Ahhh....I totally get being connected to 'place'. I have strong ties to our place that we built. A place of logs that were from Yellowstone...some even with burn marks still on them from the 88 fire. (house is from standing dead, we didn't use green logs) As I stake my claim, I have visitors and regulars that I watch for each year...the Phoebes, the Orioles...Bluebirds are really rare and for the state bird of Idaho, you think they would be easy to find. Nature goes on naturing and it makes me positive that it knows something we obviously don't because it has endured and continues on while we fret and harumph. I look forward to the signs each season that all is well despite what the news could be saying. When the birds are silent I wonder what is wrong. Just simple connection at a most primal level and it gives comfort.
Sadie that whole comment is poetry. Loved every word of it.
"Nature goes on naturing and it makes me positive that it knows something we obviously don't because it has endured and continues on while we fret and harumph. I look forward to the signs each season that all is well despite what the news could be saying."
More and more, I find myself seeking out work like yours, which always makes it to the top of my list. Experts got us into this mess, the poets and ranters will get us out. I am sure of this. I do love a good rant!
In the midst of this silent yet deadly war we are living, where so few are even aware it is happening, I'll take walk in the woods with your images and words any day. My heart needs the nourishment from such images to keep up with the onslaught of denial systems the likes of which I couldn't have fathomed only a few short years ago. My armor is truth, swung daily not needing to protect friends or foe, it's tiring. So a break like this is welcomed and brings me right outside my own door to notice more the beauty I live with. Thank you!
A wonderful reminder, Kathleen, to embrace what we have forgotten. We got lost in this playground, as you call it, mistaking it for reality, forgetting that it is play, a stage act, a self-important blip in history, meanwhile the nurturing spirit abides, patiently waiting for us to move toward enlightenment.
I remember, a few years back now, seeing a bunch of articles about "forest bathing" and thinking: "It's great that people are getting out into the forest, but something is wrong here..." What's wrong, of course, is that nature shouldn't be viewed as a temporary escape from a stressful industrialized hell, it is *where we belong*, and dealing with the industrialized hell should be the temporary situation, and then only when absolutely necessary!
Soooo beautiful Kathleen. Simply being that joy. Being that delight, urges us all by way of our quantum human connection to feel that nature-true essence. Realizing that we are the Sky, not the clouds passing by. Bicycling along my favorite path I am frequently greeted by a cluster of gold finches and occasionally an up close and personal encounter with a red tailed hawk. Refreshing. Re-fresh-ing.
I’m so glad you can seize the moment of calm (oxymoron?) and just be and appreciate. In this maelstrom of a world, it’s these times that keep us sane. Yeah okay, maybe fortify us to fight on but also a chance to remove the armour and breathe.
It’s little nuggets of “nice” like yours that make my inbox smile - and me too. Thank you!
Nothing wrong with love for life. We do not know how long each of us have. Live your best life. Help others at the same time. No good is ever wasted. Put a smile on your face and in your heart. Love birds and all animals. Love ourselves out of suffering.
Oh my, this is just lovely and you really are a kindred Nature Spirit! And, anytime I see the word "Magic" mentioned, I swoon! I am presently trying to help the birds find their way to a little feeder attacked to one of my windows. I dream of them eating out of my hand. I dream of befriending a Crow. I feel fairly certain this doesn't seem at all odd to you! :)
" Nature is not an escape from the world. Netflix is. Nature is more like a nurturing mother, a great big manifest Spirit that can fit us all in its lap, soothe the worries, comfort the sadness and make it all okay" Amen to that.
Thank you SO MUCH for sharing my post, Kathleen. 💚💚
"I feel fairly certain this doesn't seem at all odd to you!" No, it does not!!
I have a sis who lives in the mountains of Boulder and her life is in service to all the creatures she lives there with. We can't have a call without discussing what the squirrels or the ravens or the foxes - who she knows and who come to her door - have been up to. It's an amazing oasis she and her husband have created.
I'm so grateful we've connected, and it was my complete pleasure to share your post. I will be revisiting your stack to read more.
Thank you for sharing about your sister! I just love hearing stories like that. :) If only I could get over my fear of mice... :( I'm all excited when a Bear shows up at my kitchen door, but a Mouse??? I'm thinking the well I was drowned in in a past life was filled with mice... 😳😳
I would love for my sis - who also writes - start a stack. Her ability to embed in her natural surroundings, get to know her animal-friends and track them, never ceases to astound me. I'm also envious! But I love hearing about it. Which is why I so appreciate your stack.
