September 10, 2009, journal entry, and Mary Oliver's birthday

Four miles.

The morning air was chilly, but the sky shone the brilliant blue of peace. My hands squirreled away, tucked in my long-sleeved pumpkin-colored Cool-Max shirt for warmth, I started north on my way to Lincoln Park to visit the marsh pond atop the hillside’s steep slope. I know my hummingbird is well on her way to South America as she was probably just visiting for the day when I saw her, but I still find tranquility in the water and surrounding trees. (I have marked on my BlackBerry the date I saw her so that in 2010, I can visit often, on and around this day in an effort to meet her again.) Up the hill I ran once more, the cement path, a beautiful tapestry weaved with amber pine needles, and the bluff’s huge rocky, crag-like surface cushioned by moss in green and purple-brown. Pine trees resemble huge folded bats, and the foliage that neighbors my feet is starting to turn in colors of red and yellow.

When I reached the pond, I was alone, although I have encountered bird-itionalists and early morning risers who sometimes throw sticks into the pond for which their dogs to retrieve. Not even the ducks were awake even though they usually are ambling to the shore, quite talkative when I arrive as though giving me the news of the night’s events over coffee. But even when I am the only human, rarely is my run silent, which is one of the reasons I discarded my headphones years ago. Today I was surprised to see two chattering red-winged blackbirds flying around, landing on the intricately intertwined tangle of cattails and sedges that never seem to bend under their perch. The aspens’ leaves continued twittering in the slight breeze, but what has captured my attention over the past week or so are the grasshoppers.

I have listened to the brown grasshoppers by the small cattail-padded marsh, Hazel’s Creek, two-ish miles south, clacking as they jump and fly sounding like a jacket’s zipper closing over large teeth, the sound of which I associate alongside the whishing and whooshing of tall dried grasses in a hot late-summer wind. I’ve seen them along boulevards that wind past undeveloped lots, and at Lincoln Park’s “track” pond. Grasshoppers are not unfamiliar to me, having grown up in the boonies of Kentucky, but I decided to give a closer inspection to this critter, so down I crouched to peer at him on a rock-quilted patch by the water. Startled, I jumped back as he jumped, snapping, opening his wings in flight which were a vivid red color, surprising me as I had expected to see the bright splash of yellow in his expanded wings. (I wanted to know the names of these creatures, so I later consulted the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America and the internet, but I am still only guessing when I write that I think they are the speckled rangeland grasshopper and the northern green-striped grasshopper.)

Running back through the trees, their rounded crowns of foliage and branches mirror those huge juicy tomatoes ripening in their gradient colors of green to red. After Spring and early Summer, the twigs’ upward growth halted in order to reroute the trees' use of light to thicken the trunk in support of the branch scaffolding that reaches for the Sun. Past still more colors, I again reflected on Autumn’s march to Winter, steady like the driving 7/8 beat of a song.

As I write this, pencil in my right hand, my left fingers the heavy Tree-of-Life pendant that hangs from my neck on its twisting-and-turning silver chain, reminding me that I, too, can stand strong through the twisting and turning of seasons with grace and compassion, as I do every year. Yes, at times, my leaves are exuberant and new, taking in Sun’s light like the sunflower for its garden. At other times, though, like after Autumn, a harbinger of Winter’s storms during its time of harvest, and throughout Winter’s preparation for rebirth (their Magic equal in value to the aromatic Magic of Spring and Summer), I am also a tree stripped of its leaves. Even so, I know I can stand tall and confident, trust my own steady roots, for they have also grown thick, strong and deep from the drifts of previous winters.

~~~~~

It’s the birthday today of my favorite poet Mary Oliver, born in 1935.

~~~~~

When I Am Among the Trees

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

(from Thirst, Poems, 2006)

GL, 9/10/2009. Prevail.