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Solitude and Company

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Sometimes we wish to be alone in the midst of the birdsongs and and the revelry. At other times, another human voice will join the chorus and we will sing together. The burbling brook - our words falling with greater care on expectant ears. We breathe in. The air, sweeter and more full than in Winter,  supplies our lungs with fresh fuel for expression. When I was a child, I would imagine myself some great explorer in these places. My eyes scan the forrest bed in nostalgic imaginings - mixed with grownup concerns. Sometimes the child prevails. I exhale and the tension flows with it. We need these moments. Yet we often rush past them, searching for something. Why? We seem to feel a great need to fill the spaces in between the trills and gusts with noise of our own making. We are restless when we find a moment of reflection. "Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!"
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The Path We Leave

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Nature rarely works in straight lines.  Even when she does, there is always bifurcation.  Her assertion in this is that she is tasked with beautifying and giving variety to the face of the Earth.  To teach us a higher lesson.  One that transcends language, or race, or culture and speaks something universal to our  souls.  A calling to hope.  She reminds us constantly in the ebbs and flows of her proclivities that she is fallen, but destined to be redeemed.  She, like us is capable of awe inspiring beauty and total devastation, of storm and fury; of calm and sweetness. Earth. Our fragile home.  Our sustenance.  The air we breathe.  The soil of our substance. A gift often unreceived, but ever offered. Stardust. Like us.
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Retracing the Steps of Henry Beston's Walk From Coast Guard Beach to the Cape Cod Bay

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" I devoted the entire day yesterday to an adventure I have long had in mind, a walk across the Cape from outer ocean to Cape Cod Bay."  (Beston, The Outermost House, p. 148)  When Henry Beston arrived at Coast Guard Beach (or, as it was known at that time, Eastham Beach) in the waning summer of 1925, he had only intended to stay a short time; two weeks to be precise.  He had purchased some land just off of the water, behind the barrier dunes, and had a small house built there which he dubbed the "Fo'castle".  He writes, "My house completed, and tried and not found wanting by a first Cape Cod year, I went there to spend a fortnight in September. The fortnight ending, I lingered on, and as the year lengthened into autumn, the beauty and mystery of this earth and outer sea so possessed and held me that I could not go." (Beston,The Outermost House, pp. 9-10)   Beston remained in his Fo'castle for the entire year, documenting his observ
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The First of Many

Welcome to the first entry of the Wisdom To Simplicity blog... In each post, we'll cover something of beauty in the natural world. Sometimes our lens will be an up close and intimate portrait of some natural subject, at other times we will range together through a natural landscape and see what we find together. In all things, our object is to draw the reader's attention to the beautiful and glorious that is all around us on this earth that we share. As Emily Dickinson once wrote: "Nature" is what we see— The Hill—the Afternoon— Squirrel—Eclipse— the Bumble bee— Nay—Nature is Heaven— Nature is what we hear— The Bobolink—the Sea— Thunder—the Cricket— Nay—Nature is Harmony— Nature is what we know— Yet have no art to say— So impotent Our Wisdom is To her Simplicity. 
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