thoughts | Minnesota Prairie Roots

As Canadian wildfires rage: “What’s mine is yours” May 4, 2016

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 4:14 PM
Tags: Canada, charity, disaster, evacuation, Fort McMurray, McMurray Evacuee Open Source Help Facebook page, thoughts, wildfires

Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo of unfurling leaves in my Minnesota backyard.

IT’S BEEN A GLORIOUS MAY day here in southern Minnesota. Sunshine. Clear blue skies. Leaves unfurling in a landscape that is a lush and vivid green.

Tomorrow, though, we can expect “milky skies,” according to the National Weather Service Twin Cities Twitter page. Smoke from Canadian wildfires is moving east into Minnesota. It will be a visual reminder of what our neighbors to the northwest are enduring as wildfires rage.

With some 88,000 people evacuated from the Ft. McMurray area and 1,600 structures already destroyed, it would be easy to feel overwhelmed by the scope of the disaster. And those feelings would be warranted.

But while I was reading about the fires and evacuation today, I was moved to tears by the goodness of people. Scrolling through posts on the Fort McMurray Evacuee Open Source Help Facebook page, I read offer after offer of help:

We have a house in north Edmonton. What’s mine is yours. Plenty of clothes for a female child age 4-6. Toys for any age. Room to park a small trailer. Room for a tent, basement and air mattress ready. Food, shower anything you need please call or text… Can pick you up and help with small children

Is anyone stranded on HWY 63 that needs fuel or supplies? Please let me know!

It’s not much. But if anyone should be coming through spruce grove on their journey tonight, I would like to give a hot meal. And a place to relax and regroup your thoughts and plans.

The Church of South Edmonton is opening its doors to those displaced by the fire. They’ll offer snacks, activities for kids, a BBQ, pastoral counseling, internet access—simply a place to recharge and refocus. People can sign up online to host a family.

Offers of help are also coming from Slave Lake, which only five years ago suffered from similar devastating wildfires:

I have a spare room ready for anyone in need in Sherwood park! Wanting to pay it forward as I’m from Slave lake and lost my house so I would love to help someone! Txt me at…

LIVESTOCK
If there’s anybody from Ft McMurray in need, I have feed and water pen space available for free in Slave Lake. Can take 10-15 head of horses/cattle

And, yes, the offers for assistance extend beyond helping people. Canadians are also opening their farms and homes to house displaced pets and livestock.

We live by Rocky Mountain house On a farm We have room and free feed for your large or small livestock for as long as needed. Also room for your rv. And a spare room. And a holiday trailer that sleeps 7 for as long as you need. We can also come up and pick you or your animals up.

If you want your faith restored in people today, then I’d encourage you to read the Ft. McMurray Evacuee Open Source Help Facebook page. Now.

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What a little cash & a little kindness are doing in North Dakota April 30, 2016

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 5:00 AM
Tags: charity, doing good, Kindness Cash, money, North Dakota, Pay It Forward Day, Starion Financial, thoughts

My creative graphic illustrating Kindness Cash.

HOW WOULD YOU like to find $20 cash?

In our neighboring state to the west, Starion Financial has dropped 650 Kindness Cash wallets containing $20 each in eight North Dakota communities. The project celebrates Pay It Forward Day on April 28.

Now, if you do your math, that’s $13,000 left lying around in places like grocery stores, parks, hotels…

The idea is to use that money to do something good. And the finders are, according to Starion’s website. Organizations like a cancer support group, a domestic violence center and a humane society have already benefited from this project.

Others are enjoying treats from appreciative co-workers. Those are all great choices.

But the story that touches me most is that of Olivia, who found a Kindness wallet under a rock in a South Fargo park. Little Olivia is giving the money to someone at her school.

Likewise in Bismarck, someone found a Kindness wallet, added $80, and left it for two lucky women to find at the Comfort Inn.

I love sharing stories like this that uplift and restore my faith in the goodness of others. (h/t Fargo Forum)

TELL ME, HAVE YOU ever been the recipient of such a random act of kindness? Or have you engaged in a Pay It Forward project like this?

I’d like to hear about creative projects that encourage people to Pay It Forward, to be kind to one another.

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A grandfather’s love April 20, 2016

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 5:00 AM
Tags: baby, family, grandfather, grandparenting, life, thoughts

My granddaughter at 10 days old.

