Orion Rising

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June 6, 2005

Spring and All

Song from Pippa Passes
Robert Browning

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wind;
The snail's on the thorn:
God's in his heaven --
All's right with the world!

In the pre-dawn morning of a day when spring seems poised to slip suddenly into summer, I wake early and head out for a short bike ride before Jen and Orion begin to stir. As I turn the bicycle downhill toward the mountains to the south, the sky in the east is painted with broad vivid stokes the color of roadside clusters of hawkweed – orange, vermillion, and yellow – while to the west, mist rises slowly from the surface of a placid pond, just as the sun crests the high ridge. I pass the remains of an old iron furnace, a reminder of the early nineteenth-century mining industry in what is now a quiet rural village, and turn right past the farmhouse, which Robert Frost “had to take by force rather than buy,” straight past several country inns built before tourism’s heyday – one of which, hosted Henry David Thoreau and his brother John during their trip to the area more than 160 years ago. Turning back north and uphill toward home, I squint against the now bright eastern sky and think about returns and cycles, and coming back home to ground myself.

This has been a spring of budding affections. While it feels as though summer has abruptly draped our woodland world after a month of wet and cold spring in which we nearly lost our affinity for this place, nature is doing all it can to catch up with the season. Orion and I have also shed our indoor selves and wandered about the woods, fields, and streams nearby.

Of late, I have felt within the world outside much more than I can ever recall. The moments of engagement stretch into longer, hazy afternoons as we stretch our own limbs to the sun (despite our prodigious black fly and mosquito entourage) and, recently, seek a cool respite from the heat we have yet to grow accustomed to.

Although Orion hasn't been quite sure what to make of the new warmer world, he appears to join me in my appreciation for the new freedoms brought by these sunny days. He may wish, however, that his parents wait until the water warms a bit more before taking him swimming again.

Perhaps it is Orion that leads me further into the woods; as I move his hands across the bark of different trees and through the soft new growth on fir and larch, and we tease the rings of hobblebush petals with our fingers, we wonder about the trees together. His vision of the world is what brings my thoughts back home and helps to show me the glory of something wondrous that I had missed all those years before.

Posted by pavel at June 6, 2005 7:58 PM

Comments

Posted by: Gina at June 7, 2005 10:44 AM

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Posted by: Sherry at June 22, 2005 11:42 AM