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Welcome! This is a place to share how we celebrate & deepen our relationship to Nature. Here you will find stories, images, & ideas about wilderness, human nature, & soulfulness. Drawing from the experiences of everyday living, the topics on this blog include: forays into the natural world, the writing life, community service, meditation, creativity, grief & loss, inspiration, & whatever else emerges from these. I invite you on this exploration of the wild within & outside of us: the inner/outer landscape.



Friday, September 11, 2020

Gifts in the Chore: Journal Notes

Ash on the window sill, blood red sun rising above the treetops, blue overhead turned dirty, and 

pervasive smoke: “Unhealthy air quality. Stay indoors.” Though altering for us, these conditions are far less oppressive than those being faced by the fire victims east and south of us: blessings for safety to you, dear wildfire sufferers!

 

Amidst this, a chore:

 

Up the long-hilled driveway, lugging large recycling and trash bins across cobbled gravel

A normal task turned breathing-rigorous in the smoky haze. 

 

But, the blessings on just one driveway round trip (house to road) were plentiful: 

 

A healthy hawk made a low flight over the dormant tan field.

 

The coyote “boy” sauntered into the back yard, licked his lips and jowls, and stood jauntily there.

 

The white crescent moon hovered like a morning prayer high in the western sky.

 

A small patch of blue opens in a corner of the northern firmament: a tear-away in the blanket of thick gray “ash-mosphere.” 

 

White butterflies (reminding me of the esteemed yet personable Robert Michael Pyle) dance around my head (as I reached out my hand to stroke or offer a perch).

 

One especially long banana slug seems out of place in today’s dust-drenched gravel.

 

Lavender blossom lingerers whose lengths I caress each time I pass, entice me again and again to offer my scent-infused palm to my nose. 

 

Small geographies of yellowing leaves punctuate the landscape of maple and alder canopies. 

 

Fat soft bees, just a few remaining as summer’s floral bounty fades, swirl atop the once-blossom-drenched stems.

 

One lone eager wasp and all his kin – who I (admittedly) feel grateful to be able to bid adieu to for the next two seasons – makes one last, hopeful dash at nest-building.  

 

The spider now clinging to the window above where the trash bins abut the house is an annual late-summer promise of autumn.  

 

And as I walk, I also meander through the week-old memory of another fantastic barred owl encounter: up-close, with prolonged eye contact, murmuring sweet nothings to him. I marvel at the significance, or symbolism, of two rare encounters in the span of less than three weeks.

 

On a late summer day, in the haze of firesmoke and a pandemic:

 

These are just some of the gifts offered in a ten-minute journey down and back up the driveway.


 



All blog images created & photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2020 Jennifer J. Wilhoit/TEALarbor stories. All Rights Reserved."