Nature’s Forge

I knew it was love before I pulled the stone out of the water. So few stones found on the south shore of Lake Superior are impressive after they’ve left the lake behind. Their beauty exists only in the correct context. In the sunlit fresh air, cupped in human hands, they become plain. Not this one. It shimmered in the water just in front of my numb feet. I pulled it out and it fit perfectly in my hand, as if I had created it. As if we had created each other. My love, I finally found it.

I’d just come from an art fair in Port Wing where an artist told me it was important that cups, mugs, bowls, and vases fit the people they went to. She encouraged me to browse, pick up the pieces, and only take home the ones that fit - that match. I searched for 45 minutes under that white tent in the town square. Car after car toting sunburned tourists turned into the gas station across the street as I touched every piece. They all felt false, forced into shapes unnatural for them. Too eager to change for the sake of my hands. I don’t want love to change for me. They would be constantly fighting themselves and their instincts to spring back to the hunk of clay, metal, or glass they’d been wrangled out of. They’d be trying me on. They’d be aching for their old form so bad they’d crack and break in my hands. They’d cut me. Tear me to shreds. All to fit. All to match. For love. It doesn’t work. I’ve cracked before; I’ve cut up those I’ve molded to and no matter how much I struggled to fit their shape, I always ended up back in the forge. 

Before this tent, before this artist, I wandered around fighting the urge to punch someone, something, anyone. It never goes away, this desire. It pools in my right shoulder, elbow, and the knuckles of my fist. It makes me itch. I’ve been told I can be quite unreasonable. But those saying that never knew what I was withholding. They never knew how much restraint I’ve shown since the very first time I remolded myself to fit someone else. Or since every reshaping that followed. I’ve never punched anyone. Not even once. Not even when the desire seeped out of my bones and into my bloodstream. Not even when it was all I could think about. It can build around anyone - even when there is no particular person to bring it on. Like the crowd at the art fair, for instance. They all looked so comfortable, content. I could feel sweat dripping down my back. They wore baby blue sweaters to save them from the chill of the lake and didn’t seem to notice the harsh sun. My calf wouldn’t stop itching. They all seemed to know each other or know how to get to know each other. I couldn’t stop shifting my weight from one aching foot to another. They looked each other in the eyes and smiled like they meant it. I am too much for myself to contain. I clenched down on the bowl, which was supposed to be perfect for my hands. My fingers were leaving grimy hand prints all over it. It was dainty. Too dainty for the fire building within me. 

The artist grabbed my elbow and traced her fingers down to my hand. She pulled the bowl away from me before enclosing my hands in hers. Her skin was leathery, and her face held a million wrinkles; frown lines, laugh lines, worry lines, weathered-the-bad-storm lines, and lines built from people loving and leaving and, occasionally, staying. Her touch was probing and her focus made me want to shift backwards. She looked up at me and I was caught in the life of her wrinkles. Her eyes shone, magnified by her tortoiseshell glasses. My legs twitched and shifted. I wanted to run until my lungs burned and my muscles wobbled. I wanted to get so far away so quickly that my body would be left behind, crumbled on the pavement somewhere between Port Wing and Brule River Road. My stomach turned. I was an animal caught in the stare of a predator, frozen with every cell of me screaming out that this, right here - this focus, this attention - promised a grisly end. I wanted to leave her and the art fair and the poor hammered cups, mugs, bowls, and vases to smash behind me and stitch themselves back into the earth. She clucked in pity.

“Keep looking. Look everywhere.” 

The fire within twisted with shame. 

What a bitch.

I had meant to wander the art fair all day. I was going to eat a brat and kettle corn at the marina and consider art that I’d never buy. Maybe I’d buy a wooden spoon, to make a show of supporting the vendors. I was going to sit near that group of women who work out on Saturdays and always clump up together at community events. They always laugh and talk about the races they ran over the weekend. I was going to infiltrate. I was going to be delightful and funny and I was going to laugh. I brought a handkerchief and I doubled up on shirts in case I sweat too much. But that artist got in my head. The urge to run developed into the urge to drive. I wanted speed. I wanted my whole life to fast forward to the point where I no longer felt sweaty and twitchy. I couldn’t move at the pace of these people who talked about the weather in every conversation with genuine interest. The art fair was too crowded, too false, too claustrophobic. I ran to my car and drove to my favorite beach. 

