Giant Sunflowers and Drunk Hummingbirds
I knew if I didn’t bring my camera on my evening walk tonight, the light would be perfect. I figured better to see it and not record it (at least visually), than not to see it at all. The Heaven that is Earth right now is not difficult to explain: the wettest springtime (August and September) since the last Ice Age provided October lushness that reflects light beyond diffuse.
The whole atypical greenness radiates a soft, almost ethereal mountain and farmland dreamscape closer to a Swiss Alps idyll than the stereotype of a high desert as I roll up my Carhartts and cross the still substantial Mimbres River.
Two hummingbirds buzz around me like drunk propeller planes late for something. September is our second spring in the high desert (here, the kids are taught, “July showers bring August peaches and weird neighborhood behavior”). This year, even October hasn’t brought even the beginning of the end to the lushness. I mean, imagine living in a place that has a monsoon. I don’t know about most folks, but for me, monsoon conveys the Serengeti, with all the associated amatory effects on the local fauna. Every animal except the human-on-a-9-to-5-schedule is frolicking in bliss at this time of year. Rabbits, coyotes, deer, red-tailed hawks, owls, my goats…
For some reason I remember at this moment that the beautiful Lupy is on her way from town.
I can’t help but emanate crunchy thoughts like, “I am so lucky to be alive, to be here, now.” I’m sorry. I know happiness is annoying to those in a different part of the emotional cycle. The near constant thunder of the previous three months is winding down, which is good, as it scares the Goatlets a little. But even they, judging but their own good attitude, know it was all worth it: so much new stuff to nosh. And despite the barrage of precipitation that’s now (I think) almost over for a few months, even during the brunt of the Legendary Flood Of ‘06 we had hours of sunlight every day. It was just that during monsoon season, I had to time the clothes-drying. Miss the window, and they hung on the line long enough to become art.
It was on this hike tonight that I remembered that working on one’s own life is the biggest blessing — it’s not about hours logged (sure it’s a lot of work, between trying to live the Green life and write about it), it’s about loving and appreciating life and where one is. Radiating love of the Moment. I am appreciative this time around. May I stay so, I prayed — and not get used to living bliss.
On the last leg of this dream hike, I brought home some stop sign-sized sunflowers for the kitchen table vase from a dewey meadow two farms away. Eugenio Zanetti, the production designer for the gorgeous film What Dreams May Come might have gotten his inspiration from this endless field of 12 foot tall stalks, about halfway into their Van Gogh decay. It’s one of those fields with columns extending as far as the eye can see, the traversing of which turns me into a Hobbit. And a ten-year-old one at that.
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