Rain, Rain

Early autumn is a wet time of year here. Rain-heavy clouds spin out of the North, West, South, and loosen their burdens before passing on. Sometimes the sky closes and the sun disappears for weeks on end. It can be a gloomy, grim time for those still hoping to cling to a bit more summer.

But I love it. Granted, the prolonged rain can be problematic and tiresome, and I do miss the sunshine, but it is so beautiful. Colors are deep and vibrant, washed clean by the rain and unbleached by the sun. It’s cool enough for a flannel shirt in the morning, a small fire in the evening, cups of hot tea and cocoa and steaming bowls at every meal. A light but incessant breeze soughs in the trees, and I am home. These sounds, smells, colors, conditions echo in my heart and settle with the well-worn comfort of old jeans. I am home.

Rain drips from the eaves, pecks on the roof like a flock of birds. Shallow puddles bleed out from the grass, fill the tracks of the driveway, huddle in small pockets on the sidewalks. Trees and bushes swing with the breeze, dance with a gray sky. It is both bleak and beautiful. And I love it.

Photo courtesy of Harshad Sharma.

Armchair Swimmers

I have returned from my trip, which took longer than I expected and was much harder to re-settle from than I’d anticipated.

My first full day back, I didn’t even bother to unpack. I grabbed a couple folding chairs, a good friend, and headed for the creek. The weatherman had called for clouds all day but they were gone by ten o’clock so we waded into the creek in full sunshine and set up our chairs where the water ran wide and shallow. I jostled a position upstream of a large rock I planned to use as a footrest for my feet and my friend dug a hole for his. We lounged, surrounded by gurgling brightness, and talked for hours about anything we could think of.

Sports, religion, politics, the economy, the future… I love good conversations with good friends. They keep me sane.

We finally retired in the afternoon, grabbed a bite of picnic lunch sitting under great pine trees, and discovered we were sunburned. Apparently neither of us were as tanned as we would have liked to believe. We spent the rest of the day in the shade, edging along gravel bars to follow the shadows. At times neither of us would talk for an hour or more.

Sometimes silence is perfect conversation, too. And it is wholly necessary for my well-being, the more the better.

There is no silence, of course. The air was full of sound from the creek and birdsong and wind in the trees and insects busily buzzing at their errands. But I consider that music, and also an essential.

As the day drew its shades we headed home, a good day gone all too quickly. But more lie ahead. That is the important thing.

Of Beauty and Butterflies

I went hiking the other day. It was breezy but warm and the nicest day we’d had for a stretch, and I wanted to get out and enjoy it. So I went to a bit of national woods not far away and walked a trail I’ve been through several times but had not visited in years. Much was the same, of course, and much was different.

An ice storm this winter hit the area hard. The trail often diverted from its original route to bypass tangles of downed trees and even where it did not divert there were colonies of stumps wearing skirts of sawdust. Some of the oldest trees in the area lay on the ground in cross-crossing lines with their roots in the air. It was almost painful to walk through. But there were protected areas, pristine little pockets behind hillsides and sweeping ridgelines, sheltered from the wind that accompanied the ice and caused most of the damage. In one of these pockets I stopped to rest.

A large shelf of rock spotted with mosses and lichens ran exposed through a narrow meadow-like opening on the steep hillside. It made an excellent seat. Surrounded by oak and pine, cedar and hickory, it was perfectly calm and flooded with warm mid-day sunshine. A small bronze-colored lizard with long dark stripes peeked out from under a tiny overhang in the rock that I hadn’t even noticed beforehand but vanished when I finally had to shift on my stone seat. A large patch of wildflowers swarmed the lower end of the clearing where the shelf of rock melted back into dark earth, violets and sheep shire, buttercups and phlox, false garlic and bluets scattered on the ground like confetti. Among their bright blooms, which drifted into the woods amid lazy sunbeams like something straight out of a Thomas Kincade painting, a few little butterflies hovered and flitted. Some were solid yellow, others colorfully spotted, and the smallest of them were white with orange piping at the edges of their wings. They tasted this blossom, then that one, seemingly unable to choose a favorite, dancing from one spring buffet to the next.

“They get to live their whole lives here,” I mused. “All they will ever know is this tiny paradise.”