THERE IS A SIDE TO GRANDPARENTING I never considered. And that is the joy of watching my husband in the role of grandpa. Randy holds his little Isabelle with such gentleness, cradling her in his arms like the precious baby girl she is to all of us.

Grandfather and granddaughter.

He is a man who works with his hands—pounding, fixing, drilling—as an automotive machinist. Oil and grease stain his skin and rim his fingernails. He works hard. But those same strong, rough hands wrap a swaddle cloth around Izzy and tuck in her bare feet as he gazes at her with such tenderness that my heart aches.

Two generations connecting.

And then at one point, this 10-day-old baby reflexively wraps her tiny hand around her grandpa’s right thumb. A kiss before she can kiss him. Love so sweet, so beautiful, between a grandfather and his newborn granddaughter.

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In honor of spring planting season in southern Minnesota April 18, 2016

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 5:00 AM
Tags: agriculture, memories, Rice County, rural Minnesota, spring planting, thoughts

A pause in field work along the Rice-Steele County line Sunday afternoon.

FARM IMPLEMENTS KICKED up dust Sunday afternoon under blue skies clumped with white clouds here in southeastern Minnesota.

Prepping the soil for planting along 270th Street East in southern Rice County.

It was the kind of balmy spring day that draws me to the land, to memories of spring planting.

This tractor and grain cart (typically used during harvest) sat unattended in southern Rice County Sunday afternoon.

While tractors and other equipment have changed since I left the farm of my roots at age 17, way too many years ago, one constant remains. This is the season of transition. An awakening. Black earth turned to warm sun. Seeding of the soil. The promise of a harvest.

Just outside Medford this farmer prepped the soil Sunday afternoon.

The farm girl in me still lingers, waiting for spring days like this, for a drive into the country, for an opportunity to honor the land via photos, via thoughts, via a deep emotional connection to the earth.

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Meet my beautiful granddaughter April 8, 2016

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 11:25 AM
Tags: baby, birth, faith, family, granddaughter, grandparenting, thoughts

My new granddaughter, Isabelle (“Izzy” for short) Karis, photographed when she was about 17 hours old.

SHE’S HERE. She’s beautiful. And she’s my first grandbaby, Isabelle Karis.

Born 19 days early late Wednesday afternoon, Isabelle weighed 6 lbs., 15 oz., and measured 20.5 inches. It is a joy to finally meet this little girl I’ve been loving since I learned in September of her forthcoming birth. I am thrilled to be part of what numerous well-wishers term The Grandparent Club.

Isabelle is named after her paternal great great grandmother, also her Oma’s middle name. Her middle name, Karis, is the Greek word for “grace.” So fitting. So lovely.

I felt that grace Thursday morning as my husband and I stood with our son-in-law at Amber’s bedside, baby Isabelle cradled in her arms, the hospital spiritual advisor also there. As Marc prayed a blessing upon his daughter, our hands hovering over her, tears leaked down my cheeks. It was a profound moment for me as I was overwhelmed by emotion. Relief. Thankfulness. Awed by the miracle of life. So in love with this little girl.

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He’s not arriving on a jet plane April 7, 2016

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 5:00 AM
Tags: Boston, family, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, Minnesota, thoughts, travel

I photographed this Frontier plane as it approached Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport early Saturday afternoon. Edited image.

SOMETIMES I AM SURPRISED by the nuances that impact me emotionally.

Recently it was the sight of jets flying into Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport as my husband and I traveled along 35E in the south metro. My memory map directed me to the Cedar Avenue/Highway 77 exit, the route we take to the airport to pick up and drop off our son who attends Tufts University in the Boston metro.

I haven’t seen him now in three months, not since he returned to the East Coast following Christmas break. I miss him. Not with the kind of aching heart absence I felt when he first moved there three years ago. But with the sort of ache that slips below the surface and sometimes erupts into wanting to hug his lanky body and cook his favorite meal and tell him, in person, that I love him.

I felt the same at Easter. Instead of mailing him a chocolate bunny delivered by the U.S. Postal Service in three pieces, I would have preferred filling his Easter basket with too much candy and sugary PEEPS and hiding it in our Minnesota home for him to find. I don’t care that he’s 22. Everyone needs Easter candy.

I could imagine the loved ones awaiting the arrival of this Frontier jetliner.

