When despair for the world grows in me,
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be—
I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water,
and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
-Wendell Berry
The great blue was one of my dad’s favorite birds, along with the similar white egret. They always fill me with a sense of awe, of magic and stillness, even when they aren’t spectacularly framed by fog.
They are graceful, stately, BIG, and immensely soothing to the soul…
and observant. Infuriatingly camera-shy.
I chased this one back and forth, back and forth, running the muddy trail and creeping down the briar-filled banks.
It was, if I am being quite honest, one of the most enjoyable hours I’d spent in quite some time.
Meditation wears many faces…
a church is where you find it.
