Shooting the Evening

As promised, if later than I had planned, due to technical problems, a whole new post.

I’ve always enjoyed spending quiet time just soaking in a good evening. Watching a brilliant sunset, picking out the first stars, listening to the sounds of frogs, crickets, cicadas calling. My perch usually takes the shape of porch swing but I once spent a fantastic evening at a picnic table in the Midwest that rivals the best of them.

We drove miles down a dirt road to a small patch of rolling farm country and pasture land in the middle of Kansas. It had been hot that day, over 100`F, and we had covered many, many miles on a trip headed West in a car with no air conditioning. We stopped not long before sunset, seeking refuge in the shade of a group of small trees near a picnic table. A light breeze drew across the hillside and shallow valley below and I thought perhaps we had stumbled on a small piece of Heaven.

We moved the picnic table into the shade and ate a bite while birds stalked tiny prey in the grass and flew in looping patterns over the grassy field a few hundred feet away. Backlit by the sinking sun, they snapped insects out of the air and sang their successes. The tall grass below them and the bugs they sought burned golden in the sunset light, gilded brightly against a dark line of trees bounding the far side of the field. The breeze was cool, the air dry, and we sat in perfect comfort watching the show.

Just up the road, an old windmill creaked and bumped through its slow and deliberate revolutions. Cattle grazed in the surrounding pasture. From time to time they bawled and lowed and wandered to the tank below the windmill for a drink of water, water delivered from somewhere underground to a quiet Kansas pasture by workings that had weathered there for more years than I and my traveling companion had been alive. Its steady sound was as natural as a creek gurgling over cobbles. I found it unspeakably comforting.

As evening drew the shades and the birds and bugs found their homes for the night, we sat reversed on the seats, our backs propped against the tabletop, and trained our eyes farther upward. Constellations materialized in the clear evening sky. Bugs called in a low chorus from the grass and trees. The windmill creaked reassuringly. And we stayed up until after midnight talking about the world, our lives, and counting shooting stars.

We left early the next morning, dawn still caught in the dewey grasses. We had miles to turn. But I left a piece of my heart on that hillside, and I took a piece of Kansas with me when we went.

It’s the reason I love to travel. It’s a cornerstone of the hope I hold for myself and this world. It’s something pure and simple and beautiful, and I saw it. I didn’t just look at it with open eyes, I saw it. And every time I see a place, a person, an object, I am forever changed … usually for the better.

Blue World

I love to swim. For just about as long as I can remember, water and I have been inseparable, and it seems as though the older I get the more I yearn for it. I was spoilt from a young age, of course. We grew up just on a hill above a creek, then moved to a hill between a creek and a river, and when I was older I spent ten glorious years at the ocean’s edge. As I said, spoilt.

We went camping recently to one of our favorite spots replete with rocky bluffs and clear water … and gorgeous swimming holes. All natural, these holes change depth and breadth and flow as quickly as the stream that feeds them. Last year, a freak flash flood scooped out the creekbed to solid rock, leaving the swimming holes an average of seven feet on the deep side. Lined with rocky outcrops perfect for cannonballs and shallow dives, it’s near paradise for a water-lover.

So while camping I spent as much time in the water as possible, skipping meals and cutting sleep short to lounge in the medium I feel I was made for. We even went for a few night dips when the heat and humidity drove us from our beds. Day by day my tan reddened to full-fledged burn but I stayed and splashed and swam and dove like a frog perfectly content in its pond. Until it came time to leave.

Leaving is always the hardest part. The last swim, the endmost dive, the irretrievable closing of blue-green water as you step out and begin that final climb up the gravel bar of the shallow side toward camp, and vehicle, and civilization. How I hate to leave.

There is a part of me always fearful that “this will be the last time,” that our next visit will find locked gates, barricaded roads, large warnings posted on trees and signposts that the area is closed henceforth. It’s happened before. As kids, the land trust surrounding our best swimming hole was purchased and access closed off without forewarning. We drove up one sweltering summer morning to find padlocked iron gates across the road and to this day it has not re-opened. Two years ago there was an E. coli scare on our now-favorite creek and accessible portions were closed to all water activities for most of the summer. It was an aberration, state employees said, a weird combination of low rainfall, limited water sources, and large watersheds. But they almost closed it again this year after a long dry spell.

