This time of year has me
Wondering and Wandering
every single day.
I want to spend every minute I can outside with the trees and growing plants. The ferns along the path that I walk have grown at least six inches in just a few days, slowly unwinding and unfurling.
As I watch the leaves pop out on the trees I am filled with wonder. Consider that each year deciduous trees create new leaves primarily from air and water. Through photosynthesis they create thousands of leaves each spring.
Such a marvel, the tenacity of the buds to surge with life every spring, to greet the lengthening days and warming weather with exuberance, no matter what hardships were brought by winter.
― Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest
I used to think of wood as heavy and dry, like the wood used to build things. But the wood in living trees is not dry at all. It’s filled with water. Scientists estimate that trees are 50% water and 50% carbon. A few years ago I photographed photographer Layne Kennedy as he was creating a wood bowl by turning wood on a lathe. Layne had left the wood to dry out for six months before beginning the wood turning process. Still, as he turned the wood on the lathe water sprayed out in all directions. I couldn’t believe how much water was still in the wood. Even as I stood a short distance away I felt droplets of water splashing me.
As I watch the trees leaf out this spring I think about how they draw the water up through their roots, pull carbon dioxide from the air to create new leaves. I think about how we have learned that trees communicate with one another, send chemical signals, and even share food with one another. And they form symbiotic relationships with fungi in the soil.
This Mother Tree was the central hub that the saplings and seedlings nested around, with threads of different fungal species, of different colors and weights, linking them, layer upon layer, in a strong, complex web”
― Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest
It fills me with wonder. So I spend my days wondering and wandering, filling my senses with the scents, sights and sounds of spring.
Bird Song and Duck Days
On my walks I’ve been paying attention to bird song. Yesterday I was serenaded by a cardinal on my walk in the neighborhood. And this morning as I drove along Medicine Lake I could hear black birds singing. Often I hear geese honking as they fly overhead. And in the pond the wood duck females make eerie cries periodically when they are disturbed.
Early this morning there were six male wood ducks smoothly circling the pond weaving back and forth, not getting too close to one another or too far away. Later I saw several wood duck pairs across the pond in a neighbor’s yard.
The more you turn inward, the more available the sacred becomes. when you sit in silence and turn your gaze toward the holy mystery you once called God, the mystery follows you back out into the world. When you walk with purposeful focus on breath and birdsong, your breathing and the twitter of the chickadee reveal themselves as miracles.
― Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics
How blessed I am to live in this beautiful place surrounded by nature, even in the midst of urban life.
Are you also wondering and wandering these sweet warm days of spring?
May you walk in beauty.
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