NATURAL PROGRESSION: A PERSONAL VIEW
NATURAL CELEBRATION
By Barbara Tatham Johnson
The anticipation in darkening skies, still air, and distant rumbles of an
approaching storm releases exhilaration when lightning flashes and rain
pours. Powerful emotions roll with the wind and fury. The natural world
energizes me. At other times, unexpected bliss restores me.
When I step outside in a May dawn and hear the song of a hermit thrush, I
stand captivated. The notes are particularly fine, a high series with a
final trill of melodic silver thread. Then, a second hermit thrush just west
of the first sings. I occupy the center of a thrush song duel that becomes
almost synchronous. The repeating series of notes climb high, then higher.
The thrush to my east, the first I heard, has the finer voice with his pure
ending trill. I allow the sweet notes to swirl through my mind, but too soon
the concert is over. The common voices of other birds, chickadees and
robins, and the rapping of a yellow-bellied sapsucker intrude on my
meditation. I try to recall the thrush notes. They were too ethereal to
retain, but the essence of their fineness lifts my spirit for the day.
An old sugar maple, with a gap through its entire trunk wide enough for me
to stand within, rises by a neighbor’s roadside pasture. Each time and in
every season that I pass and see the tree thriving, I am cheered.
Maine poet Abbie Huston Evans wrote in The Moment of Beauty, “A
boulder beautiful beyond belief, / Witch-hazel blossoms bitten by the cold,
/ Touched with a sudden shining bright and brief, / Make pictures that we
see till we are old; / Ay, what has once been a transfigured thing / Halts
us, long after, with remembering.”
As a young woman, I explored a narrow hillside ravine, and as I pulled
myself up the slippery side of wet ledge and brown leaves one April morning,
I looked, eyes level with a grassy field edge, into the delicate beauty of
hepatica blooms. Love at first sight took my breath away. The flowers, so
small and hidden that I had never noticed them, were simply lovely. The
exquisite, freshly opened, plum-pink, white-edged sepal cups provided a
marvelous setting for the tiaras of white stamen within. Backing the sepals,
dark bronze-green bracts covered with fine hairs intensified the effect of
intricate delicateness. This unexpected beauty in drab surroundings
inspired, in the most lyrical way, a life-long interest in wild flowers and
botanical exploration.
The natural world is a meeting of wild places and places changed forever by
the activities of humankind. Rolling farmland, the kitchen garden, and urban
parks are natural places, too, and sources of satisfaction and comfort.
In September of 1152, Hildegard of Bingen accompanied by her priest and
confessor, Volmar, surveyed the land holdings of her Benedictine convent.
“Riding out with Volmar as soon as the day’s mass was dismissed, my eyes
followed with joy the curved, scalloped ribbons of goldenrod still blooming
next to the lavender of asters and joe-pye weed, fluffy and pale as it
matures into its gone-to-seed stage. Patches of yellow leaves lit many
trees, and bold vermilion creepers wound around trunks and threaded through
evergreen boughs of our blue-green cedars. The air now is remarkably like
clear water; the light a pale rose. Apple and quince trees support ladders
for picking, and grapes are pendulous, of a matte gray-green like weathered
copper, ready to be collected in canvas and leather buckets, oaken
barrels...This afternoon I thought the precise diagonal rows of newly
planted wine grapes spoke elegantly of our own growing culture on this
mountain in contrast to those curved ribbons of wild flowers. Planted,
pruned, and fertilized to fecund maturity, they speak of planning, training,
and priorities in our lives as opposed to the chaotic sensuality of nature,
which I also love.” (The Journal of Hildegard of Bingen by Barbara
Lachman.)
Many years ago, unusually mild air in February created strong warm winds.
The narrow valley where I lived in West Virginia funneled a flood of air
through the night, and the roar as the wind passed across the tree-covered
hillsides brought me outside. I climbed with my family to the ridge top and
reveled in the wild commotion. A flock of geese, caught in the relentless
current, called to each other as they sped northward. A full moon silvered
the landscape, and the scene swirled our senses with the turmoil of the
night air into a thrilling unforgettable memory.
Nature creates lasting impressions that I value for confirmation and
restoration. I enter the natural world, wherever I find it, with expectation
of surprise, discovery, exhilaration, and serendipity, as well as
inspiration. Nature’s sensual diversity gives a sense of wholeness and
continuity, the essence of living.
(This is the third part of a three-part essay.)
