How swiftly the strained honey of afternoon light flows into darkness
and the closed bud shrugs off its special mystery in order to break into blossom:
as if what exists, exists so that it can be lost and become precious. ~Lisel Mueller “In Passing”from Alive Together
He may become like a glass filled with a clean light for eyes to see that can. ~J.R.R. Tolkien – Gandalf speaks of Frodo after his injuries – in The Lord of the Rings
…what (does) it mean to bear Christ in the midst of a world that feels somehow even more chaotic and violent than usual. What does it mean to be saved and healed by him when we linger and ache, here in the darkened realm of the still-broken world? …in this passage I return again, again, to the astonishing recollection of God in his love, who takes what evil meant to be our destruction (pain, loneliness, loss), and makes it the place of his arrival. The man of sorrows, bearing our pain so that no sorrow may ever end the story again. Where we grieve, he arrives to heal. Where we ache, he bears our load. Where we cry aloud, he answers. So that our need becomes the very ground of our renewal. And the clear light of his love shines through the glass of our lives.
Eventually. For those who can see. I know people like that. I want to become a soul like that. ~Sarah Clarkson writing about the above Tolkien quote here
Each one of us, like a swelling bud hanging heavy, waits on the stem — already but not quite yet.
Such is the late afternoon light of a mid-spring day~ ~ an air of mystery in a honeyed moment of illumination ~ knowing something more is coming.
Not just letting go of what we cannot yet understand. Not just peering through a glass darkly. Not just giving up and dropping away.
Breaking from bud into blossom means opening fully, glowing with transparent ripeness in the glass of our lives. Becoming light itself.
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Of the two spoiled, barn-sour geldings we owned that year, it was Red— skittish and prone to explode even at fourteen years—who’d let me hold to my face his own: the massive labyrinthine caverns of the nostrils, the broad plain up the head to the eyes. He’d let me stroke his coarse chin whiskers and take his soft meaty underlip in my hands, press my man’s carnivorous kiss to his grass-nipping upper half of one, just so that I could smell the long way his breath had come from the rain and the sun, the lungs and the heart, from a world that meant no harm. ~Robert Wrigley “Kissing a Horse”
…and there was once, oh wonderful, a new horse in the pasture, a tall, slim being–a neighbor was keeping her there– and she put her face against my face, put her muzzle, her nostrils, soft as violets, against my mouth and my nose, and breathed me, to see who I was, a long quiet minute–minutes– then she stamped her feet and whisked tail and danced deliciously into the grass away, and came back. She was saying, so plainly, that I was good, or good enough. ~Mary Oliver from “The Poet Goes to Indiana”
It was dragging my hands along its belly, loosing the bit and wiping the spit from its mouth that made me a snatch of grass in the thing’s maw, a fly tasting its ear. It was touching my nose to his that made me know the clover’s bloom, my wet eye to his that made me know the long field’s secrets. But it was putting my heart to the horse’s that made me know the sorrow of horses. Made me forsake my thumbs for the sheen of unshod hooves. And in this way drop my torches. And in this way drop my knives. Feel the small song in my chest swell and my coat glisten and twitch. And my face grow long. And these words cast off, at last, for the slow honest tongue of horses. ~Ross Gay “Becoming A Horse”
Living the dream of nearly every young girl, I grew up with a horse in our back field. The first was a raw-boned old paint who allowed my older sister and toddler me to sit atop him, walk around the barnyard and on the driveway at no more than a walk. He was arthritic and sore, but patient and tolerant to the attention of little girls. When we moved away to another part of the state, he didn’t come with us and I was too young to fully understand where he had been sent.
The horse on our new farm was my sister’s 4H project who was a spiffy chestnut mare with a penchant for a choppy trot and speedy canter. My sister would go miles with friends on horseback down back-country roads. Sadly, my sister soon became allergic (hives and swelling) to any contact with horses. I was barely old enough to start riding by myself in our fields.The little mare missed her adventures with my sister but seemed to adapt to my inexperience and took care of me as best she could – I never fell off. One night, she broke through a fence and ate her fill in a field of growing oat grass. The next day she was euthanized due to terrible colic. I was inconsolable, crying for days when visiting her burial spot on our property.
