A Morning Full of Surprise

“When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

I come into the peace of wild things.

  Wendell Berry

The best antidote for anxiety and the cares of the world has to be a morning walk in the woods.  Some days it is a quiet walk and the fact that everything is pretty much the same as the day before is comforting and reassuring.  On other days, it seems that nature is showing off just a little.  This kind of walk is exhilarating and exactly what we had this morning.

Because today is Saturday, we had not made any big work plans but rather hoped to have a more restful day.  Mike decided to take his camera which is a little unusual because it is really too heavy to enjoy lugging about every day.  We first walked down to the pond across the road from us and surprisingly, there were two Canadian geese sitting on the water pretty close to where we walked up.  Mike was able to get a few shots before they got shy and paddled away.  The weather was cool and we were expecting a gray day but soon realized that we were in for a more spectacular and sunny day.  Everything is beautiful this time of year.  Even plain old grassy weeds in the middle of the trail have these pretty little white flowers on them.  It makes it harder to dislike it when it is so pretty.

As we walked up to the larger pond and our new garden area, I was looking at the sweet young vegetables coming up when I realized Mike was gasping at the sight of a mama and papa goose with seven young goslings right near the boats where we were standing.  It would be unusual to see the whole family but to be so close to them was really a special treat.  Now the fact that Mike happened to be holding his camera is nothing short of a special blessing from God because it just almost never happens that way.  They were soon moving on across the water slowly to the house side of the pond.  We could hardly believe what had happened.

We walked on around the pond on the dam and then through the woods, scaring up three Wood Ducks from the water.  There is no photograph of that because they are just so fast you can hardly ever catch them in time.  Everything was really just about as perfectly beautiful as it could be.  It will be very wonderful for the rest of the summer but the fresh new greens and wild blossoms of spring are almost intoxicating.  As we came up the path behind the house, Mike gasped again as he saw the little goose family waddling up the path to the house and through the yard.  It was hard to get close enough to photograph because we really didn’t want to disturb the little ones too much but that was just a little hard to believe.  Who would have ever thought that would happen!

As we walked on our road out to the mailboxes, we were hoping for sightings of the baby foxes and the gopher turtles but the fox holes appeared to be hiding their occupants and the gophers rushed back inside as we neared their neighborhood.  Even so, it was a fantastically beautiful morning and a perfect start to a quiet and blessed day.  As evening comes on, we have dinner on the grill and a small fire in the chiminea even though it’s not really as cool as we thought it would be.  I think there are many people who may never enjoy as sweet a day as we have had no matter where they can travel.  How blessed we are.