Encountering Earth

Summer flowers are bursting out everywhere! The roadsides are lined with colors and textures of the many wildflowers: the periwinkle blue of chickory, the soft white of Queen Anne's Lace, the pearly pink of swamp milkweed, the sunshine yellow of bird's foot trefoil, the bouncy orange of tiger lilies. Summer flowers are boisterous! They shout their presence, unlike the fragile and quiet Spring wildflowers that must be pursued, like a hide and seek game, in the understory of the woods.  Many of the flowers of Summer are like flags waving me down: Joe-Pye weed that can be taller than I am, huge purple thistle and goldenrod. I need to pay more attention to these Summer flowers. In the Spring I often take out a magnifying lens and look deeply into the heart of fringed polygala or spring beauties. But now I give a cursory glance as I caught myself doing yesterday on a walk. Pause I say to myself, look deeply, see the color and texture, notice the bees rolling blissfully in the heart ...

Today I took a hike with a friend to the Landis Arboretum in Esperance. The Arboretum is a celebration of trees and plants, but the trees really had this special magnetism. There were so many species! The diversity of trees is one of the wonders of the world. There were many species of oaks, conifers, crabapples, beeches, maples, aspens - the list goes on. Old-growth trees have an incredible attraction to me. We didn't take the Old Growth Forest Trail today, but we did meet some amazing oaks along the Woodland Trail. The most stunning of all was Big Red, a towering red oak that is over 300 years old. I grasped the tree in both hands and held my head to its sinewy bark. There is a wisdom in an old tree, a wisdom that speaks of hardships and great times, of harsh, icy winters and glorious Spring rains. This wisdom knows how to hold on, to stand tall, to be patient. This tree could tell many stories; this tree has seen many things. The roots of this oak are as deep and wide as the can...