As the snow melts and I enter the melancholy often brought on by mud season, I find myself seeking comfort in the words of Lois Nestel, the founding naturalist, director, and curator of the Cable Natural History Museum. Lois was a talented, self-taught naturalist, artist, and taxidermist. Examples of her accomplishments populate every corner of our modern museum building. Her legacy is strong in the work that we do.
I never met Lois, but every Friday I feel a particular kinship with her as I send my “Natural Connections” article off to the newspapers. Lois initiated the tradition of a weekly nature column provided by the Museum, and did so with a gentle, reverent, poetic style. Her column was titled “Wayside Wanderings,” and the articles were compiled into two small volumes in 1975.
One of my favorite authors, Sigurd Olson, provided the introduction to Lois’s first volume. In his characteristic style, Sigurd wrote: “With the eyes of a naturalist, artist, and poet, season by season she has recorded the miracles she found there, miracles that epitomize the truth that we are all part of nature; that because of our primeval background we hunger for simplicities of the past, the beauty of flowers, trees, and animals.”
As I walked into work this morning, I passed by the dried stalks of the Museum’s pollinator gardens. With any luck, young bees are sleeping soundly within the hollows of those stems.
Lois wrote: “Most people are aware of the beauty of summer flowers and often bemoan their passing as winter approaches. This need not be a cause for regret because, while much color may be lost, there continue—as seeds, pods, and capsules—many forms that rival the flowers in beauty and grace. Many of these seed containers last throughout the winter, serving as food for wildlife and pleasure for humans.
“There is a sculptured beauty in the pods of various milkweeds and wild iris, evening primrose, cockle, and [ghost] pipes. Delicate grace is exemplified in airy sprays of sweet cicely, papery clusters of wild hops, and feathery virgin’s bower (wild clematis) twining over bushes, and in the dried grasses and sedges, each with individual form and style.
“To enjoy these and many other beauties of winter there are few requirements; namely these: get outside, have open eyes to see and an open mind, receptive enough to appreciate what is seen.”
While that passage on the beauty of weeds in winter is quite cheerful, it’s even more of a comfort to me that Lois also experienced melancholy, as she wrote:
“When a whistling winter wind is sculpturing the snowy waysides, I am inclined to stay indoors and do my wandering in memories of younger days. Of all the elements, strong winter winds are what I like the least and yet, in retrospect, even these have brought their measure of satisfaction.
“Perhaps it is because houses are more tightly constructed that these days, I do not hear the wind in the same way as in my childhood. Then the winter wind seemed a living thing that shrieked and moaned around the corners and clawed at the windows. But that soulless wail was great to hear when curled, warm and comfortable, beneath the patchwork quilts.
“Now there seems a desolation and bitterness in the wind as though it mourns the sadness and injustice in the world. But the wind is not governed by political upheavals, poverty or crime. It is as it has always been. Only the listener, the endurer, has changed.
“Those days I shiver with the birds huddled in more sheltered spots. I start nervously at sudden, violent gusts, as do the animals. The wind was once my playmate; I could run with it and contend against it, but now it no longer is my friend. The loss is mine.”
Today, while the last of the snow shifts from melt to ice, the wind feels mournful to me, too. Skimming Lois’s writings, I sought a bit of sunshine to poke through the clouds. I’m not sure I believe it yet, but I’ll try to trust Lois’s wisdom:
“Nothing lasts forever...There is a new warmth in the sun and each day brings changes so that even the seeming setbacks of late winter storms cannot alter the fact that spring is in the air.”
Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.
For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. The Museum’s current exhibit “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow” is open through March 11. The Museum will be closed for construction March 12 through April 30. Our Winter Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.
Last Update: Mar 05, 2025 8:13 am CST
