

Montana summer

I have two more nights at home this summer. If all goes as planned. (When do things ever go as planned?)

Tonight is one of those two nights. I hop a plane tomorrow to celebrate a special anniversary. I was one of two flower girls a half-century ago; the surprise party should be fun! (IF you know who I'm talking about, please keep it a surprise.) Mom said I played "Jesus Loves Me" at the ripe age of 6 ... and forgot to take off my lacy white gloves. No matter. I found a pair of white gloves today and will take them along, whether I have a chance to play for the couple or not.

Dreaming of summer

I'm almost two months behind on my first plans of summer respite. The first month after grad we toured the Holy Lands (Israel and Jordan) with a study group. Sunshine! immersion, truly a gift from God. This month, I began to sort and declutter the dissertation debris, whip the house and yard into a semblance of order, and get caught up with some of our friends. I even found time to watch a few Korean dramas.

W headed for our cabin in MT last week, working on trim, grouting a bathroom, and otherwise finishing out the building that has been his labor of love for 15 years. I'll join him in MT next week, leaving our adult kids to spread through the house on their own.

"Mom, we miss you guys, but honestly? It's nice to have the house to ourselves," go the young-adult-reviews about our extended absences. Meanwhile, W and I are happy to have caretakers and chore-doers! Jonathan ramps up his skills as a chef and baker when we're away, too. We love to see pictures of his friends sitting around the kitchen table, eating his creations.

Happy Birthday, Marilyn!

The sun shone on the dogs and me as we did our hour-walk this morning. After a visit to the doctor with Melissa, we celebrated her mom's birthday with takeout from a Chinese restaurant. Then it was time to check email and pack for the weekend as well as the summer. Except...

1000 hurrahs! The PDF of my dissertation popped into my inbox this afternoon, thanks to the hard work of copy editors Annette Newberry and Tresa Edmonds at the seminary. Between everything else, I've spent the afternoon and evening printing out the dissertation. On the way to the airport in the morning, we'll drop the copies off at the Post Office, my last obligation of the degree. The seminary will bind the copies. I'm giddy with the thought of NO MORE DISSERTATION. EVER.   EVER.     EVER!

That said, my posts may be more sporadic as I dive into summer writing projects. But if you don't hear from me, remember that you can write to me! Find me on FB or post a comment on the blog once in a while.

Happy Summer, everyone.

Read more:

*The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Psalm 23:1

*Thus says the Lord, “I will rejoice in doing good to them.” Jeremiah 32:41

*For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. John 3:16

*Christ says, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” John 10:10-11

Moravian Prayer: God of abundance, we hear your familiar voice and draw near to you, the one who leads us through verdant vales of vitality. May the still waters of your presence comfort our anxious spirits.

Just as the Lord rejoices in doing good for us, so may we rejoice in our great-hearted Redeemer through all we do. Let us testify to the entire world—“God is love!” In the name of Jesus. Amen.