It’s shrinking. My beach, that is. I sometimes wonder if I would have found my love sooner if Lake Superior weren’t slowly eating away at the shoreline. If I had driven up here for a visit years ago, I would have walked out an additional 25 feet, at least. All on dry sand. I would have scooped up my love and taken it back to Madison with me. We would have grown to know each other over a beer at the terrace on Lake Mendota while watching the sun set behind live music. We would have gone dancing on salsa night at Blue Velvet. We would’ve laughed at the awkward undergrads who conned their way past the bouncer and then stumbled through each song. We would have had a bottle of wine and a charcuterie board on a picnic blanket at Concert on the Square and we would’ve made friends with the people on the blanket next to us. We would have had so many happy years there. I may never have moved back north. As soon as I held my love, I felt the ache of all the time lost. I haven’t been able to shake it. 

Just a few miles around the shore from sunny Port Wing, the world was grey - the kind of day that only exists right next to Lake Superior. The clouds matched the sky, matched the waves, matched the wind. The wind swirled the grey around and pooled it up in the trees. I wrapped myself in a sweater and walked the empty beach. It was a relief to be alone with the lake. Sunny days draw a crowd of locals looking to cool off. Grey days allowed for some peace. The waves and the wind swooshed together and my body fell into rhythm with them. I never knew how ruled by Lake Superior I was until I went to Florida. The ocean’s rhythm was all wrong. My body couldn’t match it and I spent the first day pacing the beach, living in anxiety as my heart raced to catch up. Some people never adjust. Some people weren’t built to live with water. Lake Superior never makes me anxious. We’re in synch, me and her. And so, she released my love to me. 

I sat on the strip of sand separating the Mouth of The Brule from Lake Superior and set my stone on a piece of driftwood in front of me. The sound of the waves brushing onto the shore encapsulated us in a bubble. We were untouchable. The world outside of us did not exist. My love was drying off and in spots where it used to shimmer it now contained complex layers of color. Its hard, sharp edges no longer glittered but glinted. The twisting in my stomach that had started with the wrinkled old woman at the art fair - or maybe earlier - was sinking into the sand. Maybe I’ve been twisted since before I moved back up here. Maybe it was the twisting that led me here in the first place. Old loves, old stories were beginning to feel facile and fade. No longer were those aches and pains sitting on the edge of my brain, waiting to overtake my body and fill me with fire and rage as soon as I relaxed. No longer were they capable of such sabotage. My stone was here to hold me down. 

My love gazed back at me. Adoring me. Seeing me. For the first time, being seen didn’t feel like such a bad thing. I used to shrink under the gaze of lovers. They searched and searched for some part of me to hate, some part of me to justify throwing the whole of me away. My love saw all my shadows and hidden corners and continued to want me. I whispered all my secrets to my love in our swirl of grey wind and waves on the beach. When the wind got cold we stacked some driftwood up and laid down in the sand. The stone lay on my slowly untwisting stomach. Cool and heavy, it pressed all my worries out of me. Together, we would be fine. Together, the heat of the world cooled and time slowed. 

I talked to a scientist once who studied trees on shorelines and the data their rings contained about hundreds of years worth of storms. She said the trees record the world. Now, as we drifted back to my car to start our life together, I took in all the trees, many with roots hanging over the eroding shoreline, waiting for just one more storm and the right wave to welcome them into the lake - to join the countless ships and ghosts already living there. I wonder what today has done to the trees. I wonder how the trees record a silencing. How they might notice a stillness both natural and rare. Surely the trees record love when they see it. Surely love is a storm greater than any tempestuous weather Lake Superior can summon. 

