The Season of Lavender in the Year of the Lizard
This morning I went for a walk with my neighbor Jeanne and we inadvertently startled a doe and a small spotted fawn. The doe darted up a hill and quickly vanished and the fawn ran directly towards me in all its fear and vulnerability, looking so tiny and new I wondered if this might have been its first day in the world. Equally startled, I jumped aside, feeling clumsy and intrusive. I hope mother and baby were quickly reunited.
Back at Jeanne’s house, we paused to pick berries, thrashing through the lavender that borders her garden. (A bear appeared behind her house recently, perhaps drawn to those berries, or maybe to test the not-quite-ready apricots.) Then I rode my bike home along the oak-lined road accompanied by intermittent birdsong. The scent of lavender still clung to my hands.
And that's the way it is sometimes.
Jeanne wrote about our canyon in an email recently: The other day I needed to explain tos omeone where I lived. All I could really say was that I lived a good safe distance beyond the end of the road. How could I begin to describe what this canyon really is? Or how the fence line along the ocean disappears into the dusk at twilight, headlands blurring softly into the distance as I make my way home from town in the evening?
Beyond the threshold of fog and dusk, there is this universe. It is impossible to ignore the strangeness and beauty of the natural world here --its weirdnesses and wonders assert themselves daily. Just yesterday I watched as a red tail hawk danced with the wind, a family of wild pigs traversed the hill from Coyote Canyon, and a lizard with streaks of iridescent blue on its underbelly scampered up the window screen, its miniature hands looking eerily humanoid.
On the beach a small sea lion pup lay dead on the sand -- I counted twenty-seven turkey vultures gnawing at the carcass or hovering nearby. A string of pelicans soared above and dolphins dipped and spun in the shine of the sea, and once again I was overcome by a sense of amazement and humility.
No doubt sharing life with a dog taught me to pay closer attention, too. I am sureI listen a little lower to the ground now, aware of another stratum of existence, of squirrels and quail and insects buzzing, the constant drone of industrious life in the orchard, the wildness at the edge of things, that bold coyote strutting close to the house, the cattle converging by the hammock near the creek, the clamor of invisible beings passing through the brush. These are the wavelengths Terra tuned into, and I cannot begin to understand them, butthey seem valid and worthy and infinitely complex. I approach life more respectfully now.
I am the visitor, after all.
Meanwhile the century plant -- which I have since learned is actually a type of yucca, sometimes called Our Lord's Candle, which makes a lot of sense -- continues its ascent after thirty dormant years, rising now above the roofline and dropping yellow blossoms. Supposedly it blooms only once and that once is happening now. There is something epic and miraculous about it.
So I live in a state of astonishment, a little bit crazy no doubt, and becoming somewhat feral, but comforted and not alone.
William Stafford (of course) said it far better than I ever could:
Now I know why people worship, carry around
magic emblems, wake up talking dreams
they teach to their children: the world speaks.
The world speaks everything to us.
It is our only friend.
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Maybe this whole post is just a thank you song.
I don’t know why I was so lucky to have landed here, but I am grateful I am grateful I am grateful.