These first two horses tolerated the inexperience of their handlers and tried to compensate for it. I’ve since owned a few horses who knew exactly how to take advantage of such inexperience. Horses size up people quickly as our feelings and fear can be so transparent; it takes much longer for us to understand the complexity of their equine mind. Many diverse training techniques are marketed as testimony to that mystery.
I have learned that horses appreciate a patient and quiet approach, reflecting their consistency and honesty. They like to be looked in the eye and appreciate a soft breath blown over their whiskers. They want us to find their itchy spots rather than act the part of a pseudo-predator with intent to harm.
That’s not asking too much of us.
In return, we learn how best to communicate what we need from them. They are remarkably willing to work when they understand the job and feel appreciated. In return, we are given a chance to experience the world through their eyes and ears and lips, to comprehend the remarkable sensitivity of a skin able to shiver a fly away.
I’ve spent much of my life learning with horses and hope there are a few years still left to learn more. Whatever sorrow they feel in their hearts is when I’ve failed to be who they need me to be. Their gift to me is an honest willingness to forgive, again and yet again.
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Above photos from Gombe Stream National Park, 1975
Reflecting on, and with respect for, the courage shown by Tanzanian park rangers and my kidnapped research colleagues on this unforgettable day 51 years ago —
I’m reposting this again as part of my Gombe saga from when I worked as a student research assistant for Jane Goodall in western Tanzania in 1975.An archived New York Times account is found here.
At first glance, Gombe National Park in Tanzania felt like paradise—a serene piece of the earth filled with exotic and fascinating wildlife, an abundance of fish and fruit to eat, and the rich unfamiliar sounds and smells of the tropical jungle. It was a façade. It was surrounded by the turmoil and upheaval of political rebellion and insurgencies in its neighboring countries, inflamed even more by the fall of Saigon in Vietnam a month previously due to the earlier pull out of the Americans from that long and tragic war.
Only a few miles north of our research station in Gombe National Park in western Tanzania, there had been years of civil war in the small land locked country of Burundi. When the wind was just right, we could hear gunfire and explosions echoing over the valleys that separated us. Escaping refugees would sometimes stop for food on their way to villages in Tanzania to the south, seeking safe haven in one of the poorest countries in the world, only a decade into its own experiment with socialism, Ujamaa.
There was also word of ongoing military rebellion against the dictatorship of President Mobutu in the mountainous country of Zaire twelve miles west across Lake Tanganyika.
Morning comes early for field studies of wildlife, as the research day must start before the chimpanzee and baboon subjects wake up and begin to stir. Before midnight, while we slept soundly in our metal huts scattered up the mountainside, a group of armed soldiers arrived by boat to the shore of Gombe National Park.
Storming the beach huts housing two unarmed Gombe park rangers and their families, the soldiers seized one and demanded to be told where the researchers were. The ranger refused to provide information and was severely beaten about the head and face by the butts of the rifles carried by the invaders. The armed soldiers then divided into smaller groups and headed up the trails leading to the huts, coming upon four sleeping student researchers, tying them up, taking them hostage, forcing them into boats and taking them across the lake back to Zaire.
Asleep farther up the mountain, we were wakened by other researchers who were fleeing, hearing the commotion. No one really understood what was happening down lower on the mountain. There were shouts and screams, and gun shots had been heard. Had someone been injured or killed? There was no choice but to run and hide deep in the bush at a predetermined gathering spot until an “all clear” signal was given by the rangers.
We hurried along barely familiar trails in the black of the jungle night, using no flashlights, our hearts beating hard, knowing we had no defense available to us other than the cover of darkness.
