Bucket List event, and whaddya know, it was in our back yard. Barred Owl spotted after entire bird population was sending five-alarm fire calls. 7:00 to 7:30 pm. 83º F. July 1, 2026. Darien, CT. All photos can be found at this link.
Bucket List!
Miracle. All of it.
Or consider the process of conception, when a single egg unites with a single sperm. Each human female has about 300,000 eggs during the fertile period of her life. Each male ejaculation has about 300 million sperm. Thus each conception contains about a hundred thousand billion different possible combinations of DNA. In other words, there are a hundred thousand billion unique and different human beings that could result from each procreation event. Only one of those possible combinations led to each of you reading this article at this moment. Here’s a way to visualize that extremely tiny fraction. If you took a very long ruler that stretched from here to the planet Pluto, one inch of that distance would be you. The rest of the distance would be other possible human beings that could have been, but never were. Each of us has won a lottery with a hundred thousand billion different players.
Being alive at all is the most extraordinary stroke of good luck we will ever experience. Yet it is the easiest to overlook, to take for granted. We wake up in the morning, have our coffee, make breakfast, send the kids off to school, go to our jobs, move through our routines, worry about deadlines, check off items on our to-do list. And we forget that beneath all of it lies something profoundly rare: existence itself. The simple fact that we are here, conscious and aware, is so unlikely that it borders on the miraculous. Because we experience that miracle every day, we treat it as ordinary, even guaranteed, mostly unnoticed at all. We postpone joy, assuming there will always be more time. We don’t see the beauty in small moments.
We simply go about the business of life, without taking a second to notice life itself. In making this comment, I am aware that in the time-driven, frantic pace of our world today, many people do not have the luxury of pausing to take stock of such moments.There is a little more to the story. There will never be another you in the future of the universe. (Some apologies are due to Buddhists and Hindus, who believe in rebirth, but even the reborn individual is not the same.) From the distant past, billions of years ago, to the distant future, billions of years ahead, the universe will never see another one of you.
It is almost impossible to wrap our heads around such things. We could not have had this grand perspective as recently as a century ago. And we have found it not through Prince Henry’s ships but through our laboratories, our telescopes, and our minds. So the question is: What are we to make of the fantastically improbable fact of our existence, our moment of life? Or, as Mary Oliver asks in the last lines of her poem “The Summer Day”: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
— Alan Lightman, from “The Ordinary Miracle of Existing” (The Atlantic.com, June 2, 2026)
Notes:
- Photo: Sunrise over Lake Superior from break wall at Presque Isle Park, Marquette, Michigan. 6:52 am. June 12, 2026. More Marquette photos here and here.
- Post Title Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
Lightly Child, Lightly.
Yes, that’s him (or her). It was 5:25 a.m. this morning at The Cove and he’s heading back to the top of Holly Pond.
It’s been almost 2 weeks since I shared Good (?) Sunday Morning after I learned about his mate being taken down by an animal (coyote?). And he’s still searching — the shorelines, the break walls, and their nesting area.
As I stood watching him circling, Murakami’s words came to mind:
“Standing there alone, I always felt sad, a deep sadness I’d felt before, long, long ago. I remembered that sadness very well. A sadness that can’t be explained, that doesn’t melt away over time, that quietly leaves invisible wounds, in a place you cannot see. And how can you deal with something you can’t see?” (Haruki Murakami, The City and Its Uncertain Walls.)
Notes:
- More photos from this morning’s walk here.
- Post Title Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
Good (?) Sunday afternoon.
Good (?) Sunday afternoon.
Those of you who follow along with me on this wildly spasmodic blog, you will understand that this Swan couple have become a fixture here (obsession, maybe?). This couple and their cygnets have been a profound source of joy for the neighborhood (and esp. for me).
Swans typically mate for life. They generally return to the same nesting spot year after year. And this pair built their giant nest along the break wall on Weed Avenue again this year. The nest was stood up sometime in mid to late April. (Photo: 5:50 am. May 9, 2026)
So, each morning, I drive down Weed Avenue in anticipation of seeing my friends, and wondering if the cygnets have arrived. And for those of you who are counting, it’s been 2,210 consecutive (almost) days on this morning walk at Cove Island Park, like in a row.
Well….
Continue reading “Good (?) Sunday afternoon.”Easter Sunday
Bethany Church Easter Sunrise Service (sans Sunrise). 6:00 – 7:00 am. 41° F, with light rain. April 5, 2026. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos of this morning’s walk here.