This is my third year in my new home in the country. As a former city gal it hasn’t always been easy and it helps that the small metropolis of Peterborough is only 15 minutes away and my city girl roots get watered in Toronto about two or three times a month when I go to see my clients for in person sessions.
As time passes though I take in more and more the way my soul seems to be expanding by living a rural existence. It seems each year while I witness the change of seasons something new happens. Something unexpected.
This year its the sounds, sights and smells of spring as a way too long Canadian winter burns itself out until next year.
The male robin is the first to fly back home from the winter migration and scout out a suitable nesting ground. Then he designates it as his territory by singing his multi-layered trilling tones up and down throughout the woods surrounding my home. All day. All the different birds are busy, busy, the frogs peeping; today alone I was overwhelmed and tranced out by the waves of sound that continuously beat on the shores of my ears all day. Wow. Needless to say I had a difficult time focusing on anything mundane, I gave up and drew outside until the black flies mobbed me back inside the house.
But what I love the most about the spring is the rise and fall of the delicate wildflower. There are so many wildflowers surrounding my home and in the nearby walks with Bear my dog its astounding. Some of them are here too briefly, only for a week or two. There was a little family of white heads a bobbing last week, I went by the next day to see their austere beauty, but they were gone. Its like experiencing the world with the soul first and allowing it to live inside you.
When I first moved here, still living “on city time” I did not notice these vulnerable, quiet beauties. I’ve realized how caught up we can become with ourselves, our lives and our Facebook accounts; we don’t notice what is just nearby.
Now when I am in Toronto I notice and hear the goldfinches song on the wind, the delicate turn of the wildflower petal, the south wind messing with leaves on the trees, all reminding me of my real self (the part that is holy) and the interconnectedness of all life.
© Lorraine Hughes 2014