Steve nudged your post into my inbox, so cheers, good lady!
To share:
1. Chicadees are my 3rd fav, bluebirds #2 and Red winged blackbirds hit #1 in feathered friend personal preference.
Lovely multi-generational bluebirds fill a high poled, 12-opening mansion in my yard. Each year, they duke it out as to SW v NE facing cubbies in that house down the grassy swale between the woods leading to the creek. Owls nest in the half-dead tertiary-growth grandpa maple along the water's edge, while occasional branches crash into the sycamores. We count small hawks taking mice in their roulette game through the shadows. Chickadees, finches and others stay close to the house, twittering in the soft young pines fringing the woods 10 yds from the back patio. Cardinals & Jays battle, but the squirrels rock all the feeders in their frenzied acrobatics, making convenient spillage to the nyjer and sunflower-fruit mixed seed crowd. Spring begins my bird cocktail party lasting til dusk when the bats slice the air for bugs.
I walk a few miles for the marshy cattail view. Glassing from across the field to see the blackbirds striped red/yellow wing takes my breath away.
Your post and the comments are so welcome to my heavy heart. Thank you!
Huh, already I'm wondering why I don't have an order of favorites?
What a bird haven you describe! And I'm sure a daily wonder to behold. Your evocative description is poetic - and doesn't the natural world tend to bring this out in us?
"...bird cocktail party" made me lol.
I'm so glad you have this place to walk and to easy the heaviness our hearts are feeling at this time. Even still, Nature just goes on, inviting us in, reminding us the essential stuff.
The three top birds haven't changed in 40 years, but seasonality and my own geo location alters my fav feathered friend list.
My Christmas greeting cards always have a Chickadee (sometimes in a Where's Waldo kind of fashion).
Holidays to the beach wouldn't be as happy without bird-watching. The myriad shore birds temper the vast expanse of sky and sea, helping me feel connected to the free openness rather than promoting loneliness.
Once the early Robins arrive in Spring (hundreds poke on the slope of bare field outside my bedroom window) I rush to clean the Martin (Bluebird!) house. Their arrival reminds me to complete the winter maintenance including hedge trimming. Robins arrive much earlier than last frost and Vernal Eq, but they're welcome to the grubs & worms any time.
The blue jays stalk me when the shovel comes out. They're vocal critics of my transplant efforts (until I'm out of their way).
When my Spring garden blooms out it's time to prepare for the hummingbirds. They love my garden and I love them, so much so I refill four multi-feeders thrice weekly by the end of Summer (after time and the heat have ended the natural sources).
My cat-sitters all know to fill feeders if I'm away more than two days. The Hummers dive bomb us all when the feeders are low. My family believes these beauties are my favorite because I nurture them so carefully. IDK. How else could you treat visitors from so far away?
Perhaps you are a writer? Well you are, but I mean perhaps you post somewhere, have published?
The feeling of easy symbiosis and harmony with the lands and seasons - and creatures of course - comes through so naturally I can't escape a feeling of 'yes, this is how it's intended to be'. Humans and creatures living together on planet earth, each enhancing the other. Nice to know this is the experience for some!
What a glorious photo of bluebirds! No wonder (correction, all wonder) the phrase is 'bluebird of happiness.'
Ahhh....I totally get being connected to 'place'. I have strong ties to our place that we built. A place of logs that were from Yellowstone...some even with burn marks still on them from the 88 fire. (house is from standing dead, we didn't use green logs) As I stake my claim, I have visitors and regulars that I watch for each year...the Phoebes, the Orioles...Bluebirds are really rare and for the state bird of Idaho, you think they would be easy to find. Nature goes on naturing and it makes me positive that it knows something we obviously don't because it has endured and continues on while we fret and harumph. I look forward to the signs each season that all is well despite what the news could be saying. When the birds are silent I wonder what is wrong. Just simple connection at a most primal level and it gives comfort.
Sadie that whole comment is poetry. Loved every word of it.
"Nature goes on naturing and it makes me positive that it knows something we obviously don't because it has endured and continues on while we fret and harumph. I look forward to the signs each season that all is well despite what the news could be saying."
Thank you! 😘
YOUR STACK
HER STACK
Such bliss. Thank you x
More and more, I find myself seeking out work like yours, which always makes it to the top of my list. Experts got us into this mess, the poets and ranters will get us out. I am sure of this. I do love a good rant!
