Tuesday, July 5, 2016

A day of remembering, paying attention, listening, looking...Being There, Day 4

On a day when many people go on big family or neighborhood picnics, attend events, rip up and down the lake on speedboats, celebrate Independence Day with light shows and noise, we opted for quiet, hungered for it, immersed ourselves in it.

It was glorious...

...for the most part!

I'd been meaning to draw the other odd bone I'd found near the lake...I see so many fae faces in it, depending on how I look at it.  Isn't that often the case?  I see how artists like Brian Froud might find inspiration here, I certainly do.

Three fae faces in this single artifact...the bottom one looked vaguely porcine to me!  I turned it right side up, and upside down, and there were more each time I looked.
Can you see them?  I know there are probably more still...but the fae often hide if you look at them straight on.

I'd forgotten how much I like sketching with my vintage Sheaffer pen...responsive lines are such a pleasure.

Alas, I seem to have lost the knack of making a flower chain...this is much stemmier than I remember!  Tighter knots perhaps?  Closer to the end?

I knew how, once upon a childhood morning...


Small, slow lives play out beside our own...he was very beautiful and a bit shy. retracting those stalk-like eyes if I startled him.  Perhaps he imagined I couldn't see him if he couldn't see me...so I tried hard not to startle him!

Tiny forests of moss colonize the rocks and make their living beneath our feet.  Reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's Gathering Moss recently, I was amazed again at the complexity of these miniature landscapes, and long for my magnifying glass.

An entirely different kind of moss...this one with a wee spotted beetle I didn't even see at first, till I enlarged the photo...
Tryst Falls was noisy with the raw power of recent flood...but that's the kind of noise that is more energizing than exhausting.

Later, we went to the lake expecting holiday crowds and not planning to stay long...we were delightfully surprised to find only a few of our fellows out soaking up the firework-free quiet.  The loudest noise this late evening was the soft plashing of his paddles and the conversations of geese as they prepared for the coming night.




The recent hard rains exposed more of the  mess left last week by the people with the water balloon party...these were half stuck in the huge mud wallow they left.  

Joseph asked why I felt it was my job to pick thim up (this from the guy who picks up trash and monofiliment on his walks and fishing!)...but it is my job because it is a privilege to restore harmony and beauty, as much as I am able.  (That is not to imply I don't grumble and mutter dire imprecations on their heads, of course!)

I am just sad that no one has taught that reality to so many...this is the only Earth we have.  As they say, there IS no Planet B.


But order and peace restored, I got in one more quick sketch of the lake, and soaked in the welcome quiet.

8 comments:

  1. Looks like a lovely day! Those fairy faces are wonderful!

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  2. Another lovely moment with you, Kate. Love the shy snail. How high we must tower over it.

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  3. Kate, you are a gem, and such an inspiration, not only by your art, but by your words, and most especially your example ... enormous hugs and gratitude!

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  4. Thank you so much for sharing your contemplations of the natural world that's all around us. It is encouraging me to slow down and enjoy this fleeting summer...

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  5. Another beautiful post. I almost wept for the child within that has lost the art of dandelion crowns/necklaces.The faces are easily seen in your drawings and fun to find in the bone photo. Drawing a white bone in pen and ink is one of the most difficult things to do. As a child up north, I would lay on a blanket and observe the tiny kingdom beneath me with wonder. As an adult in the south, I shudder to think I would be forced to sit on a blanket with spiders and ants running willy nilly around me. Such beauty lost to my adult "logic". The balloon pieces are so very dangerous to birds that pick them up quickly and strangle them. Once an old man asked a little girl why she was running to get the stranded minnows in the tide pool and release them in the ocean. He said you can't make a difference - look how many there are. She just kept running and said but to this one I made a big difference.

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  6. I never knew how to make a flower chain.
    I thought of the birds and fish right away with the balloon pieces! So glad you gathered them up!
    Another delicious post!! I saw faces in the bone right away, too. :)

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  7. Thanks for all of this, Kate, wonderful as always.
    And thanks for the invitation to Mindfulness. Great way to start the summer...

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  8. Sounds wonderful! Just the way I would choose to spend it, I really dislike crowds and noise...

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