Misty Ridge Musings

I have moved. And with moving, I’ve discovered how much like a cat I am. Disoriented by my new surroundings. Thrilled by the new sights and smells and sounds, and yet yearning to find my quiet spot. I am at times like my cat, Count Vronsky, looking for a pile of papers to hide amongst, peeping out, watching the world with suspicious eyes.

I have emerged from my forest cloister. The trees around Halcyon Pond grew around me without my taking note. After twenty years, I was held in their close embrace, shadowed within their sheltering boughs, sighing as they sighed, lost in contemplation. In my private monastery I watched the circle of life spin through the days, through the seasons. I learned Nature’s private rhythms playing out on the pond, in the forest. I listened and watched as creatures came and went and came back again. Watched and accepted as the food chain manifested its ruthless order. Nature’s Order writ small.
I did not notice the darkness until I emerged into the light. I sit now on a fringe of land, nestled between the sea and the bay. Endless vistas in every direction. There is nothing to do but to stare into the abyss, to learn new rhythms. To discover new cycles of the whirling food chain. To learn Nature’s Order writ large—writ on a scale that, if acknowledged, awes and terrifies.

I will find my new pathways. Gather a new lexicon to describe the world that unfolds around me. Play with new tropes, the old ones being so inadequate to this light-filled, endless landscape.
A new journey has begun.