Hope Mosaic

That middle photo says it all: hope. Sometimes it’s hard to find when looking at the world around us, and even harder to hold onto once it’s found … but if you look hard enough, it’s there. Always has been and always will be.

My thanks to the Flickr members who supplied the photos: 1. Brewer’s Black Bird, 2. Hidden, 3. “The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.”, 4. ~ You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away (Thank You, Paul McCartney, John Lennon & Eddie Vedder), 5. {we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars}, 6. hard worker, 7. flower black and white, 8. Natural Bridges Sunset, Black and White – Santa Cruz, California, 9. hidden

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.

Technicolor Life

My favorite color is blue. It has been for many many years. But I find that the older I get, the harder it is to pick just one; all colors are beautiful. I never liked chartreuse until I noticed that sunlight in fresh spring grass carried that color. Gray never seemed exciting until I saw it churning in the sky and ocean after a storm. I was never very fond of pink until those tiny, delicate crocuses bloomed in front of the house, and the rose bush shed great handfuls of bright pink petals on the sidewalk.

Somewhere, everything is beautiful. Maybe not in the same place or at the same time as anything else, but every thing has its own beauty. I may not enjoy a wine-colored shirt, but wine-colored autumn leaves or wine edging on green ivy is a different story.

Years ago a close friend and published poet urged me to write a poem about color (I fancied I had a bit of talent back then). There were rules, of course, to make the process more interesting, including that the entire poem could contain only one basic color and anything mentioned must pertain to it. To really challenge myself (cocky as I was) I chose what I thought was the most boring color in the crayon box (brown) and spent several days refining my little creative attempt. The results were hardly better than mediocre but it changed my perspective completely. In looking for “brown” things worth writing about, I found unexpected beauty everywhere.

I’ve never stopped looking for similar unexpected beauties, and have never stopped finding them.