Better Than Yesterday

All around The Moose Lodge spring is erupting.  The rhubarb seems to grow by inches every day and the midnight sun washes its magic across the landscape as new flowers come into bloom daily.  Each walk in the woods is sacred.  The simple observation of nature, transformations underway daily, free of charge to those who care to revel in it.  

“Keep calm. You have the forest in your blood.” 

― Nenia Campbell

Each day is “better than yesterday”, which fits my transition to treatment for bi-polar disorder.  Every day is filled with hope and promise, each day I am a little stronger, braver, and better, which is all any of us can hope for anyhow.  Spring holds such beauty and promise as the landscape springs to life once more, delighting us with new surprises that erupt from the mossy pillow-like tundra.  

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” 

― John Muir

Setbacks are to be expected though. Last week on a drive to “Town” we hit a snow storm through one of the mountain passes and the tempreature hovered just above freezing. Surely giving the leafed out trees cause to wonder if they’d erupted a week or two too soon.  

“We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”     

― Henry David Thoreau

Back at The Moose Lodge the bluebells spring up in every which direction.  Dotting the landscape with their perfect soft fuzzy blue hues.  Wild roses delight the senses in shades of light pink to hot magenta.  Everywhere you look spring is upon us and new beginnings are underway.  The transition from spring to summer happens here without celebration.  Overnight, it would seem, is how spring arrives in this wild landscape. 

It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.” 

― Cheryl Strayed

Spring winds have done their work in the woods, clearing out dead branches -- scattering them along the path to be picked up and tossed aside to clear the trail.  Rocks erupt from the earth driven higher by the thawing soils, removed by hand or kicked to the edge of the trail.  

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” 

― Margaret Atwood

Landscaping work done by hand, gardening shears in hand snipping out old dead grass and weeds, giving this place the tender loving care it needs.  An exchange really, as I need the repetitive soul cleansing work of working with the earth, the simple observation of nature, photography and writing.  Life. Better than yesterday.

“In short, all good things are wild and free.” 

― Henry David Thoreau