It’s the first day of summer! What are you doing with your light?
From a cabin off the grid* in southern Vermont, day 4 — A few things noticed, loved this week:
The way the shadow of the apple trees moves down the hill … behind them at dawn; under some in late morning, the especially leaning ones in afternoon; and in front of them late in the day, when the light lasts past 9:30.
My first lightning bug sighting of the year, not in flight but resting on a roadside Queen Anne’s lace.
An Eastern red-spotted newt (in the juvenile eft stage) after a hike on a well traveled trail with nice mosses, scenic boulders, sun-dappled forest and occasional bridges. It was crawling, belly-swinging along the soil below a stepping stone near the trailhead, a stone that might as well have been a tall retaining wall for it. (I wanted to call mom — one of those impulse-twinges we have to call someone no longer callable — and say, “Guess what I saw in the woods?” I had read aloud to her from a nature book telling about the eft stage of being a newt, sort of the teenage stage. Years after, she would occasionally quote a sentence we both loved: “Some newts skip the eft stage.” (It was her counterpart to Annie Dillard’s mother’s “Terwilliger bunts one.”))
The resident robin, seen all around the cabin’s well-tended perimeter, like a bird caretaker. Or so I thought, until I took a walk this morning and returned to find four robins ambling around within view and short flight of each other. That’s better, really, because now we know that one has friends.
Patience, anticipation … Peonies taking their own sweet time to move from tight bud to blossom.
The way a split log finally stops protesting with bark-pops and gives itself to the purpose of slowly becoming fuel, glowing coals, and kindly retaining its heat so embers can help kindle a morning fire.
The peace of a well tended place, reading, stopping, listening to the susurration, psithurism, whispering of wind-breathed leaves.
The symbiosis of friends taking turns cooking, washing dishes, doing chores, without needing a schedule.
The provisions of a most hospitable host.
And this morning at 10:57, the moment of summer solstice when the sun was directly over the Tropic of Cancer, its northernmost position, making this the longest daytime of the year and the first day of summer … the way the nearest tree’s leaves lifted when they were serenaded.
Thank you, gifts and challenges of spring. Welcome, light and warmth and invitations and responsibilities of summer.
Peace,
Laura
*P.S. Shared thanks to a town with a cafe with nice outdoor seating, coffee, good food and wifi for checking in with civilization.
Just in from weeding, not having registered solstice. So glad to add this to the gratitude list.
And thank you for a new word to look up: "a quiet psithurism, just straddling the line between music and noise." Dictionary.com
And . . . "Terwilliger bunts one." I am now the grandmother of a baseball kiddo and it's delightful to recall again what caught A.D.'s mother's ear and slipped into the family dialect.
I am loving these Notes!
This was wonderful to read in the way that makes me want to go outside and do the same. Generative - the best kind of art. Glad you get to enjoy this time!