November 21st, 2018
The air is blinking thick with flurries so we pull our hoods up to ease the worst of it, the best of it we breathe in, a freshness too soon, although strangely welcome.
It is only November 21st and we are walking on a trail covered with a six inch depth of snow, third snowfall this week and each a measure to be reckoned with.
At winter's height last year the trail was never worse to walk than this and yet we do not mind
because we are back walking a trail we love so well and after too long a time away--we can't help but feel so alive!
Interestingly the last time we were here it was too sweltering to make it far.
Mid summer's heat had lingered late, the sun ablaze and air as humid as the tropics threatened to send us back to the air conditioned comfort of our car--
but in the car, windows up we deny so much more than heat.
We deny connection to the buzz of insect wing and drum of amphibian's song,
we deny the fragrant scent of sweet meadow grass and tender sway of roadside wildflowers
and in doing so we deny ourselves.
Instead, that fiercely hot day we chose to linger and we noted Bobolink's of quite a number busy in the meadow--their total flock unusually large and so despite the heat we stopped a moment to take it in before we continued languid but soul-heartened back to the car.
Now, in the snow squall so thick we cast our eyes downward, we know full well we could have chosen the warmth and comfort of our cozy home but instead we walk downcast
and stumble as almost underfoot wooly bear caterpillars leap out at us from the pure white snow.
Their tiny black and orange bodies so delicate and still we think they are dead but upon closer inspection realize they are indeed still alive. Curled in a tiny ball on my gloved hand I move them to the bushes near the ditch.
What resilience in the face of unpredictable weather--we could do so well.
Further along we turn off the trail and are stopped in our snowy tracks by a deafening thunderous cacophony of geese as a flock of thousands lifts off from a field a distance beyond the trail.
Breathtaking,
the power of their wings, their voice, their unison centers and connects us in the beautifully lyrical way that nature, like music and art, and poetry, mystically can.
We leave the trail as their flock parts way, half heading east and the other west, and as we walk down to the pond we find it swelled to overflowing while two muskrats make themselves known with their busy attentiveness to their own lives--such graceful, playful, fluid creatures.
We pause and be still in our own silence,
feeling the briskness of the snowy air, flakes landing, fleeting, on our faces as we
listen to the rush of pond waters flowing over a dam to the brook below us.
Standing in the power of such awareness we know we are being graced.
And in this graciousness we are filled with something you simply cannot buy... the contentment of true presence...and the beauty, peace and joy and love it so generously affords us.
The economics of this world demand that we rush onward and pay little heed to the natural world of which we are an intrinsic part. Walking in the quietude of a snowy wooded brook side trail feels like an act of rebellion against the digitization and commercialization of human life. With our attentiveness we forge a rebellion in our own hearts towards re-connection with all we know to be right and true and worthy.
The desire to be well and a part of the living wildness of the soil and air and waters of this little Island we adore, swells large within us not unlike the swelling of the pond waters and the song of the wild geese who gather and sing despite the hunter's season.
The hurting of the world demands our song.
Time is passing and we can choose to pay attention. Future generations depend on our willingness to reconsider our lifestyles and model re- conciliation with self and other, with constructed and natural environs. With heart and soul and body and the Earth.
There is a whole entire world whose delicate balance is being challenged by the disruptive and greedy ways of human enterprise. Courageous hearts and minds can choose to bear witness to the truths as they are seen before us. In doing so we tell the story of the world as it is and with leaps of faith as it might be imagined to be. Whole and well and loved.
I want to tell my children that the future looks bright for them, as they are bright young people with hearts wide opened to art, music, love and nature. But it is a difficult time to be growing up in the world. It is a difficult time to be an adult in this tumultuous era too.
The one truth I hold fast to is that their willingness to love this world, broken and fragmented and disappearing as it is, will never be a wasted effort.
For to love this world is its own reward. Love is rather beautiful like that.
Happy sixteenth birthday Nov 21st to my son Lucas--cherished child adored by his mom and dad and two loving sisters for his kind and gentle ways, his humour and his willingness to always lend a helping hand.
A keen eyed nature observer with an artistic touch in all he does, Lucas is a storyteller who uses photographs and canvasses to show us how things are in his mind's eye. I have a faith in his art that I do not have in the dominant capitalistic system which overlords itself onto our lives at every turn. His ability to utilize art to convey what so many seem to miss on their daily rounds absorbed in the minutiae of their own lives is a gift to the world.
But then again I am just his mother.
Wishing you a deep sense of your own connectedness to this blessed Earth.
XO
Jill
Thank you Lucas for the bobolink photo and the idea and act of yesterday's Mount Herbert walk.
