CMP Review 2024-08-01

August 1, 2024

I have many ways to cheer myself when it’s time for a winter nature walk. I think of animal prints in the snow and the infinite patterns of ice mixed with the water of a stream.

Even so, week after week the bare trees and winter weeds begin to wear on my soul. That’s when the words of Emily Brontë express my heart:

How do I yearn, how do I pine
For the time of flowers to come

Amidst evergreen pines and intrepid cardinals I remember those crown jewels of nature study — the flowers. I remember my favorites, the spiderwort and the wood lily:

‘Tis these that breathe upon my heart
A calm and softening spell
That if it makes the tear-drop start
Has power to soothe as well

When the cold finally breaks through my gloves and no warmth is left and I’m ready to go inside, I think of the ephemeral, living gems of summer:

For these I weep, so long divided
Through winter’s dreary day

That’s what makes nature walks in August so precious. Most of the flowers I can’t bring home to me. But I can bring my notebook to them. With just a moment of preparation and a little thermos at my side, I can capture the moment, the gesture, and the life. I know it will cheer me up next winter. It will remind me that I didn’t just see the flowers in a photograph. They were real.

@artmiddlekauff