😘
How big hearted and gracious of you, Excess. Thank you.
Yeah, it won't be the f'ng 'experts'.
In the midst of this silent yet deadly war we are living, where so few are even aware it is happening, I'll take walk in the woods with your images and words any day. My heart needs the nourishment from such images to keep up with the onslaught of denial systems the likes of which I couldn't have fathomed only a few short years ago. My armor is truth, swung daily not needing to protect friends or foe, it's tiring. So a break like this is welcomed and brings me right outside my own door to notice more the beauty I live with. Thank you!
Thanks so much Mary. Appreciate the comment.
My heart needs it too. Best to you.
Well, good morning!! ☀️
😊 Good morning!!
A wonderful reminder, Kathleen, to embrace what we have forgotten. We got lost in this playground, as you call it, mistaking it for reality, forgetting that it is play, a stage act, a self-important blip in history, meanwhile the nurturing spirit abides, patiently waiting for us to move toward enlightenment.
I remember, a few years back now, seeing a bunch of articles about "forest bathing" and thinking: "It's great that people are getting out into the forest, but something is wrong here..." What's wrong, of course, is that nature shouldn't be viewed as a temporary escape from a stressful industrialized hell, it is *where we belong*, and dealing with the industrialized hell should be the temporary situation, and then only when absolutely necessary!
"What's wrong, of course, is that nature shouldn't be viewed as a temporary escape from a stressful industrialized hell, it is *where we belong*,..."
Bullseye. Thank you for that, James. Best.
Soooo beautiful Kathleen. Simply being that joy. Being that delight, urges us all by way of our quantum human connection to feel that nature-true essence. Realizing that we are the Sky, not the clouds passing by. Bicycling along my favorite path I am frequently greeted by a cluster of gold finches and occasionally an up close and personal encounter with a red tailed hawk. Refreshing. Re-fresh-ing.
Thank you, Philip. Lovely comment!
I'm gonna steal that - Re-fresh-ing. Exactly that. Best.
I’m so glad you can seize the moment of calm (oxymoron?) and just be and appreciate. In this maelstrom of a world, it’s these times that keep us sane. Yeah okay, maybe fortify us to fight on but also a chance to remove the armour and breathe.
It’s little nuggets of “nice” like yours that make my inbox smile - and me too. Thank you!
Me too, Freeq. Can't really imagine not doing that - and even, really, it allows for calm.
Happy to hear that. :-)
Best.
Nothing wrong with love for life. We do not know how long each of us have. Live your best life. Help others at the same time. No good is ever wasted. Put a smile on your face and in your heart. Love birds and all animals. Love ourselves out of suffering.
Well said. 😘
Beautiful!
Gracias.
🙏 Thank you, Guy!
Da nada!
By all means use it "Re-fresh-ing". Best
Oh my, this is just lovely and you really are a kindred Nature Spirit! And, anytime I see the word "Magic" mentioned, I swoon! I am presently trying to help the birds find their way to a little feeder attacked to one of my windows. I dream of them eating out of my hand. I dream of befriending a Crow. I feel fairly certain this doesn't seem at all odd to you! :)
" Nature is not an escape from the world. Netflix is. Nature is more like a nurturing mother, a great big manifest Spirit that can fit us all in its lap, soothe the worries, comfort the sadness and make it all okay" Amen to that.
Thank you SO MUCH for sharing my post, Kathleen. 💚💚
"I feel fairly certain this doesn't seem at all odd to you!" No, it does not!!
I have a sis who lives in the mountains of Boulder and her life is in service to all the creatures she lives there with. We can't have a call without discussing what the squirrels or the ravens or the foxes - who she knows and who come to her door - have been up to. It's an amazing oasis she and her husband have created.
I'm so grateful we've connected, and it was my complete pleasure to share your post. I will be revisiting your stack to read more.
Very best wishes to you.💕
Thank you for sharing about your sister! I just love hearing stories like that. :) If only I could get over my fear of mice... :( I'm all excited when a Bear shows up at my kitchen door, but a Mouse??? I'm thinking the well I was drowned in in a past life was filled with mice... 😳😳
ha!
Bears - good. Mice - no!!
I think that's as good an explanation as any.😊
I would love for my sis - who also writes - start a stack. Her ability to embed in her natural surroundings, get to know her animal-friends and track them, never ceases to astound me. I'm also envious! But I love hearing about it. Which is why I so appreciate your stack.