I envied them. Beautiful and perfect, they danced on air. Their lives were short but enchanted, if only for one untainted afternoon. But, then, so was mine. I sighed and moved on, climbing farther and farther up the hilll until the trail broke out of the woods and wound the narrow edge of a bluff high above the crystal clear creek I had left just below the parking area. It was a lovely vista, a wide panorama of the creek valley and hills beyond, all broken ranges and steep hollows just beginning to don the golden-green cloak of spring. Redbuds flamed in purple brilliance and dogwoods floated like drifts of snow in the trees. I tried to soak it in, memorize every wrinkle of the hills, every sharp edge of rimrock, every curve of the creek so I could pull the memory out for later use and relive the simple glory of stillness and spring on a rocky bluff outcrop. I think I managed pretty well.

So now, even on long dark days when the sun does not shine for me, I can recall these memories and cling to the knowledge that it is not only butterflies who dance in the air and lead lives full of beauty.

Lessons From Sam

Several years ago I made a big move, started a new job, and met people who would forever change me. It’s funny sometimes how the people around you can effect your life so quietly, so subtly that you don’t even notice it, perhaps for years. For me, no one changed my life like Sam.

I was fresh off a small college campus, still wet behind the ears and, truth be told, a little green around the gills at the chance I was taking. Eighteen hundred miles from home, fourteen hundred miles from the nearest person I knew, I had an old car, a new job, and one big wild hope. My first week on the job I met Sam.

I worked for a small outfit owned by a sweet, aging couple who knew the value of a dollar and frugally kept as many as they could. To that end, they hired Sam to mow the business’s grounds and do odd jobs as needed. “He’s a little slow,” the owner told me in preparation. “And he doesn’t mean any harm, but he’s a big guy. Sometimes he doesn’t know his own strength.” I immediately thought of the character George in Of Mice and Men and was a bit afraid. I didn’t relish the thought of working around someone with reduced mental capacity and potentially dangerous machinery. All nerves and ugly imaginary scenarios, I waited for him to appear.

When he did, a large mop of dark hair towering above his companions, I watched him closely to see how he acted around the owner and other workers. And discovered my fears were completely unfounded. Instead of a menacing hulk I found a polite young man who was quick to smile and who wanted to help in any way if he could. In a few weeks time, I was looking forward to his visits. My co-workers were nice enough, good people, but seeing Sam walk in was like sunshine breaking through heavy clouds. Somehow he always brought a sense of joy with him. But some of my co-workers never quite got used to him, never got over their awkwardness with him, and all I can say is that the loss was completely theirs.

Sam had a hard time with names, especially of those he didn’t see on a regular basis, but he knew the people behind them. The owner equated his mind to that of an eight-year-old and he often stuttered, especially around strangers, but was surprisingly clever at times and had a wonderful sense of humor. He was a bit backward and shy but never spoke an ill word of anything and always did the best he could. I loved Sam. He was like a big little brother to me.

I worked with Sam for three years before a change in jobs moved me out of the area. Over the next few years I visited on occasion but then moved farther away and have not been back since. I often think of Sam and wonder how he is, if he has any friends in the workers there now. I miss him. I miss his smile and his innocence and the joy he carried. The way he said my name like we hadn’t seen each other in months and he was thrilled to see me, even if we’d worked side by side the day before. I miss the pure goodness of him. In a confused and ugly world, he was such a calm and beautiful island.

And Sam taught me a lot, like not judging people before I got to know them. He taught me that some people are worthy of your trust and that an open heart feels lighter than a closed one. And that friendship is not limited by age or social class or IQ or anything else. He gave me confidence by accepting me exactly as I was; showed me that it was perfectly okay to just be myself; reminded me that great things (like happiness) can be found in small acts (like picking berries with a friend). But more than anything I think he taught me to just be happy with what I’ve got. Period.

I’ve had a lot of friends over the years, some very good close friends, but nobody was ever quite like Sam. I got to missing him again and just thought I’d share that.

Boykin Creek

I recently had the opportunity to visit the East Texas Piney Woods region and found a lovely little spot on Boykin Creek. It was a short visit, unfortunately, but so very pleasant while it lasted.

Boykin Creek was dammed back in the 1930′s by the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps, one of the many Depression-era work programs created by then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt). The result was a small lake with dark water and a fascinating secret: here there be springs. According to locals, several small springs feed into the lake bottom and others dot the parkland, preserved as part of the National Forest complex. Three can be found within easy walking distance of the main parking area and the largest is quite an attraction.

Filling the immediate area with a sulphurous hint, the spring bubbles out of sandstone rocks and tumbles into a small stream, doubling its output just before it runs into Boykin Creek a few hundred yards below the dam. And there, at their convergence, I found a lovely little slice of life.

Two long, white sandbars lined the clear water’s edge, under pines and oaks and magnolias that towered overhead and rocked back and forth in the insistent breeze. At stream level it was nearly quiet, just a light puff of air now and then invading the streambed, cupped between rocky, sandy banks some eight feet tall. The banks and meandering path of streambed cornered the sandbars in an almost invisible location, one I stumbled on merely by chance. And immediately fell in love with.

At the first opportunity I retreated to these sandbars, shed my footwear in the warm afternoon sunshine, and rolled my pantlegs in preparation of exploration. I waded back and forth across the cold creek, reveling in the soft sand under my feet, between my toes. It’s been years since I was barefoot on the sand. Oh how I missed it.

After wading to my heart’s content (it took a while), I padded across a wide sandbar and sat on the downed trunk of a large pine. The air was fragrant and light, the sand warm and dappled with sunshine, and I was unspeakably happy to just sit there and stare at the treetops nodding high above.

No computers or televisions coerced me into an electronic stupor, no radios blared music at earth-shaking volumes, there was just water and earth and trees, sun and clouds and wind. And me.

The perfect afternoon inevitably ended – and much, much too soon – but not before I had reclaimed some part of me I had unknowingly misplaced these last several months.

It was exactly what I needed, when I needed it. Thank you Boykin Creek.

The Bee

Yesterday was gorgeous here. It felt like late spring, a good three months early. Since it was so nice out, I spent part of the beautiful day in a swing, basking in the dazzling sunshine in just my shirt sleeves. The swing is free-standing, upholstered in canvas, and seats three people but I swung there to and fro alone. Or nearly. A loving cat (Bandy) came to visit, jumping into the seat and sharing my cozy cove of sun-lit swing. After an hour or so another visitor came along.

I can’t say he was a stranger – we’d met a couple hours before at a picnic lunch just across the yard – but he had only been passing through then. This time he sat a spell. On my hand. A little bee, as nice as you please, lit on my wrist and preened unhurriedly in the warm afternoon. I moved slowly, he made no threat to sting, and we spent a lovely half-hour together.

He was so very beautiful. For many long moments I studied the downy hairs on his thorax, the neat black and yellow stripes on his abdomen, his minute antennae and large dark eyes. I found myself fairly smitten. He tickled the fine hairs on my arm and hand as he ambled around, exploring the strange scape, searching for the perfect angle of sun. We had a lovely little conversation while the cat looked on in sleepy apathy. What wonderful neighbors, I thought.

But he had only stopped to visit and eventually bade us farewell. With a tiny shirring of wings he lifted off and buzzed away, headed vaguely west in the bright slant of afternoon.

I only hope I am so lucky as to enjoy more such days in the weeks and months and years to come.

Shine On

I love sleeping in the sunshine.  It doesn’t happen very often, but on the occasions when a day off happens to overlap good weather and a few hours of free time, I put those beams to good use.  During the winter it’s an indoor affair, searching out the slanting afternoon light through empty windowpanes, but throughout the spring, summer, and fall there are many places I can go and curl up in quiet, sunny places:  a rocky outcrop, a copse of pines, a fallow field.  For me, few things carry such simple pleasure.

It’s kind of like camping.  I love to tent, sleeping under the moon and stars, and sleeping in the sun is just a napping version of the same thing.  Being outdoors, no one around, the wonderful warmth of the sun…  It brings such peace.  I can’t explain why but I sleep better, it’s more restive, and I wake more refreshed than ever. 

And it makes me feel free.  When I sleep in the sun it feels like nothing else in the world can touch me, none of the worries or conerns or problems of everyday life.  So long as I’m dozing in those warm beams, all is right in the cosmos.  Maybe it’s a placebo, just a psychological construct, but I couldn’t care less.  Ten minutes in the grass and leaves and sun beats out ten hours of tossing and turning in a bed.

And until the snow comes, you’ll still find me grabbing naps in the sun.