Civilization creeps in. Wilderness recedes. But I am grateful for the times I am privileged to visit and enjoy, unrestrainedly, these watery wonders. I look forward to the next time I can brace my feet, aim my hands, and erupt into a liquid world full of silver bubbles and cold sunbeams, gravity-defying weightlessness and dusk-blue infinities.

For our earthen world today, good water is a miracle in itself.

Storm Sunset

A few days ago a small thunderstorm swept through the area to my West and put on quite a show. I enjoy non-destructive thunderstorms – have since I was a kid – and seeing them from a couple miles away allows for some fantastic viewing. Feeding off the late afternoon heat, the storm boiled into the sky and passed near enough to drive me indoors with rain. With sunset in full gear and the rain easing off, I walked to a small clearing near the house and watched as the storm tracked neatly to the South leaving a perfectly clear sky behind.

I should have taken my camera, but once the show got started I wasn’t about to leave. Nature offers few intermissions. As the sun slid over the horizon of trees and hills to the West and the thunderstorm edged away South, rays of light caught the upper portions of the stormclouds and painted them gold. The lower clouds faded from orange and red to maroon and gray with a beauty and sublety that fixed me in place. Occasional flickers of lightning brightened the main cloud column. Evening mist – steam – filled the rambling valley I overlooked and a crescent moon finished the masterpiece of land and sky in a bright sliver against the deepening blues of coming night. Only a madman would have left to fetch a camera.

It would have been beautiful on film, no doubt, a stunning photo of summer evening, but paper and pixels could never do it justice. There are some things that eyes need to see for themselves, that hands need to feel and lungs need breathe. How do you accurately describe the taste of a ripe peach? Words, visuals, images only go so far.

So I stood in rain-peppered awe following the storm’s southerly push and the sun’s splendid farewell until color had faded from the uppermost tip of the anvil cloud and the moon ruled the dark sky. It was so beautiful. At times like that I feel filled with child-like wonder, as if some part of the world were suddenly new again and I got to experience it first-hand.

I suppose in a way it was. Every day is new. Every living thing grows and changes. Non-living things are acted upon and altered. It is an ever-shifting world so, yes, I suppose every thing is always just a little bit new.

I find that unspeakably encouraging.

God’s Thumbnail

That’s what some call a crescent moon, the thumbnail of God. Kind of goes along with the idea that “He’s got the whole world in his hands.” Whatever your beliefs, it is a beautiful sight.

Last night I stayed up late, until 3 AM today actually. Time flies when you’re having fun, as they say. I hadn’t intended to, had made no plans to do so, but I got in a groove and rode it as far as I dared, which happened to be three hours into the next day. See, I love to write. You’d never know it, coming to this blog – my organizational skills sometimes leave much to be desired and I’ve been unexpectedly busy since last October – but I write in some form nearly every day.

Last night I got on a roll and didn’t want to stop. See, it’s been a long time since I felt like I really connected with the old muse and had more to jot down than just a line or two. It’s been years. It’s tantamount to a chocoholic being limited to one Hershey’s kiss every day for two and a half years, then suddenly one night finding a great stash with case upon case of kisses and all other manner of chocolatey goodness. When I found my word stash, I wasn’t about to close the door and walk away after just one treat.

Which is how we return to God’s thumbnail. About 2:00 AM or so, I noticed an orange glow in the trees to the East and dismissed it as a neighbor’s polelight. I kept writing. In the vicinity of 2:30 AM I realized it was a low crescent moon, tinted by the atmosphere and just beginning to rise. I watched it for a while, still half-obscured by treetops, and then went back to my words.

Beauty is such a simple thing. At 3:00 AM I left one thing of beauty for another, walking outside and standing in the yard under a hot, silent sky to stare at a sliver of dusty planetary satellite in its slowly fading orbit. And I was awed.

I can see why some call it the thumbnail of God.