A Walk in the Marsh

The past several days were chill and damp. Today is sunny and warmer, and I was drawn outside.

For untold eons Medicine People have known and taught that we are the world. We are each, and all, connected to all that is. To experience the natural world is to encounter both oneself and the Creator. To take our joys, sorrows, and frustrations to the trees and mountains, the rivers and the great weathers, is to rediscover ourselves and find healing.

In the presence of the non-human world we  discover our categories are arbitrary and narrow. Good and bad, useful and useless, inside and out, are all constructs, the work of thoughts. Thoughts are Nature, too.

This afternoon I found myself walking the bike path through the marshes.  High overhead the Osprey soared, then flew off toward the river. I would like to share a few images of that walk with you.

In the wetlands many trees remain bare, refuges for myriad red winged blackbirds.  In winter, mixed flocks of starlings and blackbirds live here, flocks composed of hundreds of birds. But it is spring and the birds are solitary or paired. The males defend their territories throughout the day.

The marshes are not totally bare; trees, and grasses, encouraged by warmer days and brighter sunlight,  are coming to life.

On the higher ground, cherry trees are in flower, weeks earlier than usual. Their flower clusters hang from down turned twigs running along he branches. The flowers appear in swirls. Here, by the water, the buds have not opened. Perhaps tomorrow.

The beaver have been at work, creating a small dam. The resulting impoundment, although narrow throughout most of its length, is several hundred yards long. Already it has become home to wading birds, ducks, and geese, who feed, gather and nest there. They are joined by a growing number of amphibians, as the adults who survived the winter, spawn.

It is still early spring. There was snow last weekend away from the lake. Yet the wetlands that provide ecological richness and diversity to the lake are awakening. The pace of life here is quickening. We humans , too, hear the  Springtime song of Life ,and join creation in dancing to its rhythms. May it always be so.