For several years we have lived on this same street, the one I’ve driven mostly at the speed limit. Except for the occasional weekend run up and back down the adjacent dirt road, during this shelter in place time, I’ve been walking this street and all about in my neighborhood, a lot. My new favorite jaunt is a 3.5 mile loop that for a section of that distance I pass by open water. It’s a shallow, in spots reedy and swampy pond, but right now, the sight of the wind rippling across it is heaven. In March, when we first began the stay at home order, the pond was broadly covered by ice but under a cloudy or blue sky this expanse was everything wonderful to see even while frozen and stagnant and filled me with enough joy to navigate another challenging day.
Tag Archives: Inspired by Nature
Retracing your Steps
They say there is no going back, not in time or otherwise, yet we all feel that pull to see it as we once did, whatever that it might be. Perhaps the core of this is best expressed in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, in Act III, during that iconic graveyard scene when the dead speak.
EMILY: But, Mother Gibbs, one can go back; one can go back there again . . . into living. I feel it. I know it. Why just then for a moment I was thinking about . . . about the farm . . . and for a minute I was there, and my baby was on my lap as plain as day.
MRS. GIBBS: Yes, of course you can.
EMILY: I can go back there and live all those days over again . . . why not?
MRS. GIBBS: All I can say is, Emily, don’t.
Warnings aside, we did just venture back to an ancestral place, one that will always have a place in my heart, and although I did discover how powerful the draw to return to one’s past can be, the present is always available, and exactly that, a gift.
Inspired by Nature
Spring comes with a welcome abundance for those of us who endured a long white winter… I find myself this May craving time outdoors, feeling the gentle spring sunshine, and taking in the copious colors and fragrances. On Saturday I drank my morning tea on the back deck taking in all the majesty and all that new green took my breath away! The field beyond my house danced with butterflies and happy dandelions; as I watched them fluttering about I thought about how in nature there is nothing wasted, nothing for naught, all is reused and renewed. This concept inspired my next fashion shoot while the orange on the butterfly wings, the salmon tulips in my garden, and the coral of the buds, all became part of my color palette.