Nature’s Fireworks
Canada day came and went, as did the 4th of July-these are the fireworks the morning of the first that mean something. That amazing colour mother nature creates, spreads across the sky with her brush that leaves us in awe….and it’s ever changing tones and shades. I usually have a peak every morning, it consists of lifting my head off the pillow and looking out the window, often through a large orange cat but he doesn’t block everything, tough right? Not….
When it looks like this, I motivate and get my butt out of bed! 5 a.m. isn’t my favourite time, I think of horse shows and medical emergencies;) I leave my tripod down at the small dock for mornings like these, wind still, reflections, colours. It’s a photographer dream! The view down the lake is priceless. It was what pretty much blew us away and sold us on this lovely log cottage as we wound our way in on a rather rough road. (Wasn’t sure I was up for another 4×4 road just yet!) You can update, modernize, paint and stain your way to something you like if you want, but you can’t change your ambient surroundings. Maybe the ten years in Baja spoiled us for needing something like this. When you live somewhere and your closest neighbours are kilometers away, and you like that, it’s hard to come back to humanity. It was my one worry leaving that mountain paradise, however could we find something that lovely, that we could afford?
Now our small garden is in, and producing this year thanks to copious quantities of Maya, Dusty and Phoenix poop, and donkeys;) All the lettuce and radishes you can eat, kale and swiss chard. Tomatoes, tomatillos and peppers of all sorts are coming soon. It was one thing we truly missed being on the road, that little patch of garden. Being able to go out and get fresh dill and basil, a handful of oregano, chives or cilantro, little luxuries you just can’t carry with you on a 5th wheel trailer. And water, fresh water, cold out of the tap, no smell, no chlorine, I think that is the biggest luxury of all-potable water. Something many in Canada and the US maybe never think about. Much is taken for granted in these countries of plenty. So we are thankful, incredibly so. There were a few days over the Winter I did long for that dry air, and mild climate, but not having to farm outside certainly made those cold days less unpleasant:)
I worry about our weather, about my family and friends in the SW, and now the NW. Fires and blistering heat in areas where that shouldn’t be. Change is here, it has always been inevitable, life is really mostly about change. We are born, we are taught and learn, we change, we adapt, we travel, and learn more. Many fear change, they brace themselves against it, it doesn’t have to be fearful. We are all constantly changing, look at our bodies age, our minds wander…this is what we are. In generations our civilization will be gone. Maybe not the art or the poetry, homo sapiens seem to treasure those, but the weapons and machinery will rust and fade away, a new religion will arise, Christianity and all the different gods and goddesses will fade away as Zeus and Apollo did, maybe it already has arrived, a new religion called “Cellphonism” haha! I shouldn’t laugh, it’s true. Check out this link to deities…so cool! I see people glued to their devices as if it were an appendage. I cherish the reunions with phoneless friends:) How did we ever survive?:) hahahaha, I think we turned out OK, and maybe a bit more independent than those who are enslaved to technology today, myself included as I type on a small thin keyboard to a lit screen connected wirelessly to an unseen internet…I started with the clack of a typewriter…Damn, this is turning too philosophical;) ha! I guess my point is we are in constant change and we need to live our lives, we need to laugh and we need to love. We are mortal and short lived. I came across this by Walt Whitman and it struck me a something to think about:
“Song of myself
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse and stuff’d with the stuff that is fine,
One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the
largest the same,
A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a planter nonchalant and
hospitable down by the Oconee I live,
A Yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the limberest
joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth,
A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deer-skin
leggings, a Louisianian or Georgian,
A boatman over lakes or bays or along coasts, a Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye;
At home on Kanadian snow-shoes or up in the bush, or with fishermen
off Newfoundland,
At home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest and tacking,
At home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine, or the
Texan ranch,
Comrade of Californians, comrade of free North-Westerners, (loving
their big proportions,)
Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen, comrade of all who shake hands
and welcome to drink and meat,
A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest,
A novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons,
Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion,
A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker,
Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.
I resist any thing better than my own diversity,
Breathe the air but leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.”
― Walt Whitman
We are human, we are all equal….let’s be nice out there…
