My friend Fleur embodies slow like I embody fast. And you could blame it on her age – she’s almost 20 years my senior – but that would be wrong. She is a photographer by trade, capturing images that depict a careful awareness that could only be explained by a lifetime of cultivating attention to the smallest detail.
I think in terms of images too – clairvoyant from birth, I have always seen what others cannot. And yet I find myself eager to move on to the next thing, whether it is what happens after that blaze of sunset or what bloom will be more salient than the last – as if any of these can be compared.
I am not proud of this trait. I have witnessed a humpback whale breach fully out of the water at close range; summoned a full grown female moose who, in the end, got too close for my comfort rather than hers. I have swum with giant mantas and screeching, flapping loons who veered so close I could see the red in their eyes and feathers that redefined the color black for me forever. I have observed shades of evening sky that defy an artist’s palette; gazed at a billion stars and constellations while floating for hours on my back inside a lone canoe on a crystal pond. I have watched northern lights descend like a final curtain, undulating for hours in brilliant prismatic hues; fireflies like stars lighting up acres of fields on a summer’s night. An early morning walk once gifted me with a rare fisher cat and her two babies and a young black bear emptying bird seed from each of our feeders as casually as a drunk in a dumpster. I once had a horse who let me sit in her stall while she gave birth; I have attended the nativity of a tiny human being.
All these experiences have taught me to slow down, but still I move too quickly. It is almost as if nature herself is waiting; waiting on me to be in these moments instead of rushing ahead mentally or physically. But maybe I’m anthropomorphizing – it wouldn’t be the first time. We humans are so self referential, getting out of our own way seems monumental at times. I only know that I am becoming more aware, and that this might be important.
The birdseed thief ambling slowly away from our Maine cottage ...
