Tuesday 26 May 2020

Scenting

Spring came all at once, and with it the scent of spring, rising out of the forest in the early morning.

 

Nor was mine the only soul quickened by the freshness breathing through the trees and across the waters.


To scent is to catch the trail of something, to be quickened and enlivened, to be pierced to the marrow by desire. It is the feeling of being on to something. What is it you desire? What, in the grand scheme of things, are you after?


The animals feel it, too. Spring and the present silence of human creatures in this place have brought them out in greater boldness than I've ever seen. Every one of them knows what they are after, no two alike in their scenting down the pathways of the heart.


I feel it, too. Certain wild aromas can catch me off guard, recalling to me at once the terrific vastness of the world, its depth and strange, untamed beauty: cedars at dusk, or pine needles at midday. The scent of wood smoke, or of rain.


There are humbler beauties to be found, too. After a long winter, no small unfolding of delight is too tiny to be noticed by the attentive hunter.



These small intimations of beauty lift me up. They help me catch the wind of high and far-off things, and at the same time they root me in the presence and possibility of what is.


Year after year they ask the same questions of me: have you rushed down the roads of life, hurrying away the seasons, always looking ahead to the next? Or have you stopped to linger, now and then? Have you bent down beside the trail long enough to find the hidden jewel in the mire?



When little wonders such as these are treasured, one may become wealthy very quickly indeed.


At the close of day, it's a comfort to think that there may be more wealth in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our philosophy.


Dusk falls, and with it the scents and soft airs of dusk. Wherever we are, night breathes its riches into our deepest imaginings, and we sleep.

Tuesday 19 May 2020

Watching


Watching and waiting. Sometimes it seems this is how we spend most of our lives: watching for the rain to clear. For spring to arrive. For dawn to lift the darkness and the chill from our limbs.


 


Sometimes there is nothing to be done but watch as the earth turns, slowly, as it always has done. Into and out of darkness and light. Toward and away from colour and warmth.




We may feel at times that it’s all we can do just to watch our own feet, covering ground step by steady step, hoping that something new may lie around the bend.


 


Sometimes there really is something new to see, something we didn’t expect, but which is gifted to us because we were watching carefully.




At other times we may need to change our focus. When the background of our lives seems barren, the signs we hope for may be in the foreground instead. The tiniest things may come to mean much more to us than they ever did before.


 

 


At such times I try to walk even more slowly than usual. I pay attention to the beauty of the path I am on already, rather than trying to foresee forks that may lie ahead, or bridges I may yet have to cross.





I watch for windows into other worlds, into other ways of seeing things. I watch for glimpses of the world turned upside down.











At certain times and in certain places, such visions come to us clearly and vividly. We can see the whole picture in perspective, what is and what may yet be.




At other times, we may need to remind ourselves that the shadows of the present need not bar the way to a very different kind of future.




Spring may come again without our needing to lift a finger. Light and warmth may return of their own accord, whether we're paying attention or not.


 


That is why I watch so carefully. I just don’t want to miss anything.


 

Tuesday 12 May 2020

Listening

I woke at dawn two days ago to the sound of birds singing all through the forest, a chorus of unseen voices in the early blue light. Those who have followed my writings before know well my love for the birds, and how much it has meant to me to learn their names and voices. As I stepped out the door of my cabin I was already going silently, and listening as deeply as I could.


This present season of solitude has seen me delivered into the heart of Saugeen territory, on the low, sandy side of the Bruce Peninsula. I'm living with one other person on the grounds of a camp with which I've had an almost lifelong relationship. As essential workers during a time of suspended life, our duties include watching over the grounds in practical ways and being ready for the world to come alive again.

There's a spare and haunting beauty to this landscape. Cedars wade in the wet, marshy ground, and birches and trembling aspens lift their slender limbs against the sky. The high, keening cries of Northern Flickers ring throughout the forest. It is prone to snowfalls in May, thunderstorms in July, and great silent drifts of windblown snow in the depths of January.


I've been living here a week now, and slowly I'm settling into the rhythm of life in the woods. There are the seasonal indicators, of course, the watched-for markers of spring's advance and coy retreat, like the robin perched high in a poplar tree and singing out his territorial challenge to all and sundry. But these in their turn are also reminders of springs past, of those things that do not change, and that mark the steady drumbeat of the years, if our ears are tuned to hear it.


In a hundred different ways the world rages on around us, but many of us have found ourselves becalmed on the seas of life, gazing into wide, still horizons that may seem eerie or numinous, depending on our point of view. It's as though we've found ourselves in the eye of a storm, straining our ears for a sign, a breath of wind, anything to break the unearthly stillness. And it's in just that kind of stillness that true listening can happen.


To listen, to listen and really hear, you have to develop the habit of walking slowly. You have to be willing to halt at a moment's notice, totally enwrapped by the thought that has come to you, or by the smallest of sounds: perhaps the crisp, quiet touching down of snowflakes onto dry leaves. Or the slow but quickening pulse of a ruffed grouse beating its wings in the distance, the sound so deep you feel it between your ears, as though it came from inside you. And then you may become aware of the kind of sound you hadn't realized was there all along: the susurration of waves against the shore of Lake Huron, not a mile distant, or the sound of your own breathing.



Those who walk in this way make every step a prayer, a hope and a readiness to hear what there is to be heard. And just as the act of prayer implies a hearer, seen or unseen, so too the act of listening implies the possibility of being spoken to, with words or without.