That was the longest wait for morning of my life, sitting alongside Jane holding her eight year old son Grub. A hand full of other students had also made their way to the hiding spot, none of us knowing what to think, say or do. We could only barely see each other’s faces in the darkness and were too frightened to make any sounds. We carried no weapons, and there was no way to communicate with the outside world. We had no idea how many of us may be missing, or possibly dead.
Jane clasped Grub in her arms, endeavoring in vain to keep him quiet, but his fears was ignited by the events that had just unfolded.
“Will they kidnap me, Jane? Will they come for me? Where will they take us? Will they shoot us dead?”
Jane, her face hidden by her blonde hair loose about her shoulders, sat rocking him, cradling him. “Shhh, shhh, we don’t want them to find us. We’re safe staying right here. Everything will be fine in the morning. No one will take you from me.”
Grub began to sob silently into her shoulder.
When the morning of May 20 dawned, the park rangers located us, and pieced together the events as best they could–the soldiers were Zairean rebels living in remote mountains, fighting an insurgency against the Zaire government. Seeking funds for their cause, they saw a kidnapping of Americans and Europeans as a way to raise quick funds and world publicity and sympathy. Four of our friends/coworkers were missing, the camp was ransacked and the rangers beaten but with no life threatening injuries. There was no way to remain safe at the Park, and our colleagues needed whatever help we could offer for their rescue.
We were able to send a messenger to a nearby fishing village, and a radio call was sent out to the small town of Kigoma, then relayed to Dar Es Salaam and Nairobi. Help arrived within a few hours, when a United Nations boat monitoring the civil war activities in Burundi pulled off shore near our camp. We were told we needed to evacuate Gombe that day, and would be taken to Kigoma, and then flown by bush pilot to Nairobi, Kenya to cooperate in the investigation of the kidnapping.
In Nairobi, at the US Embassy, I met CIA agents who viewed our wild primate studies with suspicion. Each of us were grilled individually as to our political beliefs, our activities at the camp and whether we may be somehow involved in subversive actions against the Zaire or Tanzanian governments. We were dumbfounded that our own countrymen would be so skeptical about our motives for being in Africa. It became clear our own government could be no help in resolving the kidnapping and bringing our friends home to safety. The agents did not shed any light on whether they knew our friends were alive or dead.
We were then hustled into a press conference (preserved video here) where we were interviewed for television and print media by the worldwide news agencies, and my parents saw me on the CBS evening news before they actually heard my voice over the phone. I flew back to Stanford the next day, spending 24 hours on a plane that made six stops up the coast of West Africa on its way back west, to tell what I knew to Stanford President Lyman and other administration officials as they prepared a plan to locate and free the students. I then returned home to Washington state to await any news that came too slowly from a place so far away that I remain astonished to this day that I was ever there at all.
It took over three months, private negotiations and ransom money to free all four of our friends back to safety. They have remained close to each other and to the remarkable man who helped free them, Dr. David Hamburg. We have had several reunions together over the years to remember those days of living in a place that at one time seemed like paradise.
In the past several years, we lost both Dr. Hamburg and Dr. Donald Kennedy, both instrumental as our faculty and mentors during our years at Stanford.
Dr. Goodall, who passed away last fall in her sleep at age 91, while on a lecture tour in Los Angeles, remained a vital part of the global message not only to preserve the wild chimpanzee, but to reverse the destruction of our natural world. Her message and life’s work continues through her organization www.janegoodall.org
Several of my colleagues have written about their experience at Gombe:
And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?”
And he looked around to see who had done it.
But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth.
And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” Mark 5: 30, 32-34
…the whole experience of compline is in some way a touching of the hem of Christ’s garment: something has been given, something disclosed. And the person holding a candle at compline may hear a call, and make a journey, as another stressed woman once did, from touching the hem of Christ’s garment to meeting him face to face.
