milkweed pods
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot.
Ecclesiastes 3:1–2
November’s starkness surprises me each day as I walk down my long and winding driveway to pick up the mail from our rural mailbox. The fields and the woods beyond are only a pale reminder of their former glory. Where once color bombarded me, only the brown-grays of dead plants show themselves. The colored leaves quickly brown and crunch underfoot, and the tall trees sway naked and black in the breeze. The sky, too, has lost its brilliant blues, as clouds darken to a diffuse gray. All living things prepare for winter’s chill. What an odd month to launch a nature journey.
...So why does someone like me decide to begin a nature journal just when plants die back and most living creatures hibernate or go south? Or to write of blooms long gone? Simply because every day of the year I see or remember something remarkable as I walk the driveway or the trail through the woods or along the mowed path around the perimeter of our land. During the growing season I gather mental notes to hang in my storehouse, waiting for inspection. Winter’s short days are a perfect time to dredge my reserves for sightings of glory.
Excerpt from November, Nature Sings: A Spiritual Journey of Place (p9)
and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot.
Ecclesiastes 3:1–2
November’s starkness surprises me each day as I walk down my long and winding driveway to pick up the mail from our rural mailbox. The fields and the woods beyond are only a pale reminder of their former glory. Where once color bombarded me, only the brown-grays of dead plants show themselves. The colored leaves quickly brown and crunch underfoot, and the tall trees sway naked and black in the breeze. The sky, too, has lost its brilliant blues, as clouds darken to a diffuse gray. All living things prepare for winter’s chill. What an odd month to launch a nature journey.
...So why does someone like me decide to begin a nature journal just when plants die back and most living creatures hibernate or go south? Or to write of blooms long gone? Simply because every day of the year I see or remember something remarkable as I walk the driveway or the trail through the woods or along the mowed path around the perimeter of our land. During the growing season I gather mental notes to hang in my storehouse, waiting for inspection. Winter’s short days are a perfect time to dredge my reserves for sightings of glory.
Excerpt from November, Nature Sings: A Spiritual Journey of Place (p9)
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