Sing a song of summer

Hooking landscapes over the last year has made me want to be in nature more. On my summer walks if I go in one direction there are rose bushes, a lily pad pond down a dirt cottage path, and little reddish-green berries that seem to grow ferociously on bushes. 

When I walk this way, there are more birds and therefore more singing. When I walk the other way, there are crows and tiger lilies and a farmers field with three grey barns that has been a muse of mine for years and years. The field beyond it has grown up now with cottages, owned by three young sisters whose mother I knew years ago and loved. I miss the field but feel so happy to see that they have a place here near where they grew up. That they get to feel the landscape they grew up on underneath their feet.

When we love in a place for a long time we see the same things day after day. The tall pine, the yellow tansy, the wild caraway on the side of the road. And it easy to not see them. It is easy to think that it is just more of the same. But really every weed is a miracle in itself. Every seedpod a hope for another summer.

Every tall pine down that old cottage land has seen a hundred summers. It is not just us who walked in its shade. It has a cast a long shadow seeing children grow into men and women with children of their own. There is history in the landscape. Stories of who was here before us and the mystery of who will remain is less clear. Who comes back home?

Who returns after years away to feel the ground they knew as a child. Many it seems if I look around me. There is a deep comfort in belonging, in knowing the pitch of the roofs and the slant of the hills. To smell the alder sap heating up on a warm afternoon as you walk to the store for ice cream. These ordinary things run a deep river inside us. A river of emotion.

I like to look into the woods and see how the light plays with the ferns. I see greens I cannot show you. Greens that I cannot make with wool and linen. I can only dream of these greens. But I can dream and I can try again and again to do only what the sun through the trees can do. I am not the sun. I am not the light. I am only the two hands that try over and over again what can never be realized. And I am the spirit that is resolved to this. I am the one that knows that nature is the real show. The art in every moment is all around us. The structure of a seed is a miracle. The flight of the bird a ballet. The shadow on the water a painting. All there, all the time. Take a left or a right and you can find it. The sudden beauty that chance brings when we open our eyes. When we open our minds. When we open our hearts to a walk through the most ordinary field.

We should live in a state of shock that there is so much to marvel at. Arms should be raised. Prayers said. Thanks given. We should shout thank you at the moon for lighting up the night. Sing good morning back to the birds. Kneel in the garden as we cut the green onion for the salad.

We cannot rest so much in the beauty that we fall asleep to summer.

Be astounded.

Wake up little bird and sing yourself a song.

Thank you for reading.