… just occasionally, it opens into deeper things, on to more ultimate questions. Just occasionally, there is an opening of heart and soul, which in some sense the liturgy itself has made possible; and then it is that, just sometimes, someone takes a few more steps on that journey from the hem of his garment to the light of his countenance. ~Malcolm Guite from Poet’s Corner
Most of us are like that desperate woman hoping for healing by reaching out to touch the hem of His robe – ashamed to be so needy, hoping to go unnoticed, not actually wanting to bother anyone, but still helpless – so very helpless, but not without hope.
He knows when we reach out in desperation; He feels it.
So He lifts us up as we begin our journey to His light – from a touch of His hem to seeing His face.
It starts with reaching out. It starts with taking a few more steps. It starts with hope in the Light.
Before the ending of the day, Creator of the world, we pray That with Thy wonted favour Thou Wouldst be our guard and keeper now.
From all ill dreams defend our eyes, From nightly fears and fantasies; Tread under foot our ghostly foe That no pollution we may know.
O Father, that we ask be done Through Jesus Christ, thine only Son, Who with the Holy Ghost and Thee Dost live and reign eternally.
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About the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching. The Jews therefore marveled, saying, “How is it that this man has learning, when he has never studied?” So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood. Has not Moses given you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why do you seek to kill me?” The crowd answered, “You have a demon! Who is seeking to kill you?” Jesus answered them, “I did one work, and you all marvel at it. Moses gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath.If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man’s whole body well? Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” John 7:14-24
The onening, she saw, the onening with the Godhead opened Him utterly to the pain of all minds, all bodies – sands of the sea, of the desert – from first beginning to last day. The great wonder is that the human cells of His flesh and bone didn’t explode when utmost Imagination rose in that flood of knowledge. Unique in agony, infinite strength, Incarnate, empowered Him to endure inside of history, through those hours when He took Himself the sum total of anguish and drank even the lees of that cup: within the mesh of the web, Himself woven within it, yet seeing it, seeing it whole, Every sorrow and desolation He saw, and sorrowed in kinship. ~Denise Levertov from “On a Theme from Julian’s Chapter XX”
Jesus seems perplexed: He came to deliver a new covenant with God’s people so why did those He came to save now seek to kill him?
Why are they angry when He healed one of their own, no matter what day of the week?
This makes no sense to the One who shares human cells with those who now want Him dead, with whom He came alongside to become “one,” experiencing all our pain and sorrows and loneliness.
He is “one-ning” with those who seek to crush Him.
Jesus is – incredibly – our kin within our skin, woven within us and yet, knowing all our sins, He still loves us and wants to bring us home to Him.
Amazing grace.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core. ~William Butler Yeats “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”
O gentle bees, I have come to say That grandfather fell to sleep to-day. And we know by the smile on grandfather’s face. He has found his dear one’s biding place. So, bees, sing soft, and, bees, sing low. As over the honey-fields you sweep,— To the trees a-bloom and the flowers a-blow Sing of grandfather fast asleep; And ever beneath these orchard trees Find cheer and shelter, gentle bees. ~Eugene Field from “Telling the Bees”
Here is the place; right over the hill Runs the path I took; You can see the gap in the old wall still, And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook.
There is the house, with the gate red-barred, And the poplars tall; And the barn’s brown length, and the cattle-yard, And the white horns tossing above the wall.
There are the beehives ranged in the sun; And down by the brink Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o’errun, Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.
A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, Heavy and slow; And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, And the same brook sings of a year ago.
I can see it all now,—the slantwise rain Of light through the leaves, The sundown’s blaze on her window-pane, The bloom of her roses under the eaves.
Just the same as a month before,— The house and the trees, The barn’s brown gable, the vine by the door,— Nothing changed but the hives of bees.
Before them, under the garden wall, Forward and back, Went drearily singing the chore-girl small, Draping each hive with a shred of black.
