There are many ways to connect. To find solidarity with. To touch and be touched.
A bottle-fed, weeks-old goat is placed in my arms and nibbles my ear. A few minutes later I hear a snore and realize she has fallen asleep in my arms, silky head resting in the crook of my neck.
My friend and I are racing along a hilly trail through the trees, breathing hard. I see a dark pink color near my foot and stop abruptly. It is a patch of trillium flowers just opened on the forest floor.
I hear a sound, loud buzzing, as I approach my flower-filled deck. Dozens of mason bees are doing their good spring work, dashing from pansy to strawberry flower to geranium to lilac.
As a client shares a story about a powerful dream, a violet-green swallow presses himself against the eaves above my window. His tail feathers are pressed against the glass so I get an up-close, inside-out view.
Along the trillium trail, I step to the side to avoid stepping on a baby bird. But it turns out to be a clump of feathers, only—gray and downy—attached to a moss-covered stick.
In the fancy cultivated garden a spot of bright blue doesn’t belong on the beauty bark walkway. I stoop down to find half an eggshell; I look up into the maple tree overhead to search for a nest. After a careful walk back to the car and then into the house I place the shell in the center of my nature calendar to mark May 1st.
As I pull into the driveway just past dusk, I see the rabbit who lives under the goat shed standing upright on hind legs in the middle of the grass. Though the other times I have seen her she flees quickly from my presence, this night she remains statue-esque as I talk to her a while before entering my home.
I inhale the sharp, tangy scent of cut grass tinged with a hint of apple and decayed cherry blossom and close my eyes in reverence, in gratitude.
These are all but brief encounters, and yet there is a lingering, persistent quality of deep presence that carries on within me for days (or years). These simple moments are potent for they are the stuff of abiding connection to the unfoldings in the natural world. They are, indeed, the interconnection with nature that can and will sustain us in the brightest or darkest moment.
All blog images created & photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2019 JenniferJWilhoit/TEALarbor stories. AllRightsReserved."
