deep gratitude for the quiet, the beauty, the wildness
I woke up this morning to the trees drenched in this gorgeous yellow, orange light. We can’t exactly see the sunrise or sunset but only glimmers of it through the trees, as we are very much in the forest. But as I stood outside in the yard with the dogs, I just followed the light with my eyes all the way around the perimeter.
As I stood there, I felt a deep reverence for this place that I live. A deep, deep gratitude for the quiet, the beauty, the wildness of it all.
I am reading a book recommended to me by my friend Ashley called, “Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country.” Pam Houston’s writing reminds me of the first time I read Annie Dillard, just pouring over each word and page.
Every few sentences nodding yes, though there’s no one around me to see. Just recognizing her experience and some kind of knowing that only a brilliant author or artist can touch within me.
This passage brought me to straight sobbing tears. I even covered my mouth so I didn’t alarm Angel and Matt downstairs watching a movie.
“I have spent most of my life outside, but for the last three years, I have been walking five miles a day, minimum, wherever I am, urban or rural, and can attest to the magnitude of the natural beauty that is left.
Beauty worth seeing, worth singing, worth saving, whatever that word can mean now. There is beauty in a desert, even one that is expanding. There is beauty in the ocean, even one that is on the rise. And even if the jig is up, even if it is really game over, what better time to sing about the earth than when it is critically, even fatally wounded at our hands.
Aren’t we more complex, more interesting, more multifaceted people if we do? What good has the hollow chuckle ever done anyone? Do we really keep ourselves from being hurt when we sneer instead of sob?
If we pretend not to see the tenuous beauty that is still all around us, will it keep our hearts from breaking as we watch another mountain be clear-cut, as we watch North Dakota, as beautiful a state as there ever was, be poisoned for all time by hydraulic fracturing? If we abandon all hope right now, does that in some way protect us from some bigger pain later? If we never go for a walk in the beetle-killed forest, if we don’t take a swim in the algae-choked ocean, if we lock grandmother in a room for the last ten years of her life so we can practice and somehow accomplish the survival of her loss in advance, in what ways does it make our lives easier? In what ways does it impoverish us?
We are all dying, and because of us, so is the earth. That’s the most terrible, the most painful in my entire repertoire of self-torturing thoughts. But it isn’t dead yet and neither are we.
Are we going to drop the earth off at the vet, say goodbye at the door, and leave her to die in the hands of strangers? We can decide, even now, not to turn our backs on her in her illness. We can still decide not to let her die alone.”
― Pam Houston, Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country
I don’t have much to say today except to share this with you. Take a look around, blow a kiss to this beautiful earth of ours and love her. What a gift it is to be here and that gift we have certainly abused and taken for granted.
Let us do less harm. To Mother Earth, to ourselves, to one another.
I’ll be journaling on this -
What can I appreciate here around me?
What am I paying attention to? Noticing?
How can I do less harm to myself?
How can I do less harm to others?
How can I do less harm to Mother Earth?
And lastly, how can I honor her daily?
