Sometimes I wonder, all obsessed with ecotones (edges in nature) as I am: how soon can I detect the transitions that are pretty much always at work in our lives?
I look out and see the buds of leaves on bushes at the forest’s edge. And I wonder when they first appeared on the twigs. I’m out there every single day so why didn’t I see them until they were just about to unfurl – hurl themselves headlong into a life – three seasons’ worth - of leafiness?
I notice how many flickers there are in the yard this week. Five at once that flew up when I opened the door today, another one who thundered the roof with his heavy pecking while I was on a business call this morning. I wonder – did they slowly grow from a solo adventurer of one to adding another and another until they became a flock? Or did they all at once find one another and fly into the yard together. Last year at this time, and all through the summer, there was one guy. One flicker. Just one. One at a time.
Each day my very elderly dog declines a little bit more; the vet calls it a neurological decline. It seems a bit like dementia in humans; a bit like the aging humans who finally need a walker, who move more slowly, who sit longer, and rise less frequently; a bit like a closing in and a narrowing of interests. And I wonder about this too: how can I imagine what it is like for her and how do I adjust my own movements and pace to accommodate her increasing fearfulness?
Transitions are alive and well, robust and strong in their movement toward something else. And I want to be attentive to it, to notice the change on the leading edge in a posture of deep presence; I don’t want to be left standing as the thing occurs and passes before I notice what has happened.
So I cultivate that awareness every day. This is one reason I use the word “simple” in so many blog posts – it is the small and un-momentous stuff that alerts us to change, or even transformation. I cultivate the awareness of edges, of transitions and change, by observing it in nature, by paying attention to the small things and holding them in the light of larger patterns to see the texture and possibility of change-in-progress.
I listen for a different note in the tune;
I watch for a tremor in the muscle;
I taste for a new herb in the dish.
I was thinking too, this morning, that I don’t want to wish the less favorable seasons away (in nature, in life); I don’t want to miss a single one. I don’t want to waste the possibility and potential that each snowflake or flower petal or praying mantis carries: to open me to life, to humble me, to bless me.
So I will be a keeper of, a watcher for, the edges.
(Orig. posted Feb 2018)