I could imagine the loved ones awaiting the arrival of this Frontier plane.

I’ll admit to being envious of those moms who see their grown children on holidays, who can travel along a metro interstate, spot an aircraft and think nothing of it.

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Color away the stress April 5, 2016

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 5:00 AM
Tags: adult coloring books, art, stress, therapy, thoughts

ONE EVENING LAST WEEK, I was seriously stressed.

When I’m deeply worried, time seems to pause and hover. I can’t focus enough to read a book or even a magazine. I can’t follow the storyline of a TV show. Any conversation seems rather meaningless and trivial.

But I had to manage. I needed something to busy my hands. Something to do while I waited for a text or phone call. The solution was only a couch cushion away. Inserted in my local daily newspaper was a 15-page coloring book for adults. That would do.

I headed upstairs to dig out a box of colored pencils. And then I settled onto the end of the couch, box splayed open next to my cell phone.

As I chose colors and began methodically coloring petals on a page imprinted with florals, I felt the tension ease. There’s something soothing about the rhythm of coloring. It’s effect is akin to watching flames dance in a campfire, listening to water gurgle or rocking back-and-forth in a chair. All are comforting. Repetitive.

Adult coloring books are all the rage right now as folks discover their calming value. But I wonder, if I remembered how to crochet, would the results be the same?

TELL ME, WHAT HANDS-ON activity works to calm you? And what are your thoughts on the adult coloring book phenomenon?

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Thoughts following a country drive west of Wanamingo March 30, 2016

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 5:00 AM
Tags: Goodhue County, memories, rural Minnesota, thoughts, travel, Wanamingo

WE ALL HAVE OUR PLACE of comfort, the place that brings us peace and allows us to escape, if but for a minute or an hour or a day.

For me, that’s a drive in the country, along the less-traveled back roads of Minnesota.

I am of the land, of sky and fields and barns and silos and farmhouses. Rural Minnesota shaped me into the person I’ve become. A writer. A photographer. A poet. A keeper of rural life and of small towns.

Memories of farm life tuck away in my heart. Doing chores—feeding calves and cows and scooping silage and manure. Walking beans. Picking rock. Gathering around the supper table with my parents and siblings to eat that which we’d grown and raised. Playing in the grove. Racing across rock solid snowdrifts sculpted by the prairie wind.

Life on the farm wasn’t easy. But it was good. Good in the sort of way that comes from working hard and understanding that family and faith come first.

I grew up poor. There were no birthday gifts, except from an aunt, my godmother. A meal was sometimes comprised of a kettle of plain white rice. Clothes were sometimes stitched from feed sacks and most certainly handed down. There was no telephone or television or indoor bathroom in the early years of my life. I went to church and Sunday School every week.

I am grateful my parents were never wealthy in the monetary sense. I would not be the person I am today. It is not important to me to have the newest or latest or best. I am content with what I have. I consider myself grounded and honest and loyal. Down-to-earth. Rooted. I love the land and I love family.

These are the thoughts that surface when I journey through the Minnesota countryside, when I photograph barns and farmhouses and other rural scenes. I am capturing the essence of the place that shaped me. Land. Sky. Fields. Barns. Silos. Farmhouses. And, yes, my family and my faith.

FYI: These images were taken while traveling along Goodhue County Road 30 west of Wanamingo, Minnesota, and in Aspelund, a slight veer to the north. I did not grow up in this area. Rather, I was raised on a dairy and crop farm in Redwood County, on the southwestern Minnesota prairie. My childhood home was nothing like the houses pictured here. Ours was a tiny woodframe farmhouse heated by an oil burning stove in the living room. The kitchen had an interior trap door that led to a dirt cellar. It was cramped. But it was home.

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Part VI from Wanamingo: A symphony at Shingle Creek March 29, 2016

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 5:00 AM
Tags: day trip, Minnesota, nature, outdoors, Shingle Creek, thoughts, travel, Wanamingo, water

Going fishing in the North Fork of the Zumbro River, Wanamingo.

This mom tipped us off to Shingle Creek. She and her son are heading to the river to fish.

IF NOT FOR THE LOCAL MOM we met at Riverside Park in Wanamingo, my husband and I would have missed out on exploring Shingle Creek. We would have driven right over the bridge spanning the creek along Goodhue County Road 30.

On the south side of this road, we followed a path along Shingle Creek.

