Daybreak Walk @ Cove Island Park. Time Series. 49° F. 3:54, 5:03 & 6:07 am. Mother’s Day, May 12, 2024. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. For more pictures of this morning’s walk, go here.
Sunday Morning
Tag: Trees
Right.
Ask her what she craved
and she’d get a little frantic
about things like books, the woods, music.
Plants.
Seasons.
Also freedom.
— Charles Frazier, Nightwoods: A Novel
Notes:
- DK Photo July 16th @ Woodland Park, Darien, CT
- Quote: Thank you Make Believe Boutique.
Lightly Child, Lightly.
…If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So like children, we begin again…
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.
― Rainer Maria Rilke, from “How Sure Gravity’s Law,” Rainer Maria Rilke’s the Book of Hours: A New Translation with Commentary
Note:
- Photo: DK @ Daybreak. February 8, 2023, 6:35 am. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More pictures from this morning’s beautiful light show here.
- Poem: Thank you Vale of Soul-Making
- 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.”
It felt like a bird when I held it: almost weightless…
When I first learned the age of the instrument (1721) I was filled with wonder that a delicate piece of craftsmanship could endure for centuries, that something so small and light could do so much, that an instrument made in the 18th century could have so much to say in the 21st. It felt like a messenger from the past and an emblem of the possible, a relic and a promise…
One evening not long ago, I went to see the San Francisco Symphony’s annual concert with the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir. The symphony musicians sat in a semicircle that began with violins and violas and ended with cellos and bass viols, and, thanks to the time I’d spent contemplating David Harrington’s violin, I saw it as a forest of wooden instruments. The gospel singers stood above them, and at one moment when I could see dozens of bows moving in unison in the dimness, see 50 mouths open in song, it felt like some kind of truce between our species and the trees had been struck.
Maybe that’s the promise David’s violin seemed to hold when I discovered how long it had been playing. At my request, he brought it over to my apartment and took it out of its case. I was a bit overawed and ready to spread a clean cloth to lay it on but he put it on my table without any fuss, and let me pick it up. It felt like a bird when I held it: almost weightless, incredibly powerful and extremely delicate. And then I saw Kronos perform one more time, and there it was, in David’s hands, making music as it had for three centuries, seeming strong enough to go on indefinitely.
— Rebecca Solnit, from “‘A truce with the trees’: Rebecca Solnit on the wonders of a 300-year old violin” (July 7, 2022, The Guardian)
Walking. In Twilight.
Twilight.
Both ends in the last 24 hours.
9:04 pm last night. (Top photo.)
5:34 am this morning. (Bottom photo.)
This is our neighbor’s Oak tree. I wrote about it in “Walking. And Ranting.” Let’s say it’s ~200 years old. This tree has seen 146,000 evening and morning twilights. Now, That’s Something.
I’ve been in search of a quote, in search for 6 months now. Something I recall reading but can’t find. I’ve been scouring my archives. My old posts. Trying various word combos in sweeping, google searches. OCD, much? Haven’t been able to find it. Words shared by a famous author who doesn’t need to travel the world to find beauty, as he finds a new world each morning, in a five mile radius around his house.
His words float to the surface this morning as I pull into the driveway returning from my morning walk. And there she stands, peacefully, witnessing yet another quiet, twilight morning.
This scene right outside our front door.
A wind rose, quickening; it invaded my nostrils, vibrated my gut. I stirred and lifted my head. No, I’ve gone through this a million times, beauty is not a hoax… Beauty is real. I would never deny it; the appalling thing is that I forget it. ~ Annie Dillard
“We have nowhere else to go…This is all we have.” — Margaret Mead.
I stare up at her giant limbs.
Thank God I have nowhere else to go.
Notes:
- Update since posting: Valerie pointed me to Thoreau. She was right! (again) “Wanderlust: A History of Walking” by Rebecca Solnit – “Henry David Thoreau, who walked more vigorously than me on the other side of the continent, wrote of the local, “An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours’ walking will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. A single farmhouse which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the dominions of the King of Dahomey. There is in fact a sort of harmony discoverable between the capabilities of the landscape within a circle of ten miles’ radius, or the limits of an afternoon walk, and the threescore years and ten of human life. It will never become quite familiar to you.””
- More photos from this morning’s Daybreak walk here and here.
- Annie Dillard Quote: “The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New (Ecco, March 15, 2016)” (Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels)