Tag: nature

Heaven in a Wild Flower

barnstormingblog8 Comments

dandy42615

dandy426156

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the Palm of your Hand,
and Eternity in an Hour.

When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light 
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night 
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day

~William Blake from “Auguries of Innocence”

To fall head long into the depths
of a dandelion puff ball,
captured in its intricacy,
a seeded symmetry
lined with delicate dewdrop drizzle.

To know the cosmos is contained
within the commonplace,
the God of Light and Living Water
no further away
than my back yard.
~EPG

dandy426153

dandy426155

dandy426152

dandy426157

Pink Synchrony

barnstormingblog2 Comments

dogwood3_

pinkfrombelow

After all, I don’t see why I am always asking for private, individual, selfish miracles when every year there are miracles like <white> dogwood.   (I insert pink here)
~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

It started this weekend.  The dogwood tree right in front of our porch, having looked pretty much dead to the world since October, started to bud out in subtle pink petaled blossoms. Last week there had been nothing remarkable whatsoever about the tree.

Suddenly it is a feast for the eyes, almost blinding in its brilliance.

Each year the old dogwood startles me.  From dead to brilliant in a mere two weeks.  And not only our tree, but every other pink dogwood within a twenty mile radius has answered the same April siren call: bloom!  bloom your heart out!  dazzle every retina in sight!

And it is done simultaneously on every tree, all the same day, without a sound, without an obvious signal, as if an invisible conductor had swooped a baton up and in the downbeat everything turned pink.  Or perhaps the baton is really a wand, shooting out pink stars to paint these otherwise plain and humble trees, so inconspicuous the rest of the year.

Ordinarily I don’t dress up in finery like these trees do.  I prefer inconspicuous myself.  But I love the celebratory joy of those trees in full blossom and enjoy looking for them in yards and parks and along sidewalks.

Maybe there is something pink in my closet I can wear.  Maybe conspicuous every once in awhile is exactly what is needed.

 

dogwoodsunset2

Giving Ground

barnstormingblog4 Comments

goldenhaze3

sunrise97144

 

The air was soft, the ground still cold.
In the dull pasture where I strolled
Was something I could not believe.
Dead grass appeared to slide and heave,
Though still too frozen-flat to stir,
And rocks to twitch and all to blur.
What was this rippling of the land?
Was matter getting out of hand
And making free with natural law,
I stopped and blinked, and then I saw
A fact as eerie as a dream.
There was a subtle flood of steam
Moving upon the face of things.
It came from standing pools and springs
And what of snow was still around;
It came of winter’s giving ground
So that the freeze was coming out,
As when a set mind, blessed by doubt,
Relaxes into mother-wit.
Flowers, I said, will come of it.
~Richard Wilbur “April 5, 1974”

 

As the ground softens, so do I.
Somehow winter freeze was comforting
as nothing appeared to change,
so neither did I,
staying stolid and fixed.
But now the fixed is flexing,
steaming in its labor,
and so must I,
giving ground
and birth
to blooms.

sunrise97147

canadianrockies2

daisydawn6

Prepare for Joy: Reason to Lament

barnstormingblog3 Comments

 

plumspring2

cherrybuds2
I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.
Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:—
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.
The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.
If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?
~William Wordsworth from “Lines Written in Early Spring”
As shy spring emerges from this morning’s haze,
I can’t let go the fog of lament
about what we’ve become:
man in the midst of the muck
cannot fix man.
We await the joy of a
heaven-sent rescue —
divinity clothed inside
a human soul.

morningmist22115 jasmine

shadesofgray2

Prepare for Joy: Before It Sours

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

seedy

cherrybuds

hooterjasmine

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         
   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         
   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         
   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?         
   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         
   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         
   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.        
~Gerard Manley Hopkins  “Spring”
Once we were innocent, now no longer.  Cloyed and clouded by sin.
Given a choice, we chose sour over the sweetness we were born to,
giving up walks together in the cool of the day
to feed an appetite never sated.
So Christ made a choice to win us back with His blood
as if we were worthy of Him.
He says we are.  He dies to prove it.
Every day I try to believe it can be sweet again.
grapehyacinth
walnutbud
homerroll2

Igniting the Wild Side

barnstormingblog1 Comment
snow1220138
photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten
Dog sees white. Arctic
light, the bright buzz in the brain
of pure crystal adrenaline. In a flash
he is out the door and across the street
looking for snowshoe hares, caribou, cats.
His wild ancestry ignited, Dog plunges
his nose into snow up to his eyes. He sees
his dreams. Master yells from the front porch
but Dog can’t hear him. Dog hears nothing
except the roar of the wind across the tundra, the ancient
existential cry of wolves, pure, devastating, hungry.
Time for crunchies. Taking many detours, Dog
returns to the porch. Let master think what he
wants. Freedom comes at a price.
~Paul Piper “Dog and Snow”
 Unlike many other parts of the country, we’ve had no snow this winter (yet).  We have been sadly deprived of that moment of  “YES!!” when awakening to that lighter glow through the curtains that suggests a snowy landscape, that blast of fresh chill when heading out the back door to step off the porch into all that clean whiteness, surrounded by pristine silence.   There is something about the complete transformation of the familiar that ignites and warms us back to the wild child inside each of us.
Ever-present mud, our current ubiquitous winter landscape, tends to have an opposite effect on the spirit.   It douses rather than ignites, weighs down rather than lightens up.  It squishes and soils and depresses.   “This too shall pass” I think, as I pull on my mud and muck boots, and then “this sucks” and force myself off the porch into the mire. It is the price to be paid for the freedom in the call of the wild:  into every life a little mud will cling.  Thankfully we are washable.
photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

 

665597_4368770689726_1966144602_o
photo by Josh Scholten

 

coyote3
snowy coyote

 

needabath

Ordinary Sunday

barnstormingblog1 Comment

frozenbrussels

lichenmoss13115

 

Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday.
It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain.
You can feel the silent and invisible life.
~Marilynne Robinson from Gilead

 

As I am covered with Sabbath rest
quiet and deep
as if being planted in soil
just warming from a too long winter~
I know there is nothing ordinary
about what is happening.