At home, I show my love all that I have been left with - all that we have - a log cabin nestled on a river 10 miles from the lake. We sit on the front porch with a glass of wine and listen to the birds, squirrels, and insects fleeing the neighbor’s land. He started logging a few weeks ago. The critters have been decamping to my side of the river. As they settle in, the cacophony grows along with the thrumming background noise of logging equipment and trees cracking. Unsettled flaps and squawks pierce the air as nests and hovels are protected or overtaken. New neighbors bring in new dangers, new hunters. The forest is filled with this anxiety. It has been seeping into my mind and the edges of my body. My skin prickled every time I sat on the porch. But now, here with my love, we watch for the patterns in the chaos. My love helps me sort them out. My love listens, watches, and loves anyway.

I tell my love all about Madison and death and heartbreak that feels like death. The loves I thought I had and the friends I betrayed. I spent so much time chasing and changing myself only to burst out of me and hurt everyone. If I were religious I’d say I lived a life of sin but instead it feels more like I put off living entirely. I hit every self-destruct button and waited for something to happen. Waited to fit. Waited for the right mold for me. My love, cool and sturdy in my lap, keeps the fire down while I cry hot lava tears and finally, finally, finally understand that all of that was never love. It hurt with the same inevitability of high heels a size too small. It was always going to hurt.      

My world was far too constricted for all of me. I had to flee. It felt like cowardice, like running away from problems. Those who tried to stay in touch certainly told me so, or at least they acted concerned. But I knew they were just forging the river cluttered with the debris of all the bridges I burned to report back to every person I hurt that, indeed, the crazy bitch has isolated. No worries. She’s contained. She can only burn herself now. And I did. Alone. Every day I expanded myself out and out and found out how far I could stretch, unconstrained. I felt how wild I could be. In the river by the meadow, I cooled my feet and on my beach by Lake Superior, I cooled all of me until I met my stone. My love who fits, who cozies up to my fire. It does not go away entirely, but it turns to simple simmering coals. 

A woodpecker has kept its tree through all the various invasions. Every afternoon it returns. Woodpeckers won’t kill a tree. They drill hole after hole to trap and find little hidden bugs but never quite topple their giant plate. They know better than to bite the bark that feeds them. My love and I watch as the woodpecker flutters about its business. It pecks and pecks and pocks the tree all over. The bark is marred and the tree stands, rooted, bleeding, trapping bugs to gift to the bird who squawks away all others and every day comes back to take more.         

Tap Tap Tap. I hold my stone and caress its hard edges. We’ve both lived lives at the whims of others. Tap Tap Tap. My love was tossed about wave to wave and smoothed smaller and smaller; all the while, I was scorched and burned by uncaring flames. Tap Tap Tap. Ashes of me are scattered all over the state. My stone cools me down. Tap. My love warms at my touch. Tap. It is no light thing this love of mine. Tap. Throughout this one afternoon its weight has already become a familiar comfort. Tap Tap Tap. Soft towards me, with one edge always glinting towards the world. Tap Tap Tap. My stone warms at my touch. Tap Tap Tap. I throw my love.

My love flies straight and true for me, pins the small body against the tree before landing with a thump upon its deflated chest. The forest dims. A sun ray, a spotlight, reaches through the trees to my love. I walk down and gently grab the corpse and my stone. I look up at the pockmarked tree and wonder if it records death. The patterns in the bark look like the old woman from the art fair. Wrinkled. Lived in and poked at. Providing, providing, providing and taking in only sunlight and storms. We go to the river and I dig a hole for the body. It’s a tiny thing, really. Tiny, for the noise it made. Tiny, compared to my love. To our love. To me. 

I sit down in the river with my stone and together we wash the chaos from us. Together we cool down. We scrape off the dirt and grime of the day. The water is cold and low. My feet and fingers go numb and I cradle my love between my thighs as I splash water on my face. Our fire turns back to coal. I lean back and let the river run over my head and body. Together, we become clean. We become cool. Whole now, we renew.

