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| Yellow Trout Lily Erythronium americanum |
Lily-yellow, tiger-gold the color of the sunlight flooding down on summer solstice like blessings, like good fortune, a healing and flourishing.
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| Eastern Tiger Swallowtail basking Papilio glaucus |
Under glowing leaves that undulate in the wind will I find one glorious afternoon to own my life; all mine, to do with as I will.
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| Wild Sarsparilla Aralia nudicaulis |
Last evening, solstice eve, I and my wild-loving sisters tended to the native gardens by the lake near my home.
Together we weeded, planted, watered, sharing our bodily energy to care for native habitat of many species of flowers, sedges, and grasses. All out of real love for the monarch butterfly and every other insect, bird and person that it nurtures.
As someone who tends to go my own way, I too rarely seek out the joys of fellowship. I suffer from the self-imposed delusion that I am a misfit in almost any group of three or more people.
But the gardening women are lovely, kind and funny. Practical and full of earth knowledge, as you would expect from persons living close to the soil. They share their wisdom generously with all who ask.
It seems strange to me that I still seek role models for how to live my life when I am at this age. Life is a work in progress. Still I am trying on ways of being like identities for the choosing, wondering, Is this it? Does this feel like a life that makes sense?
But how else could it be. Life needs to change as I change, something I am mulling over now more than ever as we think about where we want to make our next home.
Because the answer to those questions depends on the life I and we want to live; and on my clarity and bravery about that life, which are currently in short supply.
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| Bunchberry Cornus canadensis |
When my thoughts circle and circle, I know it is time to stop thinking. Go outside. Be animal, be spirit, be present and unminding and unknowing. Now, the yellow-rumped warbler calls again and again, his voice carried on a south wind through my open windows. I'm coming!
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| Stemless Lady's-Slipper ready to bloom Cypripedium acaule |
I send to you solstice blessings, my wild-loving friends in both hemispheres. I wish you a hopeful bright spot today, a restorative retreat of sorts, even if only of the mind.
