Do the stones we find on the shoreline, inspected closely before placing in a pocket for safe keeping, care that millions of years of effort have vanished?
We may live in nature, within its surroundings the forests’ cradling hands, but we must remember the cradling hands found us as they were here first, before we arrived as simple celestial beings.
Early October and the first snowfall through 30 degree temperatures, the leaves are still green and the grass is layered with a white coat. Gray rolling clouds ooze more snow as the winds toss individual flakes from rooftops and place them elsewhere in growing drifts.
The forecast shows below average temperatures and has skipped fall headlong into another MN winter. Trees still boast subdued green foliage on graying branches, never getting the chance to show their fall colors and the seasonal hues from a new palette.
Building snow upon the leaves causes winter fall and the path turns green while other colors disappear to be found next spring.
While we expect the seasons to follow what we know and are familiar with, natures path is jagged, chaotic, and not for us to understand. This year featured a short summer, shorter fall, and a hint of a long winter.
We are only bystanders in the grand scheme, the plan nature has written, that we do not have access to. Hidden deep within in the earth’s core with its own roots cast across the universe we see and beyond.
Being in awe is the reaction and realization of something beyond us and accepting that we cannot control its state.
However, we exert influence and try to impress our ways upon nature. Our actions individually seem innocent and isolated. However, collectively these actions put us at odds and force the hand of nature. Nature which always seeks balance. The ways of nature should influence us.
And so I lift this stone carefully from the light infused shoreline, hold it my cold hands, eyeing each color and line, knowing full well its connection to everything and to myself, and place it in my pocket. Carrying a part of nature with me, I walk into the sun.
