Queen of summer

I wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago about Queen Anne's lace. My favorite wildflower. In this picture I took at my husband's family's farm, where the flower is stretching west into the setting sun, you can see the gentle light reflecting off the flower and creating a soft glow that reminds me of a halo. What a majestic flower, named for a queen and so snowy white that a crown actually adorns its dome-shaped blossom. The queen of summer...

Most people consider it a weed. Are wildflowers weeds? If you mean that they grow without your permission, then of course--wild foliage, by nature, needs no human prompting to grace the landscape with its unkempt beauty. But if weeds are unsightly, nuisances, then what is weed-like about a peaceful flower, growing in its own habitat and disturbing no one except we humans in our symmety-seeking, manipulative landscaping states. Does Queen Anne's lace grow up at the margins of your yard? Is she out of control? No matter what you do, you cannot banish her. Because she was here long before you were. This mountain landscape is hers to abide in and to decorate and to own. And can't you see--her woody-stemmed, waist-high beauty far outsurpasses that of the weakling pansies that you grow in your straw-carpeted flower bed, easily crushed under the foot of a stray dog--unnaturally placed and trying to flourish in a balance of colors that is perfect in your constructing mind, though it is not what nature ever intended.

If you've ever seen a field of wildflowers, various sizes and colors and shapes all melding into one ever-flowing image, you have seen nature's perfection at work. Something about the completely unplanned mix, the clump of wild pansies here that slowly mixes and gives way to the clover, the milkweed clusters that shoot up between the Queen Anne's lace and accent her snowy whiteness with their burnt orange... No human mind could have constructed that asymmetrical perfection. Scarcely a human eye can spot its overwhelming attractiveness through the preliminary appearance of uncontrolled wildness, of random splashes of color on the blank canvas of the meadow that may first seem like a mess, but when you unleash your heart you see a masterpiece.

180 Degrees...

I am only 1.5 hours past completing a gruelingly long accounting exam. It took me three and a half hours to get my numbers to balance, and it dulled my brain to the point that a late-evening excursion to Marble Slab was necessary to restore it to working order... Nothing revives those brain cells like coffee ice cream with Heath Bar and slivered almonds. Yes.

I try not to eat too much junk food. My metabolism is such that I have to generally be very health-conscious or I notice extreme differences. It's annoying and sometimes burdensome to require a meal every four to five hours, when often food is not conveniently available and always I have to be careful about how much I eat--because whether I eat lightly or pack my tummy full, it's a guarantee that in just a few short hours I will feel like I haven't had a bite all day. Anyway, I like to eat healthy--I like believing I keep my body in as close to creation order as I can. I enjoy vegetables and fruit and yogurt and whole grains and water and green tea; I enjoy stretching and Pilates and walking and running (but only when the weather's nice); it's too bad that I also enjoy chocolate and coffee and Black Cherry Vanilla Diet Coke so much too.

Anyway, to change directions entirely, I was not very happy with my paper about a threat I had encountered from nature. It's hard to write about a jellyfish attack and make it interesting. And it didn't seem quite fair either--after all, I was on their turf. Only a couple of hours after class, the idea came to me that I wish I had written about instead. I should have written about the surf washing away my sandcastles and my childish doodlings at the seashore. I can remember the feeling of impending doom as I watched the tide creeping closer and closer to the marks I had made; I can remember writing things in the sand and hoping that somehow they would stay forever, or at least long enough for another to see them. But the ever-dependable tide would always encroach upon "my" turf and completely efface anything I dared to lay bare in the wet, malleable sand that always yields to the tide.

Part of me wants to rewrite the week's essay and send it out to everyone again. Perhaps I will. Or maybe I will just save the idea for a longer project.

Changes, changes

Well, here we are in our new apartment in Athens... It's definitely a change from the country life that I had grown used to and come to love, but you know, Athens is not a bad city. There are still places to escape to, but civilization is far closer at hand. Right now I sit here looking at boxes and naked walls, and wonder if this place will ever feel lived in. But of course it will--that just seems so far away right now, because so many other things take precedence over decorating your home...

