accessing the capacity for joy
My feet
find a beat
on the drum-tight shell
of ice-topped snow;
a crisp rattle,
then a tinkling, skittering
whisper of melody.
And I dance –
to the song that I hear
and to hear the music
of my dance!
February 13, 2018
Yes, for the last two days I have been dancing joyfully down our drive, delighting in the crispness of the air and beneath my feet and the unfamiliar soundscape!
Our first year of living in rural Ontario has been truly special. I have had a sense of homecoming, of re-connecting more fully with nature. And, for me, that connection is the source of much wonder and joy.
So I put together a book, A year in the life of The House at Turtle Pond. A kind of journal, it seeks to capture our response to the newness of living through the turning of this first year, looking out over Cranberry Lake on the Rideau system in Southern Ontario, Canada.
It speaks to a deep connection with nature, the rhythm of the seasons and the interconnectedness of internal and external realities.
I wrote it first and foremost so as not to lose sight of the newness as the years pass and familiarity potentially dulls our awareness. But it has been lovely to find that at least a few people find in it something to feed the soul. It makes it even more worthwhile!
Below is a link to A year in the life of The House at Turtle Pond as it appears on the Blurb website. Here you can glance through a preview. If you happen to be interested in having a copy and live locally, please feel free to contact me direct. Blurb often offers discounts to the creator of a book, which makes it significantly more affordable.
By the way, it was our predecessors who named our wetland between the house and road Turtle Pond. And our neighbour noted that this was therefore The House at Turtle Pond, like The House at Pooh Corner. This seemed apt, especially when I came across this:
And by and by Christopher Robin came to the end of things, and he was silent, and he sat there, looking out over the world, just wishing it wouldn’t stop.
I was ever a child of nature, integrally connected with the rhythm of the seasons and with a strong link between external and internal realities.
Nature’s place in my life is as a sweet familiar melody running through my living,
it speaks the language of my soul;
it connects my roots to the beating heart of Mother earth
and it centers me in ‘now’ and ‘am’;
it lifts me out of the mire of day to day concerns;
gifting me moments of deep knowing and insight;
even in my darkest days, it anchors me to wonder and joy,
lighting my way back home to my best self;
it roots me in awareness of the constancy of change, unafraid,
and threads the cycles of dying and rebirth within my being;
it enfolds me in a living silence, rich in mystery,
opens the door to realms of myth and magic;
it inspires me to watch, to note, to listen,
sating my senses;
it draws from me a life-affirming reverence,
a deep resounding ‘yes’!
I’m very excited to be embarking on an exploration into Nature’s Poetry. Even this afternoon’s first foray into the preparatory work for Session 1, beginning to look at my personal connection with nature, has been richly nourishing.
I have, over the last couple of years, felt the pull back to my writing roots, which started with poems before I could even put pen to paper (I was three years old). So this online course speaks both to my deep sense of return and re-connection to nature in living rurally and to rediscovering a mode of expression that faltered as I focused on career and family.
What a delicious luxury it is to be invited down a path along which poetry, both in the reading and the writing, can illuminate one’s inner landscape!
I intend to do my best to follow Mary Oliver‘s instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
A dear friend gifted me with the wonder of a Monarch butterfly chrysalis – exquisite in its own right; blue green, studded with gold. But the gist of his gift was the opportunity to witness the process of transformation.
We hung the ribbon to which the pupa was attached above our dining table, watched it through breakfast and checked back regularly over the course of the day. Needless to say, we missed the moment of transformation, which must have taken place between 6 and 8pm!
It struck me that this suited the metaphor of our own transformations extraordinarily well. We are rarely fully aware of a single moment of transition from one stage to another. Only in hindsight is the shift apparent.
Of course, the truth is that transformation is not a single moment – for a Monarch Butterfly or a human being. It is a continuous, lifelong process, punctuated by periods of struggling to break free of what we have been and those wondrous, joyous times when we find new wings!
Thank you, Real, for a beautiful gift.
Walking in snow-like-sand, entranced by each grain’s iridescent glitter. Does the knowledge of the unseen, the microscopic beauty of the crystal structures, increase my sense of wonder, of joy?
I have always perceived joy as being fed by wisdom rather than knowledge, yet I can see the possibility that humankind’s amazing curiosity and creativity open up ways of knowing, of seeing or otherwise experiencing that amplify perception even when that mode of perception is not available.
Or is this merely an intellectualization?
