This is the way

I know you’re tired,
but come. This is the way.

~Rumi

I must return the gift

Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us,
giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair,
not because I have my head in the sand,
but because joy is what the earth gives me daily,
and I must return the gift.

~Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

the earth heals us

Earth Day 2020

A native bee visits a stem of prairie blazing star
in the native plant garden my husband and I created
as an oasis for monarch butterflies and other pollinators.

As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.

~Robin Wall Kimmerer

the sweet, simple things

I am beginning to learn
that it is the sweet, simple things of life
which are the real ones after all.

~Laura Ingalls Wilder, (1867 – 1957)

To make a prairie

To make a prairie it takes a clover
and one bee,––
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
if bees are few.

~Emily Dickinson

the face of the fields

I have loved
the feel of the grass under my feet,
and the sound of the running streams by my side.
The hum of the wind in the tree-tops
has always been good music to me,
and the face of the fields has often comforted me
more than the faces of men.

~John Burroughs, (1837 – 1921)

the old cottonwood speaks

I have not stood upon earth half as long as this aged tree. Has it any wisdom, then, to lend me? As questions find form, I suspend them unuttered in the hush of twilight.

Sensing my need, the old cottonwood speaks:

Child, you are built to withstand the storm, whether flood or drought, hail or heat, tempest or lightning strike, blizzard or blight.

Youth fades, illusions wither and fall away. But what is essential remains.

When at last you stand in simplicity, in stillness, empty arms upraised, you, too, can embrace the infinite.

beyond the beauty

I, the fiery life of divine essence,
am aflame beyond the beauty of the meadows.
I gleam in the waters,
and I burn in the sun, moon, and stars. . .
I awaken everything to life.

~Hildegard of Bingen, (1098 – 1179)

I shall not pass this way again

I expect to pass through life but once.
If, therefore, there be any kindness I can show,
or any good thing I can do to any fellow human being,
let me do it now and not defer or neglect it,
as I shall not pass this way again.

~William Penn, (1644- 1718)

the dazzling cosmos unfurls

After a brief spell of cool weather posing as autumn, late summer has made a return, with its characteristic heat and humidity. At this time of year, I love to slip away to a small stretch of restored prairie a few miles distant. It’s another world, this little wilderness, a place where I retreat from civilization to lose myself in the timelessness of tall grass and nodding prairie wildflowers.

This nearby acreage beckons to a variety of butterflies; there are skippers and swallowtails, emperors and fritillaries, the occasional monarch, and sometimes, rarely, an Eastern-tailed blue. The air pulsates with music; there’s the incessant chatter of finches and sparrows, the stridulatory shriek of cicadas, the high lonesome sound of crickets. If the day’s thermometer is on the rise, I fail to notice, oblivious to a punishing sun. I wander about, mentally gathering armload upon armload of purple asters, frothy white boneset, sweet evening primrose, tall goldenrod.

The luminous petals of a prairie sunflower leap like flame from a conical seed head crowned with minuscule stars. This comely native wildflower artfully illustrates these resonant words:

When we look deeply
at a flower, we can see
the whole cosmos
is contained in it.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

Not merely in this flower, but all around me, the dazzling cosmos unfurls. This small patch of prairie is a universe dotted with constellations of sunflowers; here, butterfly wings are etched with tiny planets and moons; pollen cascades like stardust from the shaken blossom. My feet are planted on prairie soil, yet I move with ease among living galaxies, worlds cradled within worlds.

Whether upon prairie or plateau, meadow or mountain, wherever we happen to stand on Earth’s vast topography, the cosmos ceaselessly unfolds. There is no need to reach up to clasp far-off heavens; the heavens reach down to embrace us. They’re here with us in miniature, in loveliness, paths sprinkled with stars.