But the mom, who was fishing with her son in the North Fork of the Zumbro River into which the creek feeds, told us about the loveliness of the waterway. She even offered to walk us there. But we declined and listened to her directions—cross the road, climb over the railing and follow the trail.

Lovely Shingle Creek.

The short route was not limestone covered as she described, but simply a trampled, uneven path through the woods. Decaying leaves, dead limbs sprouting mushrooms, hard earth beneath winter feet aching for this spring-like day in March.

Water rushes over limestone ledges.

Only a short distance from the paved county road, we stood on the bank of the creek and watched water spill over limestone shelves, rush along the creekbed, and then tumble and foam over rocks.

Further down, water churns below rocks.

Churning water mesmerizes me. It is poetry and song and art, a symphony of sights and sounds that carries me away from everyday life to a place of peace. I feel the same watching campfire flames dance in flickers of orange and yellow.

Fire and water. Water and fire.

On this Saturday afternoon in Wanamingo, I experienced the serenity of Shingle Creek. All because a local mom shared this community’s natural beauty with us, just a couple on a day trip 25 miles from home.

FYI: This concludes my six-part series of “from Wanamingo” posts. Thank you for joining me on this tour.

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Part I from Wanamingo, a classic small town in Minnesota March 21, 2016

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 5:00 AM
Tags: main street, Midwest, Minnesota, small towns, thoughts, travel, Wanamingo

Driving into downtown Wanamingo along Minnesota State Highway 57 on a Saturday afternoon.

Driving into downtown Wanamingo along Minnesota State Highway 57 on a recent Saturday afternoon.

ON THE CITY WEBSITE, Wanamingo is described as a classic small Midwestern town in Southeastern Minnesota. That seems accurate.

What then is a classic small Midwestern town?

Visiting early Saturday afternoon in downtown Wanamingo.

Visiting early on a Saturday afternoon in downtown Wanamingo.

It is a place where, on a Saturday afternoon in March, two guys lean on the back of a pick-up truck and converse outside a bar and grill.

Posted at a local park. I edited the phone number from the photo.

It’s a place where a notice in the park information center requests help in finding Belle, a missing Siamese cat.

Walking the puppy downtown. Wanamingo still has an old style water tower.

It’s a place where a friendly young couple walks their curly-haired puppy, allows a visitor to pet him and then wishes the out-of-towner a good afternoon.

It’s a place with solid brick buildings in a downtown occupied by businesses like a meat market, a bar, a cafe, a garage, law and insurance offices, and grain bins banking the north end of Main Street.

I love the classic corner angled gas station.

Wanamingo has that small town rural feel, that sense of life moving at a slower pace. Traffic is minimal downtown, even though Minnesota State Highway 57 doubles as Main Street. And, yes, the main street is named Main Street.

In this classic small Midwestern town, kids drop bikes in yards.

Beautiful Trinity Lutheran Church. I'll take you on a tour of the church in an upcoming post.

I’ll take you inside Trinity Lutheran Church in an upcoming post.

A life-long resident tinkers with a light post outside Trinity Lutheran, a stalwart brick corner church that holds the histories of so many local families. Births, marriages, deaths.

Wanamingo, platted in 1904, is not Utopia. No place is. But it is a community of about 1,100 that seems, from outward appearances, to care, to want to look its best, to be the kind of place folks want to visit or call home. It is a classic small Midwestern town.

FYI: Check back tomorrow for the second post in my “from Wanamingo” series. I’ll take you inside the Area 57 Coffee Cafe.

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Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

As Canadian wildfires rage: “What’s mine is yours” May 4, 2016

What a little cash & a little kindness are doing in North Dakota April 30, 2016

A grandfather’s love April 20, 2016

In honor of spring planting season in southern Minnesota April 18, 2016

Meet my beautiful granddaughter April 8, 2016

He’s not arriving on a jet plane April 7, 2016

Color away the stress April 5, 2016

Thoughts following a country drive west of Wanamingo March 30, 2016

Part VI from Wanamingo: A symphony at Shingle Creek March 29, 2016

Part I from Wanamingo, a classic small town in Minnesota March 21, 2016

Follow Minnesota Prairie Roots via Email

An essay of barn photos & memories; In praise of preserving country churches; & Testing the track during a Soap Box Derby trial run in Faribault

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