How did we end up here so quickly? That's a long story... We really needed to get away from his parents, who were our neighbors. Parents across the ages have difficulty separating themselves from the lives of their grown children--it's uncomfortable to have pressure from parents to go in one direction, when you, a perfectly able and free-thinking adult, wish something different for yourself entirely. So we had to get away. I know things will be better now... although I will miss the ability to go out and escape into 100 acres of woods and pastureland, to look up at night and see the stars, unpolluted by the lights of the city. But those things are not gone forever, I have to remind myself. I will just have to find them in other ways.

So life has been outrunning me these past few weeks. I'm tired and I feel like my mind is just awakening from the numbness of constant wear and overexertion. Joy has escaped me--until a few nights ago, when I spent time with God like I have not done in a long time. I know He's in control of all this, and I don't have to feel like everything good in life is whirling away from me, out of my reach.

I'm enjoying writing about nature. I've started my long paper that is due at midterm, and I'm really having a good time with it. I know that nature has helped me get through some difficult times in the past because it is the only thing that is still pure in the world. The more we manipulate it the more it depresses me; but that's not exactly what I'm writing about. I can't wait to be done with it, so I can read it and find out if it tells the story I want it to tell. A story about healing.

Running

I love to run--really. Nearly every time I drag myself out to go for a run, I find myself extremely glad that I did. Yesterday frustrated me, because it was so cool and blustery outside that the aerobic breathing actually hurt my chest, and I didn't run very far before I was winded and had to go home. But at first, I truly was having a great time.

If only the neighbors would keep their dogs penned up, running around here would be much more relaxed. But wherever I go, I am sure to find, at some point, some dog to come chasing after me, barking as if I had encroached on its territory, its hot breath on my ankles and shins. It frightens me every time, and nearly ruins my run. That was the thing that made me turn around yestereday--two of them, huge, just came tearing out at me as I tried to run by. I am not eager to get attacked by dogs while I'm trying to mind my own business and enjoy being outside; it's just not fair that the neighbors think their dogs can do no wrong and leave them unattended to terrorize anyone who happens by. It is one of the most upsetting things I know. I really am afraid of those dogs, even the smaller ones. So disappointing...

Nature journal excerpt

...But when I am in the woods, or on a hike, I like to slow down and hear the voice of God speaking to me through the mountains, through the trees. When I stand on a mountain cliff and see the misty green valleys descending down from me, then up miles away to the pinnacle of another tree-carpeted mountain, I can hear Him assure me of His majesty, can feel His omnipresent spirit moving through me with every breath. When I stand in the core of a deep, high forest, trees rising up all around me, extending their long, stout arms over my head to weave an umbrella over me, I remember His compassion for me, and His strength in my all-consuming weakness. Yet when the delicate needles of a young cedar tree mingled with the holly's hearty, waxy leaves brush against me on the trail, I think of His beauty, and the beauty and exceptionality in all He created, even in me. Hiking, I am overcome with reverence and adoration for my wonderful Maker.

Winter makes a comeback

It's been so cold this week! I've been abrupty reminded that February really is the bleakest, most colorless month, and that the unseasonal weather we've had recently was bound to end. In previous years I have rarely minded the winter weather, but this year is new for me in that Bob and I don't have central heating in our little house and we have relied on a small, cast-iron wood-burning stove to thaw us out. The inconvenience of heat (and air conditioning, in the spring and summer months) has allowed me to appreciate warm spells in the wintertime more than I normally would.

The sky is entirely blanketed with clouds like a thick-gray fleece right now. But when I woke up this morning and peeped out the front door of our east-facing home, the sun was just beginning to rise in the corner of the sky. Coral-colored waves of light shot out from behind the tree-line and reached out, engulfing the roof of the neighbors' (my in-laws') house. The light glossed right over the stretched-cotton clouds, dyeing them a powdery pink; between the clouds pierced the reds and oranges, until they faded gradually, purple, then into a whitish-blue sky.

God impresses me, the way he stretches the heavens out above us each day, smooth and elastic, like a balloon over the rim of a cup but encompassing infinitely more dimensions. Always familiar, but a new experience every morning.