Trembling, I listened: the summer sun Had the chill of snow; For I knew she was telling the bees of one Gone on the journey we all must go! ~John Greenleaf Whittier from “Telling the Bees”
If you talk to him, he will not pretend to be an ordinary man. He won’t let on he is one who isn’t afraid to hold in his outstretched hands the buzzing gold.
He won’t tell you he is the man who keeps farmers warm in their livelihood, or the man who keeps the grocery shelves full, then adds, simply for good measure, jars of his shining honey. He won’t explain that he is the one who sets his suffering neighbors free from their pain with gifts of jars that sting.
He won’t let on to be the lifegiver or a god. He will pretend he is just an old man with sand-colored hair, a blue truck heavy with breezy hives, and a comb-spinner in his cellar. ~Sidney Hall Jr., from This Understated Land
…The world was really one bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places. Don’t be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and pants. Don’t swat. Don’t even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates while whistling melts a bee’s temper. Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved. ~Sue Monk Kiddfrom The Secret Life of Bees
He calls the honeybees his girls although he tells me they’re ungendered workers who never produce offspring. Some hour drops, the bees shut off. In the long, cool slant of sun, spent flowers fold into cups. He asks me if I’ve ever seen a Solitary Bee where it sleeps. I say I’ve not. The nearest bud’s a long-throated peach hollyhock. He cradles it in his palm, holds it up so I spy the intimacy of the sleeping bee. Little life safe in a petal, little girl, your few furious buzzings as you stir stay with me all winter, remind me of my work undone. ~Heid E. Erdrich, from “Intimate Detail” from The Mother’s Tongue
It was just like I was telling the bees last night. I saw two of them asleep inside the cup of a hollyhock, covered in pollen, just holding each other’s feet, just sleeping in the flower waiting for the sun to warm them so they could fly off. To see two of them curled up like that, it was very sweet. ~Diana Gabaldon/Matt Roberts from the final episode of Outlander TV series
A beekeeper must be a loving and patient person; the bees know who loves them, and who will always be there to care for them.
An old Celtic tradition necessitates sharing any news from the household with the farm’s bee hives, whether cheery like a new birth or a wedding celebration or sad like a family death. This ensures the hives’ well-being and continued connection to home and community – the bees are kept in the loop, so to speak, so they stay at home, not swarm and move on to a more hospitable place.
Each little life safe at home, each little life with work still undone.
Good news seems always easy to share; we tend to keep bad news to ourselves so this tradition helps remind us that what affects one of us, affects us all.
These days, with instant news at our fingertips at any moment, bad news is constantly bombarding us. Like the bees in the hives of the field, we want to flee from it and find a more hospitable home.
Our Creator (the ultimate Beekeeper) says personally to each of us: “Here is what has happened. All will be well, dear one. We will navigate your life together.”
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your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose ~e.e.cummings from “[somewhere I have never traveled,gladly beyond]
Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is a way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples, and pears. Show them how to cry when pets and people die. Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. And make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself. ~William Martin from The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents
Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity. ~John Ruskin
It is at the edge of a petal that love waits. ~William Carlos Williams from Spring and All
Here is the fringy edge where elements meet and realms mingle, where time and eternity spatter each other with foam. ~Annie Dillard from Holy the Firm
We tend to look for love only inside the heart of things, watching it pulse as both showpiece and show off, reverberating from deep within, yet loud enough for all the world to bear witness.
But as I advance on this life’s road, I find love lies waiting at the periphery of my heart, fragile and easily torn as a petal edge – clinging to the fringe of my days, holding on through storms and trials.
This love is ever-present, protects and cherishes, fed by fine little veins which branch from the center to the tender margins of infinity.
It is on that delicate edge of forever I dwell, waiting to be fed, trembling with anticipation.
It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate. This isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak. ~Mary Oliver“Praying” from Thirst
Now that I’m free to be myself, who am I? Can’t fly, can’t run, and see how slowly I walk. Well, I think, I can read books.
Well, I can write down words, like these, softly.
It doesn’t happen all of a sudden, you know.
