An autumn invitation to be an ordinary mystic

By Tim Mulherin

Sun contributor

By the time you read this, I’ll be gone for the year. I left with the annual southbound migration. Songbirds, hummingbirds, raptors, monarch butterflies, hand-sized common green darner dragonflies, downstaters, out-of-staters, and me.

For the past three years, I’ve had the golden opportunity to live in our cottage in Cedar, which we’ve owned for 18 years, staying from mid-May through mid-October, with intermittent returns to Indianapolis. My wife, Janet, is still working in Indy, though retiring next year. Although I miss her dearly when we’re apart, these lengthy periods of solitude are priceless, restorative, and a source of endless gratitude.

However, my mostly monk-like existence doesn’t preclude the blessings of friendship. Thanks to the welcoming treatment of my northern Michigander friends, whenever I’m here, I feel like a local. They also understand why my heart turns bittersweet with the coming of fall. It’s hard to leave paradise on Earth and its endless expressions of stunning beauty. For me, they often fall into the category of mystical experiences. Perhaps you know what I mean.

About 10 p.m. on Sunday night, September 14, I was wasting precious minutes of my life scrolling on Facebook at bedtime when a Cedar neighbor excitedly posted, “The northern lights are on!” So I forced myself out of bed and went outside. Peering through the stand of towering sugar maple trees on the northside of our property, I instantly discerned that telltale ghostly glow. Minutes later, I was leaning against my car in a nearby vacant lot, awed by the incredible celestial light show.

In Indianapolis, the Milky Way is only a rumor, the view obstructed long ago and forever after by light pollution. But here, not only is this star-studded galactic vista visible on a clear night, we also get front row seats to phenomena like the northern lights. As anyone who observes the aurora can attest, it definitely qualifies as a mystical experience.

I recently listened to an episode of The Spiritual Life podcast, hosted by Fr. James Martin, SJ. It featured an interview with the writer Mirabai Starr on “Mysticism for Everyone.” Asked to provide a definition, Starr said that “one of the primary characteristics of a mystical experience is that it’s ineffable.” She added that for her, “It’s a direct experience of the divine” and often “spontaneous.”

Although I’ve never been accused of being a mystic—I’m apt to seek some lesser bliss by imbibing a few beers on my deck on a summer’s eve—I, too, think we all have access to such transcendent experiences. I’m reminded of this during the long goodbye of closing our cottage for the winter.

It’s Sunday, September 28. An extended high-pressure system has settled over the Grand Traverse region. Outside my window, dappled sunlight paints irregular patches on the trees. Chlorophyll production is ending, and leaf-turning is beginning. The maples’ fiery reds sporadically flame on. Meanwhile, the calm wind and azure sky invite me to pause, as if a call to prayer. I glance away from the keyboard and spot spent leaves randomly detaching and gracefully meandering groundward.

The mums on my deck have bloomed in vibrant sunshiny yellow and velvety purple, to last another week or so. As you read this, they’ve turned brittle brown. I’ll remove the dead flowers from their pots come April, as I return on my northbound springtime migration in pursuit of trout, morels, songbird sightings, fewer people, cleaner air, and crystalline waters once again.

Another autumn is here, my sixty-ninth, a mind-blowing thought on this spectacular day. The only request it quietly suggests is that we take time out to realize our part in it as both witness and participant. It’s an open invitation to immerse ourselves in an “ordinary” mystical experience. Right here, right now.

The hummingbird feeder has been taken down, cleaned and stowed for its overwintering wait for the return of company of the hovering kind. The hummers began their vanishing act about mid-September, the males gone first, the lingering females departing about two weeks later, their usual exiting order. I wonder if they remember doing so the year before, or if their genetic instructions are ever fixed on the present moment, the signal occurring when autumn’s shorter days and cooler nights trigger the urge to relocate.

The waterbirds, too, have just about finished passing through the region on their way south. I’ll see some of them down Southwest Florida way on the Gulf of Whatever We Call It when Janet and I spend a month or so there this winter. She’s afflicted with seasonal affective disorder and chronic fatigue syndrome. The sunshine and warmth and Gulf view are a tonic for her. However, those balmy, unnatural-for-me winter conditions only make me yearn for the entrancing sight of snowfall, a longing instilled in me from my northeastern Pennsylvania childhood.

During September evenings in Cedar, around dusk, wildlife declares its existence. For several consecutive evenings, two eastern screech owls call to one another. Their high-pitched, whinny-like communication enlivens the airspace in our yard. The little raptors are elusive, well camouflaged among the trees.

Male crickets serenade me to sleep on these magical nights. The hypnotic murmur of their stridulating wings seeps through the cracked window in my bedroom, riding on the chill air, escorting me into the realm of slumber.

Locals Summer was delayed this year by nearly several weeks following Labor Day. Curiously, more people than usual stayed longer after the end-of-summer holiday, and more kept coming. The spring and fall shoulder seasons in northern Michigan continue to stretch; perhaps one day they’ll be unrecognizable, absorbed into an unending tourist year. Nonetheless, the midweek September afternoon finally arrives when we go to our favorite Good Harbor Bay beach spot and realize we have this special place all to ourselves. It’s cloudy, cool, and slightly under 70 degrees, unfavorable conditions for those pursuing endless summer, yet perfect for us.

Janet walks along the Lake Michigan shoreline scouting for prized stones: Petoskey, of course, and its close cousin the Charlevoix stone, along with chain coral and her personal favorite, white quartz. I put down my book to watch her. We’re now in our sixties. Yet I’m seeing her in my mind’s eye as she once was in her twenties when we first met. It’s a fused, overlapping vision that contains her ageless essence, what drew me to her, and so we remain in the mutual promise of togetherness.

As Janet slowly returns to her beach chair, I have a lump in my throat, a constriction of grace.

Such sublime experiences are not at my beck and call; they occur of their own volition. Yet, my mystical-experience-detecting radar is more finely attuned now, perhaps a gift of old age. These days, I find myself paying close attention to the everyday availability of the metaphysical, wondrous paradox that it is.

Though it seems so far from now, soon it will be winter. As I’m about to start my period of “suffering” through my long Indianapolis and Florida captivity, I’ll look forward to the winter solstice when the Northern Hemisphere tilts sunward once again and the months-long process of summer’s return commences. I’ll daydream now and then about my own spring migration, which will eventually arrive, a patience payday for my heart. And I’ll think about my northern Michigander friends who stay put when the snow flies and a wintry consciousness settles upon them, by firelight, by lamplight, by soul light. Ordinary mystics all.

Tim Mulherin is the author of This Magnetic North: Candid Conversations on a Changing Northern Michigan, published by Michigan State University Press. He is currently writing a book about wildlife in Michigan and Indiana.