…is to bloom. – Alice Walker
This morning, while walking back from letting out the chickens and hanging with the pigs for a bit, this is what I saw in the cool slanting morning sunshine:
The 6 ft nettles are seeding and abundantly potent. The thistle are nourishingly prolific and excruciatingly prickly (time to thistle mulch chop and drop, keeping the soil building root structure and biomass intact while avoiding the dreaded fluff ball seed dispersal extravaganza of last year. And most startlingly, the flowers are back! Wildly, sporadically, here and there, but nonetheless, most definitely here. Likely by way of bird droppings and westerly winds. When we first arrived here, the absence of flowers, after years of goats foraging the land, was starkly noticeable. And this morning, they announced their return, officially, finally. Quietly, slowly, persistently, resiliently. Vibrant colours against a barrenly grey construction site backdrop.
Walking back to our little cabin, where I would immerse into breakfast and morning routines, I was contemplating all of these wondrously mundane things, realising that what I was seeing reflected perfectly and spoke better than words what it feels like right now at this time in our transition, this journey into the vibrant colours of change, stage. Tingly, exciting, prolific, incredibly rewarding and satisfying, totally alive…while at the same time tiring, exhausting, scary, lonely, and sometimes dauntingly overwhelmingly grey. We have covered a lot of ground since going off the map, and wherever we are on that little side road without a sign, somewhere between Here and There, there is more to cover, slowly, persistenly. And amongst all the many wondrous things we’ve encountered so far, there are now glorious flowers to look at, smell, talk to, learn from, and travel with.