This is the time of year when everything outside is fat, ripe, and exuberant. Everywhere I look there is something growing, flying, feeding, swaying, crawling; the natural world is full of infinite possibilities for exploration.
A few mornings ago I took a hike through a patch of forest near my home that I hadn’t yet journeyed. I wound through the sanctuary of trees. Dirt, mud, pine needles underfoot. Even a few of last year’s fallen leaves, in various states of decay: skeletal remains of those most deteriorated were also those that most captivated me … beauty incomparable.
Another morning this week I spied the first swallowtail butterfly of the season. Then a second one appeared and I was lost in the colors, shapes, textures of fluttering wings on petals and that hairy half-caterpillar body … and then it was wings on wings as the two butterflies posed one atop the other for an instant that seemed too brief to be reproduction and too elegant to be a quarrel.
A third morning this week carried a thunder- and rain- storm that pummeled everything … and then stopped as abruptly as it had arrived. The scent of rain was a powerful aphrodisiac: head over heels smitten with and beholden to the lover in every living nonhuman being.
But before all of this was the dawn.
That still-magical moment when the trusty ol’ sun – as fat, ripe, and exuberant right now as everything-nature on the Earth below – just does what it does: rotates into view, an apparition of beauty divine standing up behind the facade of horizon with head aglow.
Dawn: the serenity of human quiet before the day’s din forces its way in.
Dawn: the musical performance of birds, breeze, breath giving thanks for the day.
Dawn: hope and light, expansion and possibility.
Dawn ... to be cherished.
All blog images created & photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2018 JenniferJWilhoit/TEALarbor stories. AllRightsReserved."