“Doesn’t it?” says the wind, and breaks open, releasing distillation of blue iris.
And my heart panics not to be, as I long to be, the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle. ~Mary Oliver from The Blue Iris
To plunge headlong into the heart of a blossom, its amber eyes inscrutably focusing on your own, magnified by a lens of dew. Whose scent, invisible, drowns you in opulence, and for which you can find nothing adequate to say.
You sense that you are loved wholly, yet are quite unable to understand why. But then, you lift your face, creased with the ordinary, to a heaven that is breaking into blue, and find your contentment utterly beyond telling, unspeakable, uncontained. ~Luci Shaw from “Speechless” from Sea Glass
Now that I’m free to be myself, I’m also free to tell about how creased with the ordinary, I notice things I passed by before.
Fleeting moments become more precious, as I long to be – while time pours through my fingers.
It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it doesn’t have to be glistening raindrops, but today it is both…
I fall headlong into their depths, through a doorway into thanks, lost in their earthbound ethereal beauty, to a heaven that is breaking into blue.
Oh, and so grateful to Mary and Luci, I am no longer a speechless receptacle without words…
The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely. ~Louisa May Alcott
And as you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged on the shingly beach of a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens. ~Stephen Graham from The Gentle Art of Tramping
That great door opens on the present, illuminates it as with a multitude of flashing torches. ~Annie Dillard (in response to the above quote) from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
About living in the country? …peace can deafen one, beauty surprise No longer. There is only the thud Of the slow foot up the long lane At morning and back at night. ~R.S. Thomas
Ever since I started noticing how beautiful are the most humble things and the most humble people, I realized a great door was opened to me: the door to my own soul and my own happiness. I need go no further than my own back yard.
I must not forget my astonishment at the beauty around me even on the grayest of days, trudging the barnyard path to exhausted chores.
If ever I fail to see what is right in front of me, this Lord’s grace-given gift to my eyes and ears and arms, I do not deserve to put on boots or hold a pitchfork.
Lyrics Praise to the Lord of the small broken things Who sees the poor sparrow that cannot take wing Who loves the lame child and the wretch in the street Who comforts their sorrows and washes their feet
Praise to the Lord of the faint and afraid Who girds them with courage and lends them His aid He pours out his spirit on vessels so weak That the timid can serve and the silent can speak
Praise to the Lord of the frail and the ill Who heals their afflictions or carries them till They leave this tired frame and to paradise fly To never be sick and never to die Never die
Praise him, O praise Him all ye who live Who’ve been given so much and can so little give Our frail lisping praise God will never despise He sees His dear children through mercy-filled eyes
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The moment when, after many years of hard work and a long voyage you stand in the centre of your room, house, half-acre, square mile, island, country, knowing at last how you got there, and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees unloose their soft arms from around you, the birds take back their language, the cliffs fissure and collapse, the air moves back from you like a wave and you can’t breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing. You were a visitor, time after time climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming. We never belonged to you. You never found us. It was always the other way round. ~Margaret Atwood “The Moment”from Eating Fire
The farm where we live has fields on a hill with woods. Evening walks are listening walks, with birdsong now identifiable thanks to our Merlin app on our phones.
There is always plenty to hear.
It is an immense relief to listen to something other than talking heads on TV or podcasts. The voices we hear in the woods remain unconcerned about politics, hantavirus outbreaks or the state of the economy.
I also listen to the sound of breezes rustling the tree branches, the crunch of sticks and dry leaves under my boots, and more often than not, woodpeckers tapping away at tree trunks, eagles chittering from the treetops, and unseen owls visiting back and forth from their hidey-holes.
So, like the outside world, our farm does have its own talking heads and drama, but I know who I will listen to and where I prefer to hang out if given a choice.
I know I’m only a visitor to their world – there is no owning this land, only temporary stewardship. We will be invited back as long as we tread softly.
Until next time then, until next time.
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