"It's hard", is an all too common way to blankly dismiss what must be done. Opine - to express an opinion, o-pine - a reverence for the long coveted mystery whispered by old pines with the wind combing through their needles.
I saw so many cedar and pine boughs downed by the uncommonly heavy snows coupled with the winds a few weeks ago in the DC region. Branches who hadn't felt the weight of 45" of snow in our history.
When I was walking with my fellow traveler yesterday morning, seeing ourselves among the trees and the river roaring below, smelling and feeling the river's wetness, recalling the pungency of being human, I began to realize how disconnected it is so easy to get. The rest of my upcoming week was going to be completely disconnected, a week confined to a hotel in the downtown of Chicago, of flights crammed with apprehensive passengers, and I began to recall that every day I have to keep watching for all the small wonders that I can be so good at seeing.
Being in those woods, cordoned off though they were, was a draft of the past, a potion that reminded me of the many times we've been together in the enormousness of nature, and been completely comfortable, lucky to find berries, deserted beaches, fauns and ferns and slippery rocks, great and complex nature, and I began again to look forward, to know. I feel the infinite feeling of connectedness I felt when standing toes buried in the sand facing east, with it unlikely there was another human being for 2000 miles in front of my mere and naked body, and that sharing that swath of our earth with my love, was immortal.
This is green love. Its the love of what we have, the appreciation, the willingness to get down with her and thank her for carrying us this far and so well, the determination to extend our stewardship beyond our own front door, the appreciation of 'we', the fact of our inevitable congress with nature, and the knowledge that she is, despite our own cognitive gymnastics, slowly being eroded into an unsustainable host. Green love is the realization and the experience of the most basic instinct of an animal, not to burn or spurn one's protector.
I saw so many cedar and pine boughs downed by the uncommonly heavy snows coupled with the winds a few weeks ago in the DC region. Branches who hadn't felt the weight of 45" of snow in our history.
When I was walking with my fellow traveler yesterday morning, seeing ourselves among the trees and the river roaring below, smelling and feeling the river's wetness, recalling the pungency of being human, I began to realize how disconnected it is so easy to get. The rest of my upcoming week was going to be completely disconnected, a week confined to a hotel in the downtown of Chicago, of flights crammed with apprehensive passengers, and I began to recall that every day I have to keep watching for all the small wonders that I can be so good at seeing.
Being in those woods, cordoned off though they were, was a draft of the past, a potion that reminded me of the many times we've been together in the enormousness of nature, and been completely comfortable, lucky to find berries, deserted beaches, fauns and ferns and slippery rocks, great and complex nature, and I began again to look forward, to know. I feel the infinite feeling of connectedness I felt when standing toes buried in the sand facing east, with it unlikely there was another human being for 2000 miles in front of my mere and naked body, and that sharing that swath of our earth with my love, was immortal.
This is green love. Its the love of what we have, the appreciation, the willingness to get down with her and thank her for carrying us this far and so well, the determination to extend our stewardship beyond our own front door, the appreciation of 'we', the fact of our inevitable congress with nature, and the knowledge that she is, despite our own cognitive gymnastics, slowly being eroded into an unsustainable host. Green love is the realization and the experience of the most basic instinct of an animal, not to burn or spurn one's protector.
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