Back to Page One of Great Place of Peace

 

Everywhere I go I meet despair, exhaustion, bewilderment. In the past month an unusual stream of visitors has come to my conservation area home,  hungering for the beauty of pines and the strength of oaks and for glistening lakes and rugged rock faces. These people tell me they are searching for strength to transcend the almost unbearable demands of our commerce-driven society. It has been a year of many wounds and losses, not just for me, but for nearly every one I encounter. Even my fifteen year old neighbor Susanna looks grave and says softly that it isn’t just grown-ups who are weighed down. “It is too much. I feel it too,” she whispers.

My old friend Matthew comes to me, stifled sobs rising in his throat. Formerly a superb social worker, he has just lost his last hope of a job to cutbacks. For someone of our age, there will be no more second chances. Soon his fourteen year old van will be beyond repair, and he no longer will be able to leave the city. His solace and delight in nature will be a thing of the past.
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So necessary is the healing inherent in wild places. And such a fragile truce we have with them. Together, for now, Matthew and I sit on a lichened outcrop, watching the glistening wild grasses, the sun stipples, the shadows of the wings hovering about us. Stillness. Respite. For all the encroachment of noise and light pollution, there still are times of resplendent silence, I tell him. I can stand utterly alone in a dark forest, hearing only the whisper of the softly falling snow. I can step out on my porch at night and see a blaze of stars--as long as I remember not to look north where the orange glow from a town fades their brilliance.

 

 Listening to sad stories everywhere, I am reminded that, for all the assaults, what we have here in Merak’s domain is far far beyond price. The deer still are free to trace their ancestral trails, their songlines, as they have for the twenty-six years I have been fortunate to live here. For the most part, turtles make their way from pond to pond without human interference. Occasionally, I still can rejoice in abundance. Of a spring dawn, walking down to a deep bay on the nearby lake, I still may come upon the wonder of two thousand mergansers.

Being privileged to share this precious place, I live in daily awareness of how essential it is to preserve our connections with nature. But today I understand anew that this rough, surprising land is still a great place of peace, for me and all who come to it in openness. As I watch Merak, now fanning her feathers to the sun, I am mindful of an Inuit print I once saw of a mother bird, a spirit bird, I think, arms outstretched to shield two child birds, one for each wing. What interests me most is that from within the strength of this encircling presence, this love and wildness, the young birds are facing out, towards life.

This week, in the student campground under the pines, it is emotionally damaged children who are living with their leaders, studying succession, pond ecology and orienteering. They are reaching out in small, courageous steps. Each day as I pass, I notice that they are quieter, calmer, more sure of themselves. I see how their faces light as they teach Barry what they are discovering.
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As we look at Merak together, Matthew’s face softens. Over the afternoon, there has been a stilling of winds. Four ungainly deer are grazing in obvious content down in the brambles beyond the pond. From the very tip of a spruce the white-throated sparrow lifts its voice, “Oh, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet.”

Come here and be at peace.