I am called by the Light
to push out against darkness,
reaching to the sky
touched by the Source of all
that makes me thrive.

Nothing more extraordinary
than an ordinary Sunday.

webdesign13

webdesign14

sunrise28151

Whispers Made of Thunder

barnstormingblog3 Comments

webdesign7

webdesign2

A poem is a spider web
Spun with words of wonder,
Woven lace held in place
By whispers made of thunder.
~Charles Ghigna

 

As I wander my yard
studying the complexities of web design,
marveling at a tiny creature’s creation
of connection by the slenderest thread.

Through words and pictures I whisper
from my own corner of the web,
waiting patiently for the shimmer of connection:
my rumbling thunder has been seen.
~EPG

webdesign15

webdesign10

webdesign4

Fickle, Freckled

barnstormingblogLeave a comment
lichen2015
frostyweed
frostymoss2
sunrise12115
Glory be to God for dappled things –
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                Praise him.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Pied Beauty”
When, finally in mid-life,  I began to appreciate the unconventional and unnoticed beauty around me, it helped me –freckled, spare and strange– feel beautiful too.  Life is all about the interplay of light and shadow within every moment of our existence, some moments darker than others, some brilliant and dazzling.
So now, each day I reach out to capture the sweet and sour of my surroundings, knowing I’m capturing my own dappled essence.   It is a reflection of the Fathering that loves us even in our fickleness, who possibly could know how?
Glory be.
pampas3
frozenbrussels1
herbgarden1
mignonbark

The Jane Effect

barnstormingblog3 Comments
Cover of "The Jane Effect -- Celebrating Jane Goodall" edited by Dale Peterson and Marc Bekoff
Cover of “The Jane Effect — Celebrating Jane Goodall” edited by Dale Peterson and Marc Bekoff

Jane Goodall turned 80 last year and many of us who have had the privilege to know and work with her were asked to write something as a birthday gift to her.  This compilation of those essays just was published and the essay below of my first meeting with Jane was included.  I have other tales of Gombe that I’ve written over the years on this blog since I was there in 1975, but this is one of my most vivid memories of Jane herself.
~Emily

 

Standing outside a non-descript door in a long dark windowless hallway of offices at the Stanford Medical Center, I took a deep breath and swallowed several times to clear my dry throat. I hoped I had found the correct office, as there was only a number– no nameplate to confirm who was inside.

I was about to meet a childhood hero, someone whose every book I’d read and every TV documentary I had watched. I knocked with what I hoped was the right combination of assertiveness (“I want to be here to talk with you and prove my interest”) and humility (“I hope this is convenient for you as I don’t want to intrude”). I heard a soft voice on the other side say “Come in” so I slowly opened the door.

It was a bit like going through the wardrobe to enter Narnia.  Bright sunlight streamed into the dark hallway as I stepped over the threshold. Squinting, I stepped inside and quickly shut the door behind me as I realized there were at least four birds flying about the room.  They were taking off and landing, hopping about feeding on bird seed on the office floor and on the window sill. The windows were flung wide open with a spring breeze rustling papers on the desk. The birds were very happy occupying the sparsely furnished room, which contained only one desk, two chairs and Dr. Jane Goodall.

She stood up and extended her hand to me, saying, quite unnecessarily, “Hello, I’m Jane” and offered me the other chair when I told her my name. She was slighter than she appeared when speaking up at a lectern, or on film. Sitting back down at her desk, she busied herself reading and marking her papers, seemingly occupied and not to be disturbed.  It was as if I was not there at all.

It was disorienting. In the middle of a bustling urban office complex containing nothing resembling plants or a natural environment, I had unexpectedly stepped into a bird sanctuary instead of sitting down for a job interview. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do or say. Jane didn’t really ever look directly at me, yet I was clearly being observed. So I waited, watching the birds making themselves at home in her office, and slowly feeling at home myself. I felt my tight muscles start to relax and I loosened my grip on the arms of the chair.

There was silence except for the twittering of the finches as they flew about our heads.

After awhile she spoke, her eyes still perusing papers: “It is the only way I can tolerate being here for any length of time. They keep me company. But don’t tell anyone; the people here would think this is rather unsanitary.”

I said the only thing I could think of: “I think it is magical.  It reminds me of home.”

Only then did she look at me. “Now tell me why you’d like to come work at Gombe…”

The next day I received a note from her letting me know I was accepted for the research assistantship. I had proven I could sit silently and expectantly, waiting for something, or perhaps nothing at all, to happen.  For a farm girl who never before traveled outside the United States, I was about to embark on an adventure far beyond the barnyard.