Newton's Apple Remembered

     It's interesting how one thing can lead to another; either due to a direct impact or through indirect influence.  In the early to mid 1660's, the Great Plague swept through Europe and on to the British Isles.  That led to the temporary closing of the University of Cambridge in England.  And although it was a tragic, scary time period, a young scholar named Isaac Newton took full advantage of the time off from the university to pursue his studies independently.  Among the insight he gained from tests he conducted on various theories and principles, he also experienced revelations in regard to the concept of gravity.  It was a concept that was apparently inspired from watching a falling apple.  That experience led to thoughts of acceleration, which in turn, became the fundamental basis for his Second Law of Motion.

     I thought of this story of Newton on Saturday.  I thought of it as a figurative idiom.  It was the second day in a row that I had an opportunity to head out to the woods.  

I am fortunate indeed; and while working hard all week, I look ahead for such periods of time when I can escape and relax by playing hard too.  This time I went out with my Dad.  It was the first time I'd had an opportunity to take him out on one of my winter outings.  Only a year ago he had had hip replacement surgery.  In the midst of continued cold weather, I took him to the spot where my winter wanderings all started.

     When I say, "where my winter wanderings all started", I am referring to my life here in the State-line.  If I go back before that, anything I did probably came from, or involved, my Dad in some shape or form; back in the "Old Country" on our little farm in Otsego County.  Hopefully as the years go by I can look back and say, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree."  I can't say that Saturday's outing led me to any thoughts on gravity, but I did think about how time accelerates the older we get.  I suppose that's why I try to take advantage of any and all opportunities when my Dad and I do get together.

     As we hiked, we talked.  We've always been able to do that.  We joke that some of our best father-son conversations were while we were cleaning manure out of the stalls in our barn; that was often a cold weather activity.  Not an activity that was necessarily in the dead of winter, because the snow was too deep to haul it out over the garden, but we usually did do the cleaning in the late fall or early spring.  Such a chore made for a captive audience.  We would clean the pens at that time for several reasons.  One was that it probably didn't smell quite as bad then as it would in the middle of the summer.  Plus you didn't have the flies.  Another was because it would allow the animals to have a clean pen going into the winter, when they were inside more than out.  Sometimes it was because the manure had built up after a long winter indoors.  We usually cleaned on a day with nasty weather; a day when you couldn't do anything else.  It was for these reasons, coupled with the ingredients of the 4 or 5 tined pitchfork, our wheelbarrow, and some good, old fashioned grunt work that gave us the opportunity to talk.

     Beyond our conversations when cleaning the barn, we also talked while working outside.  It was the kind of work that would eventually lead to play.  Because of our location in the "Snow Belt" of Northern Lower Michigan, we often had family and friends stay at our house for “get-a-way” weekends in the winter.  We would usually sled/tube or cross country ski; adults and kids alike.  To prepare for such outings, we cut brush and trees off the hills and along the trails.  It was tough work.  It was fun work.  It was work to talk to.  Our hill was well known, and historic, as a place to gather youth groups, cousins, and friends throughout the winter months.  It was the fruition of my Dad's dreams.  He even installed an old tow rope, from a nearby downhill ski resort, through holes he augured through cedar posts.  People would use them as a hand hold to climb back up the hill.  When you worked to create something like this you enjoyed it all the more.

     We had miles of cross country ski trails snaking through the hills and valleys behind our house.  To groom them, my Dad and I would snowshoe them first.  The front person would break trail while the one behind would overlap the middle track creating a "three track wide" trail.  Where trails merged, or came down a steep incline into a curve, we often would stomp down more snow to allow for error while skiing.  More than once we would return from packing the trails on snowshoes only to be greeted by our guests who had just arrived.  With a change of clothes and the transition from snowshoes to skies we'd be off again; this time with a whole entourage.  Those adventures led to some great times and memories.  It's hard to erase a classic wipe-out at the bottom of a run from memory, especially when you witnessed it or lived it.

     It was these thoughts that ran through my head as my Dad and I hiked along last Saturday; thinking of the past while talking in the present.  We watched the dogs often, and that reminded us of Teddy, Susie, King and Cricket, and later Kelly and Dolly; all good dogs.  They were all dogs we had up north, that loved romping in the snow, as Kati and Kora were doing that day.

     With the fresh snow, fresh signs and tracks were everywhere.  There were prints

Eagle Wing Print

from voles and their low bellies, mice with their tracks packing down whole areas under the seed heads of the rattlesnake master prairie plant.  An owl's print was left where it grazed the snow with its left wing and then dug in with its right as it made its attack.  A coughed up pellet was the only other sign that it left.  Further on it became evident why we had seen 4 or 5 bald eagles in the trees ahead of us, when we came upon the carcass of a raccoon.  The snow was packed from their feet and marked with their great wing tips as well.  They all left stories in the snow.  Cold winter days are like that; they resurrect visions of the past while creating new ones.  I enjoyed the day with my Dad; hiking, talking, listening, solving world problems and spending time together.  He's good at that.  Newton would have been inspired and proud.  Dad's a good tree for this apple.  
See you along The Way.