Waylaid by Beauty
"Let the little things amaze you. That's how you'll remember life is a miracle." ~Alexandra Wolf
I love spring and summer with the lush growth and rampant blooming. But I also love Winter's end. There is a feeling at the cusp of any great change, an anticipation of what is to come. But people are impatient. The child wishes to be a teenager, the teen an adult, and people sigh and wish it would "just be spring already!" They don't realize the transition times of our lives are so fleeting that they must be savored or lost forever.
Spring is tickling the air. Birds have been loudly proclaiming their desire for warmer days and the dogs have shaken off winter lethargy. The ground is still, no stirring of bees yet, or creeping of bug. Only the shortest carpet of hardy grass and weed, like the down of a newborn's head. The trees still stand as sculptures made by an austere hand, no leaves to clothe their nakedness.
In the day the trees are statuesque, but in the gloaming they are magical. Gloaming is a beautiful word that I have loved to whisper under my breath since I was a child discovering poetry. It is a poet's word, a term to describe that elusive window of lowering dusk as it verges on nighttime. Another cusp. This is a time that I love to walk.
The earth lays in ever deepening shadows, the dirt road a paler shade of dark, a seemingly glowing path in fading light. All around me rise mammoth trees, branches arching to a sky of deepest blue, a midnight blue, though it is only 6:40 of an evening. Against even the sky's dark hue the ebony of the branches stand out like Japanese brush paintings.
Some, like the silver maple, stand with straight back and all it's many arms raised to heaven with a million praying hands. Others, like the bois de arc and wild plums are twisted and gnarled, with heads covered in sackcloth and backs bent, ancient people of Nineveh under the watching eye of God. And then there are ones like the walnuts with arms akimbo, swaying in every direction. Unlike the supplicant with hands lifted to the Maker, these trees dance with wild abandon, like a naked King David danced for joy before his Lord.
When I was young I would hear the spring wind when it burst through the valley, tossing leaves and testing dead branches for strength. I can remember jumping out my window when I was supposed to be asleep, and running into the yard to wrap my arms around a slender tree that was whipping in the wind. I imagined my arms were around the dryad who lived inside the tree and that we were dancing together the wild dance that spirits do when they hear Spring rush in.
The trees' beauty was so great it made me long to take more pictures as the light lowered. My humble camera and its equally humble user were not capable of such wonders. I tried, even deigning to turn on the flash, thinking some miracle might result. In the sudden shock of luminescence the worshipers were caught, awkward and ungainly.
Instead, I stood for a time and took pictures in my mind, breathing in and out. It was a transcendent peace, except for the NOISE. I am laughing even as I write that. City people always say the country is so quiet. The spring peepers, tiny fingernail sized frogs, were screaming their heads off in every creek, spring, and wet spot in this damp land. They do not merely peep as their names suggests, they yell with jubilation- "Spring is coming! Spring is coming!"
In the woodlands near the creek were more melodious sounds. Low and husky, finished with a feathery trill, two owls were courting. After a moment of cooing and hooting back and forth the sounds were suddenly closer together. More love talking, more gentle persuasion, and the calls were closer yet. If you are ever close enough you can sometimes see them fly to each other, a hop and skip from treetop to treetop, prolonging the anticipation of actual meeting. And often there are feathers or down to be found under their favorite trees, evidence of a lovers' tryst.
Then the coyotes take up the call. This is a discordant but lovely sound to my ears. The howls and yips and barks all language of a close-knit pack. The song of the coyote is a comical one; in Native American lore he is often a trickster, a buffoon. I have seen many an adult coyote stand smirking at something they find amusing. And you can often find their pups' toys up on our highest hill. A chewed plastic bottle, a piece of fabric, even a boot once, well gnawed.
As a child I was terrified of the dark, but only in the house when it was time to sleep. Somehow my mind conferred that the proneness of lying in bed with the light off made me vulnerable to all sorts of unseen terrors. I spent many nights calling for my mother in heart-palpitating terror. Yet I was never scared of the dark outside and all it held.
I could go down to the barn and stay with my Pop as he worked on one vehicle or another and emerge late, much later than my normal bedtime. I would then walk through the field to the gate, past the garden, and up the hill to the house. I did this alone, in pitch darkness, with absolutely no fear. All the sounds of the creatures of the night were a lullaby to me. To be outside in the night was like wearing a comforting cover of darkness, a protective embrace.
All these years later it still feels the same. I walk out and Night's arms open to take me in...
Assault
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
After a year of silence, else I think
I should not have ventured forth alone
At dusk upon this unfrequented road.
I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk
Between me and the crying of the frogs?
Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,
That am a timid woman, on her way
From one house to another!
