August 22nd 2019—Mt. Herbert, PEI
There are times in life when it feels our cup is overflowing. Be it times of plenty when the joys in our heart swell to spilling over and everyone and everything we gaze upon is lit upon with beauty, as if the whole world were tinged in what photographers call the golden hour light.
At other times it seems that our heart is a bowl too deep to ever let ourselves explore its depths. Fear, grief, heartbreak and suffering can bring us to those moments when we sense an overwhelm too large for mere articulation and some find relief through talking it out while others like myself receive the strength to dive down and let our feelings wash o’er by spending time alone in nature.
The past week was one of emotion for me. August’s dwindling brought with it a farewell to a dear sister heading back to the west coast and life with her husband and teens. Time with her was well spent, especially so this summer when she offered herself and those she knows and loves the gift of her unencumbered presence in our lives. Hard–earned, indeed, wellness and presence are choices one makes again and again, but what a brilliance the heart offers when it is free to shine.
As part of our quieting down again after much emotion and busyness, on Thursday evening our oldest daughter invited me for a walk on a trail we frequent in the fall and winter months but less so in summertime. Mason jar in hand she wanted to see what the trail side berries were looking like. As we pulled into the parking lot she noticed parked there was a large tractor with a ditch mower behind it and wondered if we should even bother walking in to see where the berries were. We decided to go ahead and soon realized that the mower had yet to mow and, for us, thankfully so.
In an instant it was as though we were transported to a wonderland where cricket song hummed loudly all around us. It felt as though we were being swaddled in song, the effect so soothing to the nervous system. Their song, a wing beat frequency which does a world of good to soul’s like mine and my daughter’s.
Bucolic indeed! I could feel the knots in my neck begin to unravel as we walked down the meadow lined, gravelly path.
On either side the trail is bordered by ditch plants; wet feet loving ones like cattails and others like the pale yellow and white toadflax, more commonly referred to as butter and eggs, which I hadn’t encountered much of yet this summer. Several glorious thistles of some height, not yet in flower and one low, lone, feathery headed, purple bloom.
But the plant of the hour which seemed to match the cricket song in its splendour and intensity was goldenrod; late august beauty it looks as though late summer rays of sunshine have fallen and landed in a field. It was in great abundance and positively humming with pollinators.
As we walked further along we noted some tansy ragwort dotting the ditch here and there; a poisonous plant which resides in a strange memory-scape from my grandparent’s farmland when I was a little girl and the very interested adults were all aflutter over the caterpillars the ragwort was laden and teeming with.
Back then I was in my caterpillar collecting phase and loved to gather into a little grass-lined plastic ice cream tub caterpillars* from the multitudes of inch long, grey and teal, fuzzy wrigglers frequenting the slender birch trees in our front yard. Being a very sensory oriented little girl I knew well and loved the feeling of their many, tiny, suction cupped feet tickling along my tan arms but the idea of that many orange and black little crawlers potentially getting onto me made my little self crawly in a not-good way.
Delicate faced Queen Anne’s Lace, some purple asters, pearly everlasting and the tiny but mighty presence of pineapple weed were a few of the many other plants we encountered along the way.
There was a quality of air and light that only late August affords those sensitive to its gift—the air, a pleasing temperature mixing both warmth and gentleness with a hint of autumn’s soon to come cooling and the light, almost surreal in the warm tones and acute sharpening it applied to everything under its spell. Altogether it lent the quite visceral sensation of oneness with all; the enveloping cricket song only furthering the sensate experience.
Feeling quite pleasantly of another world or perhaps, more accurately, very of this world therein entered the attack of the mosquito; something which strangely did not bother us for almost the entirety of our berry search until the latter part when the backs of our exposed legs and ankles became moving targets for the bane of summer walking, yet an important member of our ecosystem—mosquitoes!
Laughing and swatting our way to the car, we spotted a butterfly at a picnic area who was flittering about there on our walk in and still flittering/alighting on and off again on our way back. Medium sized, orange with white eye spots and a marked, narrow black mid stripe, we still are not sure what we saw but it was certainly quite beautiful.
But, no berries.
Past for raspberries and yet to come for the luscious, trail side blackberry, we made our way, renewed with a sense of the wonders of a late August meadow walk.
In beauty,
Jill
*I am utilizing this link for the identification only--not as a recommendation for their control methods.
You feel, as always, from the very depth of your toes!