On Wednesday morning, we went for a walk at the botanical garden. This time of year, things are growing and changing there so fast that we try to make it a weekly outing. It was a perfect morning, and although the 40-minute mile isn’t exactly aerobic the steps still count on the fitbit. It takes a long time to appreciate it all – to listen to the bird singing from high up in the tree:
to admire the soft colors of the daffodils:
to say hello to the goddess of the garden:
to decide which clump of flowers has the perfect degree of pale purple:
to pass the tree which I think of a the halfway point:
We admired violets that are in our own backyard, too, but usually unnoticed there:
And at last we arrived at the pond. Turtles, frogs, tiny fish, and layer upon layer of reflections and surfaces and shallows and depths:
Like so many things these days, this walk produced wildly ranging feelings in me: gratitude for the garden and the time to walk there. Anticipation of enjoying it throughout spring and beyond. Sadness that it’s all so ephemeral. And guilt that everything in the garden, everything in the whole world, is endangered by human greed and I can’t protect it. Lately almost every experience and every emotion is accompanied by that guilt, quietly lurking in the background.
Beautiful and bittersweet…my sentiments, exactly. While at my parents’ cabin in northern Michigan this past week, I was overwhelmed with joy watching the pair of loons fish and feast after their long journey north. And I worried that next year may be the year they don’t return.