LaceCap Hydrangea…

“The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

― Wendell Berry, The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

Spring has come to The Chesapeake. The mornings and evenings are still cool and delightful. I often sit watching the return of the veteran osprey to their nests and the young ones in search of a mate to make a nest and raise a new generation. I spot eagles and herons fishing, amazed at their grace and comfort and ease in their world. I admit to a certain amount of jealousy.

In that magical time just before the sun rises I hear the migration of the geese as they make their way back to Canada and pause to feed in the surrounding fields and creeks. The other day I watched a red fox as he lurked in the stillness of the brush along the water’s edge and an otter swim across, leaving lovely ripples in his wake. Along the sandy shore a ground hog lumbered along, shaking himself as if trying to fully awake from the winter’s slumber.

Living so close to Nature gives me peace. I do not suffer the world of man well at all. I cannot understand the meanness and ugliness that abounds there. Well, I understand that much of it is fear and that fear is fueled by people who know how to take advantage of this fear and give people a justification for their hateful actions.

Understanding the mechanisms does not help explain the lack of courage to educate and listen to your heart and to take risks and chances to change both ourselves and thus the world. So many people hide behind these masses of people who wear masks of evil to try and scare others into joining their journey of negativity. The sorrow I feel wells up and threatens to drown me. I have no answers. I can only do whatever it takes to survive and to help those I can as I journey. For me it is my photography and my musings. I try to make a difference in “my small, individual way”.