I'd love to read her stories too!
I am 71 and have never seen a live bluebird here in Ontario. I wonder if I ever will.
I sincerely hope you do!
Oh my, a "blush of bluebirds." That phrase alone made me sigh with contentment.
Your gorgeous, much-needed piece reminds me of Wendell Berry's masterpiece:
"The Peace of Wild Things"
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Oh, my Mary! So appreciate you including that poem.
Masterpiece to be sure. Timeless. Reassuring.
(I think it's time to re-read some Berry.)
Beautiful comment. Thank you. And for directing me to "The Quaking Poplar."
Ahhh, now I know how we found each other! 💚
Hi Mary! I love Wendell Berry and this poem so much! 💚💚
Hi Mary.
And thanks for the heads up — a new name articulating the old and ever green.
Thank you, Kathleen, I really needed this, coming back to the basics. You did a beautiful job.
It's important to be reminded that "We really do have everything we need."
Thanks, Rocket!!
Much appreciated. 🙏
Dear Kathleen,
Steve nudged your post into my inbox, so cheers, good lady!
To share:
1. Chicadees are my 3rd fav, bluebirds #2 and Red winged blackbirds hit #1 in feathered friend personal preference.
Lovely multi-generational bluebirds fill a high poled, 12-opening mansion in my yard. Each year, they duke it out as to SW v NE facing cubbies in that house down the grassy swale between the woods leading to the creek. Owls nest in the half-dead tertiary-growth grandpa maple along the water's edge, while occasional branches crash into the sycamores. We count small hawks taking mice in their roulette game through the shadows. Chickadees, finches and others stay close to the house, twittering in the soft young pines fringing the woods 10 yds from the back patio. Cardinals & Jays battle, but the squirrels rock all the feeders in their frenzied acrobatics, making convenient spillage to the nyjer and sunflower-fruit mixed seed crowd. Spring begins my bird cocktail party lasting til dusk when the bats slice the air for bugs.
I walk a few miles for the marshy cattail view. Glassing from across the field to see the blackbirds striped red/yellow wing takes my breath away.
Your post and the comments are so welcome to my heavy heart. Thank you!
Welcome BetterOff and thank you, Steve!
Huh, already I'm wondering why I don't have an order of favorites?
What a bird haven you describe! And I'm sure a daily wonder to behold. Your evocative description is poetic - and doesn't the natural world tend to bring this out in us?
"...bird cocktail party" made me lol.
I'm so glad you have this place to walk and to easy the heaviness our hearts are feeling at this time. Even still, Nature just goes on, inviting us in, reminding us the essential stuff.
Thank you and welcome.
Does order favorites change?
Best.
Good Morning!
Thanks for asking!
The three top birds haven't changed in 40 years, but seasonality and my own geo location alters my fav feathered friend list.
My Christmas greeting cards always have a Chickadee (sometimes in a Where's Waldo kind of fashion).
Holidays to the beach wouldn't be as happy without bird-watching. The myriad shore birds temper the vast expanse of sky and sea, helping me feel connected to the free openness rather than promoting loneliness.
Once the early Robins arrive in Spring (hundreds poke on the slope of bare field outside my bedroom window) I rush to clean the Martin (Bluebird!) house. Their arrival reminds me to complete the winter maintenance including hedge trimming. Robins arrive much earlier than last frost and Vernal Eq, but they're welcome to the grubs & worms any time.
The blue jays stalk me when the shovel comes out. They're vocal critics of my transplant efforts (until I'm out of their way).
When my Spring garden blooms out it's time to prepare for the hummingbirds. They love my garden and I love them, so much so I refill four multi-feeders thrice weekly by the end of Summer (after time and the heat have ended the natural sources).
My cat-sitters all know to fill feeders if I'm away more than two days. The Hummers dive bomb us all when the feeders are low. My family believes these beauties are my favorite because I nurture them so carefully. IDK. How else could you treat visitors from so far away?
This is such a pleasure to read, BOR.
Perhaps you are a writer? Well you are, but I mean perhaps you post somewhere, have published?
The feeling of easy symbiosis and harmony with the lands and seasons - and creatures of course - comes through so naturally I can't escape a feeling of 'yes, this is how it's intended to be'. Humans and creatures living together on planet earth, each enhancing the other. Nice to know this is the experience for some!
Just lovely, I so appreciate the glimpse.