Nature Notes: Only a Moment

“Happiness is not a brilliant climax to years of grim struggle and anxiety. It is a long succession of little decisions simply to be happy in the moment.” - J. Donald Walters

Michelle at Rambling Woods hosts the Nature Notes meme. She reminds us to connect with the natural world around us and to express our feelings about what we find there. I usually turn it into a photo project. But today I'm just going to be still for a while.

Have you ever watched a bird in flight, how it folds its wings for a few beats, allowing itself a moment of falling through the sky?

I work in a call center all day where my body, spirit, eyes, and ears are under continuous assault. I have this day off, and I'm taking a precious few hours for my own. No cleaning, no shopping, no phone calls. At least for a little while. No TV or radio, either. No washing machine or dishwasher, no vacuum or lawnmower noise. Just me here, typing quietly by the open window.

Over the course of these few months of living close to nature, I have become deeply aware of the fleeting quality of life, the achingly ephemeral beauty of each moment. Now, this flower nods in the woods; the next hour it has gone forever.

Now, there is utter silence. Now the wind comes sighing through the tall grass, a crow calls, and a chorus of birds begins to sing.

One breath is only air. The next is filled with honeysuckle perfume, and the one after that brings a rumor of freshly cut grass.

A hummingbird zooms to the feeder on its impossible little wings, sips nectar, its tiny throat pulsing as it swallows, and is gone.

A turkey head pops up from a deceptively empty-looking hay field, then another and another, and another. They turn their sharp eyes this way and that, periscopes above a nodding green sea, and finding no enemies they sink back below the waves.

A hawk appears from nowhere, soaring alone from east to west, and disappears into the dark shadows of the trees. Where the hawk goes today, at least one small life will end.

That small creature does not concern itself with time or the ending of it. It lives only today, now, this moment. It is all we have, any of us. And it is enough. Enough.





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