All This Useless Beauty

"LOONS" - origin of image unknown. Post title borrowed from Elvis Costello, who doubtless borrowed it from de Maupassant.

As we slip into the dusk of the year, I am reminded of the need to slow down, savor the days, hibernate like a wild thing. If Mother Nature pauses in her great labors, so then must I. If that great ball of fire in the sky sinks lower on the horizon from the weight of the season, I shouldn’t wonder at the heaviness in my bones as I sink onto mattress and chair.

Keeping pace with nature’s rhythms seems easier when living close to the heart of the land. Observing birds on the wing must be coded in our DNA. Gazing out at a vista of landscape changing hues sets off a chain of invisible events, as image hits retina. Just because we might not be aware of it does not make it any less stupendous. If I consider the million sensory impressions assaulting my body every day, there is no filter that can effectively cancel them all. And even if that were possible, I would not wish it into being. Changed and charged currents waft on breezes tinged with the damp of winterchill. Dogs pick up their ears, cock their heads. The full-time simplicity of their lives grants them a necessary rhythm in acutely attuning to minutiae.

When I lived in Maine where seasons merged at nature’s whim, I was often devastated by the sudden and profound advent of the equinox. In thirty-two sets of seasons, I can honestly say I was never fully prepared. Perhaps as a result of my birth and upbringing on warmer shores, I lacked the intuitive sensitivity to a tinge of morning frost. Too energized by the thin air and the wafts of wood smoke in my nostrils; too enthralled by the variety of wildlife scurrying about, readying for the inevitable. Too enchanted with the labors of loons launching overhead, furiously flapping wings to offset the density of solid bones, their lilting cries piercing the stillness of morning. Often and one time too many, I was too distracted by beauty to repair to the warmth of hearth and home – just another sack full of leaves, one more armload thrown on the brush pile – ignoring the frigid hand of impending winter wrapping itself sinuously around the back of my bare neck.

Life on Hawaii island is vastly different, but thirty-two years of syncing my body to the rhythm of four distinct seasons and it doesn’t easily give up the memory. I must fight this laconic feeling, this sense of endings – or I must flow with it, as my ancestors have for generations before me; before the advent of the Age of Technology which keeps us well wired but ill grounded. Perhaps I shall leverage this leaden feeling to anchor myself more fully to the planet. Perhaps I shall, with a certain muster of grace, embrace the warmth of this Hawaiian winter like a wraith getting a bye on life. One final round before yielding to the great Unknown.