A few days ago I began to see slugs in great quantities after months of no sightings:
I recall the banana slug who slipped into the empty banana peel I laid outside the tent door while the torrential rain pummeled everything around us
Bringing up the trash cans from the road this morning grasshoppers kept popping out of the field beneath my feet, causing me to smile and stoop closer to look:
I remember reading about a scary plague of locusts as a young girl
I heard one lonely frog croaking his heart out, hidden in some moist spot:
I am suddenly transported to my nighttime trek through an Indonesian river helping local scientists locate frogs by flashlight
Over the weekend a fat baby robin crashed into the window, heaved his lovely spotted breast, then flew off before the neighbor’s cat could pounce:
I call to mind every article, essay, chapter, and story I’ve written about bird strikes and the discouraging research about their prognosis post-impact ... even if they do fly off
In the forest, the glare of muted sunlight through haze turned small leaves to smeared blotches of color:
I momentarily lose track of my sweet friend ahead of me on the trail as I become overwhelmed with the giddy autumn-is-coming bliss I feel every day of every year for weeks and weeks between August and November
We had a proper feast, over and over again, as we ate, picked, and then froze several gallons of blackberries this week:
I recall the two-week-long power outage on Vashon years ago that turned my frozen, handpicked berries to black mush at the bottom of my freezer
In nooks and crannies all over my office, this season’s fragrant lavender is drying flat so I can make it into sachets:
My memory journey is shorter, going back just two summers to the glad process of learning how to make my first lavender wand
I plucked one red, one yellow, another yellow, three red, five more succulent yellow cherry tomatoes in rapid succession off my neighbor’s plant last night:
An old man neighbor comes to mind – the one who brought over more cherry tomatoes in big brown sacks than we could stand to eat as little kids
Yesterday the rain licked the dirt road into mud, pounded down the roof, and led me scent-by-drip into something lovely:
I am transported back to a childhood night when I pressed my little-girl nose against the screen of my open bedroom window and sniffed eagerly to catch the scent of rain on Earth
Simply taking in the everyday moments that nature offers can be the thread trailing backward through our lives. Presence now in nature can help us recall a lifetime of connection to - interconnection with – the natural world in all its manifestations. I love that!
All blog images created & photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2019 JenniferJWilhoit/TEALarbor stories. AllRightsReserved."
