Crown Point Road : In Gratitude for Preservation this Earth Day

Crown Point Rd suppertime April 21st, 2021

We park the car field edge and walk in red mud, tractor tire ruts

Beneath a mixed canopy to a wonderland of birdsong.

A noisy chatter of enchantment floods

As we spy an Eastern Chipmunk in the roadside bramble

And soon thereafter a small orange butterfly

Reminds us of a walk here late last summer

When Tiger Swallowtails swooped and fluttered in

A giddy embarrassment of head swiveling abundance.

We are not geared up for the mud we encounter in places,

Our walk here unplanned

But we make the best of our footing

stepping up onto still yellow berm grasses

And over puddles and soft spots on the road.

We follow Lucas' lead and pause in stillness to listen for spring warblers who might be making an early appearance here,

Hear only Juncos, Bluejays, and a lone Yellow-shafted Flicker beating out its drum on wood.

Could be a Pileated—our eager as spring itself, birder son points out.

These are good woods for the Pileated and he and his older sister saw one nearby last week and so while he is jesting us,

He isn’t wrong.

In fact, nothing here feels wrong. That’s the beauty of this place.

Of any wild place that still maintains an unaltered sense of itself.

But the plaintive call of the mourning dove cooing in the distance beyond the saltwater marsh stirs a sadness within which our youngest says feels like a sadness for all we have lost of this beautiful world.

We pause a moment with this too.

And because it seems there is room for everything here,

joy, pendulous, swings back into our hearts as

spring peepers sing unbridled from a fresh water pond just beyond where we stand. The trill of an American Toad centering and singular amidst the multitude of peepers calls out for our attention from the mix.

Something in my withered, winter/ covid weary heart calls out sweet Jesus to this moment.

I bend to my knees, press my palms firm on the soft firmament of red earth beneath me.

I want to lay my whole self down here and stay awhile in this overflow of

presence, to call back my tattered fragments to be made whole again.

But what is tattered, when here I am?

Nothing. Blessedly nothing for I am cloaked in

Sky, Earth, Waters and the sounds of PEI in Spring.

Here. Now. Together.

I settle happily in this momentary rising swell of mud and marsh and April birdsong with my offspring as a Kingfisher bobs across the sweep of blue to where evergreens border the saltwater marsh. I stand, we turn for home laughing, grateful for the goodness of this place.

This Earth Day 2021 I welcome you to pause in gratitude for these wild places that have been preserved. I welcome you to consider supporting such goodness while you can, where you can, in your own way.

https://www.islandnaturetrust.ca/conserving-land/

https://macphailwoods.org/

Happy Earth Day 2021!

Thanks for reading!

Be well,

Jill