For the first time since I hit all my self-destruct buttons in Madison, for the first time since I lost everyone who loved me, I want to rebuild. I want to reach out. My love and I spend days camping in the meadow building fires and dancing around the flames. We walk through my forest and make sense of the chaos as new critters settle in and others move on to less full lands. They are too busy with living to pay any mind to us as we count the wild strawberries and trace the patterns of the stars in the sky. I am reinvigorated. I have felt the growing pains and I am ready to grow. Every morning I mimic the trees and stretch to the sky and think about roots, and community. I want to try again. Now, fully as I am, with my love by my side, I want to try. I decide to reach out to the laughing women, the workout group. I become one of the ladies who meets up on Saturdays. I laugh and laugh. I’ve become quite good at it. They seem to mean it every time. They shriek out in earnest at mistakes, jabs, and the folly of others. There is a lot of folly. Apparently, it’s funny. In truth I find it worrisome. But I laugh. I shriek and I try to match the manic look they get when they really need the release. Their lives are falling apart, and they laugh anyway. I try it on. I go home and tell my love that they are all scared to live and scared to die. I tell my love about how they smile with fear in their eyes and we wonder if someday they’ll try to giggle and accidentally cry. It seems that’s the risk of folly when you’re not truly the most you you can be. When you haven’t found the rest of you, like me and my love.

I have told them I’m in a relationship and they want to meet my love, so we all go out for coffee. I told my love to expect the mania, the laughing, the folly. We are meeting in a coffee shop which used to be an art gallery which used to be a quilt shop which used to be a church. They are the only ones there when we arrive. They sit a step above us on what used to be the sanctuary. They look down at me expectantly, a question in their eyes. I hold my love up. The sun shines in through the old stained glass windows. My love glistens sharp and beautiful. 

This is my stone.

My love.

They are quiet. I repeat. 

This is my stone.

My love.

They are no longer laughing and the tilt that their heads all make in unison twists my stomach several times over. Their eyes all squint. I’ve seen that squint before. When the thing in front a person doesn’t quite fit, when it’s starting to crack against the mold. Silence inside is much bigger than silence outside could ever be. There isn’t a breeze, or the rustle of grass against itself, or even a running river to sweep the confused tension away. One of the laughing women who is no longer laughing starts speaking gently, softly. I have heard this tone before. I do not listen. I do not hear. This was meant to be my moment to shine. My love and I were going to shimmer, together, outside the Lake. I had made friends, they were supposed to tease my love about how much I talked about it. I was supposed to blush and laugh in earnest and sip my coffee with a side eye that admitted it was true. They were supposed to flirt with my stone just enough to show they understood how valued, how lovely, how wonderful it is but not so much that they could be seen as trying to steal my love away. Not that they could, but out of respect they wouldn’t even try. 

My stomach continues to twist and the silence behind the false soothing words is far too stifling. I let my twisted self turn around and walk out the door. My head is pounding and I’m clenching my teeth. My stone, my love weighs me down, cozies up to my burning rage and instead of cooling me down I feel my love heating up. I turn it in my hand as I walk and press it against my forehead. A cool breeze drifts off Lake Superior. We leave the horrible laughing women and the tiny boring town behind. My love and I, simmering, walk towards the marina.

By the time we reach the beach next to the marina we are both consumed with fire. We were perfect. We are perfect. My love and me. And I thought that would be enough. We thought that would sustain us, keep us safe. But the silence in that coffee shop pinches at my brain and I can’t stop thinking about Madison. About how all the beginnings of all the ends started exactly like this: with a head tilt. With a confused and concerned look. What follows is always gentle shame. Quiet reproach. Request after patient request to please fall in line. Fit in. Be the correct shape. 

I look at my love, consumed with the beginnings of humiliation, the beginnings of a self-destruct button I have already worn down with overuse and I no longer want what this place has to offer. I no longer want to laugh manically and pretend to be interested in fun runs, cook outs, and saving the broken-down community center. I no longer want to work so hard to care about people who have no idea that they are the eroding force that took away my beach and are cluttering up my forest. I no longer want to be a part of this community. 

My love rages and I remember the waves from which it came. My love rages and I take a step into the water to cool myself down, to make a good decision. My love rages and Lake Superior cozies up to my calf and the cold against the heat of me feels like velvet. My love rages and we look out at the lake and the waves reach up and beckon. We are hot coals straddling the shoreline, my love looks forward and I look back. Together the pain of the forge simply melts us more into each other.  My love and I, we will go where we can fit. My love and I, we will be forever.