Through the Barbed Wire Fence

A Pilgrimage to an Altar Amongst the Thistles

This begins 15 years ago, driving with my kids to go on a houseboat trip with my entire family. We had taken many such vacations when I was a kid. It was the last trip my father would ever take. He had been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia and would be gone in three months.

As we drove north, we passed a small sign in the middle of nowhere: Hazel Dell Library. For some reason I can’t explain, I turned around to my kids and said, “Help me remember that name. It’s going to be the name of a character in a book at some point.”

A few years after that, we traveled to Japan, and the plot for Hazel Dell’s book was born: a girl travels to Japan and is mysteriously given a bonsai tree. The tree houses luck gods that escape once Hazel Dell got back to Minnesota. It is her job to get them back.

Five years ago, my life went sideways, and it was all I could do to survive. One of my lifelines was to start writing Hazel Dell’s story. I wrote 300 words a day and emailed them to my daughter, who was away at college. Elise cheered me on as Hazel Dell faced challenge after challenge thrown her way.

Since then, I have significantly rewritten the book at least five times. On Thursday, I finished what feels like my last version. Even though it’s fiction, even though it’s about an 11-year old girl and magic, this piece feels so true, so autobiographical, I wept as soon as I hit the end.

I had to do something to honor this journey.

On Saturday, I gathered up “tobacco”—offerings to make to that Hazel Dell sign I had seen so many years ago. I grabbed a rock from Sedona, an old necklace charm, some sweet dark chocolate, among other things, and put them in a bag.

I also put something I had gotten in South Africa in my pocket. Elise had been there on a semester-long study abroad trip a few years earlier, and when I had visited her, we had walked along a beach and come upon a whale’s vertebrae. Beneath it was this thing that might have been bone, rock, or shell, and I have kept it beside my bed ever since to remind me of the mysterious and powerful things at work in the world.

I got in the car and drove north to the middle of nowhere Minnesota. I turned left at the Hazel Dell Library sign and pulled up at an old town hall. The door was unlocked, and as I stepped inside, I was immediately hit with that wonderful smell of old books and wood.

I made my way into a back room. As I stood by a book shelf, I saw a book entitled Ghost Towns. One of the stakes in my novel is that Hazel Dell’s beloved small town will wither up and die if she fails to get the gods back.

I reached out and touched the book with my left hand. As I did, I raised my eyes. The first book title I saw was Elizabeth Takes Off (my real name is Elizabeth). Other book titles started talking to me, too: You Only Die Twice, The One Tree.

When I stepped back outside, I looked across the gravel road to a nearby field. That’s when I saw this tree stump with a big rock on top of it.

I knew that was where I had to make my offerings. I climbed through the barbed wire fence and stood amongst the thistles. Since there are seven luck gods and a prankster that live in the bonsai tree in my book, I placed eight things on this wild altar.

Wind on my face. Earth under my feet. I bowed and touched the tree with my left hand.

Getting in my car, I drove back to the road sign I had seen 15 years earlier.

For some reason I can’t explain, I knew I had to leave the thing I had found under the whale vertebrae in South Africa at that sign.

Maybe it was my way of honoring all the “for some reason I can’t explain” moments I’ve had that almost always invite me to experience the Big and Mysterious Energy playing at the edges of my life.

Maybe it was my way of acknowledging that life can be barbed wire, thistle, and wild altar all at the same time.

Maybe it was my way of saying thank you for the gift of Hazel Dell, the girl who experiences magic everywhere. The girl who saved me.