March 5, 2025

Good morning,

It’s Wednesday. Whenever I need words of wisdom or a really good hug, I head down the field and into the woods leading to the wetlands surrounding the pond that’s a lake (that’s a pond).

There stands my grand old friend, the oak. She is stately and formidable but also generous. More than two thousand species of birds, fungi, invertebrates, lichens, mammals, and mosses rely on her in one way or another. Oh, and humans, if you count me.

She listened intently and nodded as I spoke, sighing and laughing and grimacing at all the right spots. When I finished, she reached into her thick bark and pulled out a well-worn book of poetry. Opening it and sticking a small twig in between two pages, she handed it back down to me and said, “Read this one.”

Shall we?

“When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

—Mary Oliver

Onwards into the light we go,

Clara