5.13.15 In the meantime, every moment is new. Here, upon the river, all year long.

When I became ill a few years ago, and like some of us, stopped working and began to live a small quiet life of restoration, at first I was distressed that I would not be venturing out far and wide, taking health and saved income and visiting or staying over here and there.

       
What happened next, as I became profoundly grateful for my ability to get by while not working, was the development of a sense of place.

A devout fascination with the vast differences there are each day in the same places of your neighborhood.

    
  As an herbalist, for years I had gone to familiar places each and every year, to gather some herbs and check on the health of other quiet colonies of plants. Some years, there would be such weather that would move earth or rain down upon hills, shifting the soils and shade and light, changing who would grow there, now.

As a human, I initially expected to find the very same population of plants each year, like a box you open and expect to find halted in time.

      Instead, everything changes. Insect populations and the intricate nature of the ecology. The drainage, the exposure to light, so many factors that result in the shifts in the lay of the land.

 As my world became smaller the last few years, I developed such an affection for the places in my life. And learned that, should there be a remarkable sunrise come upon us, or sunset about to land, going to these places I would discover even more about them, as they changed and changed again.

         
With each seasonal shift, with weather differentials, with time of day. Like a dear friend or beloved, each and every moment changed, and therein lay a broad realm of discovery.

        The wind patterns, the wildlife settling themselves for bed, or caring for newborn young, the quiet order in which trees and plants come awake, from the earliest Spring onward.

 Now, I am getting better, each day. Each day, a bit stronger, when, despite that being my work, to solve mysteries and the unknown of health and cover the bases with supplements and acupressure and other things, and then carefully monitor and watch  conditions and health improve,  it had been of little  use for this, save preventing further deterioration.

           Now, I am the one taking care of errands and making meals and mowing the lawn and trucking about, which, when you think you will never be capable of doing this again, is an odd and exhilarating gift that sinks into you each and every day.

Now, as my capacity to do more and go more places increases, and I turn my health to caring for my beloved. As his strength increases and I watch his organs and systems, supporting this, empathizing with that, monitoring the other, seeing what is possible,

           this sense of place is simply what it is. It has no need of me, of my exhilaration, of my steady sense of wonder and surprise.But that is the way of it. And still, like the watcher and the watched, we change each other. We always do.

          
In the meantime, in this precious quiet life, every moment is new. Every Maple leaf tenderly emerging and reaching out to the warm life-giving sun is unique. Every sunset is a snowflake of unequalled being, except that the moments seep deep into us, if we let them. They seep into us and they stay, imbued in our vision and the air we inhaled just then, and the distress or frustration or resentment or ease or gratitude or love we felt.

        
And so I have come to love these places in my life, like dear friends, to visit, or pass by and take note of, saying to myself "Oh hello, river. Hello, farmer's fields and sky and emerging moon. Hello, Eagle Sanctuary and the apex of river and skies. Hello, each evening as we lay ourselves to rest, and each morning, when we rise to embrace the brand new day."