4.18.15 Thou answerest them only with Spring

4.18.15 Mine, yours, ours

How do we accept help with what is our business,

without enabling the helper to somehow decide it has become their business?

I think that is the crux of it, for many of us, and for challenged or old people.

The problem is not accepting help, but weighing the consequences.

Retaining the strength to maintain the boundaries, no matter what others want to take charge of.

4.17.15 Imagine waking slowly, as the earth about you softens and warms.

Off we tromped, through the early spring woods, and then down to the ridge overlooking the outwaters of the Connecticut. 

Rife with creatures and peepers and ducks and geese; the turtles I know have awakened from their winter's rest in the deep dark mud.

 Imagine waking slowly, as the earth about you softens and warms.    

As the water above you thaws and the sounds begin to nestle up to you, from other living things stirring. Imagine stretching your turtle neck and limbs, your organs within beginning to move and function.

As you tunnel up out of your winter's nest, swim up through the delicious clean spring waters, and take your breath of fresh spring air? Spot a fallen limb, and swim over to climb up upon the rough bark, and sun yourself deliciously in the warm spring sunlight?

 I can, and as I sit far above on the ridge, looking down as the reflection of clouds passes through the waters below, I imagine all the wild things living here all winter, as torpid chipmunk or surviving coyote.

All the wild ones who slept slowly coming awake, looking about, and setting out for a few tender sprouts or insects upon the high limbs or small fish in the waters below.

                       

 I sit up there, watching as the sun slowly sets and the Shepherd races about and all of the forest begins to sing its springtime song.

4.17.15 The joys of weather behaving badly

         I realized the other day that when you don't live somewhere like this, there aren't clouds precipitating and doing all sorts of remarkable creative things all the time.

        Weather coming and going and changing and snowing in May and melting everything suddenly in January. Mud seasons and flooding and parched  dry periods and then hot humid miserable mosquitoey Julys. 

      Fresh temperate fall days with the aroma of fallen leaves, and the hills resplendent with unbelievable color. 

     Winter days of frozen air pricking your nose and making toes and fingers ache, replete with freezing rain and ice formations and all the clothing you stuff yourself with to tromp out into the woods. The cozy warm of nights inside, hot tea and slippers and warm soups. 

     There are so many things we do to calibrate ourselves to the weather we each encounter.

      Myself, yes I have seen and breathed and relished California and Maui and Albuquerque and Mexico. But after a bit, I find myself waiting for weather. For surprises that don't come in the form of a soft gentle rain, each afternoon at 4-4:30. Pfft. 

And I find myself so glad I live in a place, high on a tiny mountain range, with wild ones and unpredictable weather and surprises at every turn.