NATURALIST NOTES

Some days I yearn to rise before the coming dawn, for the joy of the transformation, the yawn and stretch of the world reawakening. A sweet silence stirs amidst celestial canopy of stars before the morning symphony begins. Some birds begin warming up in the dark, and then slowly, like an unhurried unveiling, darkness gives way.

A peak of light becomes a wave of light upon waves of landscapes spreading across our Commonwealth of Virginia. A warming light unfurling alongside new adventures. Sunbeams cut through the clouds like daggers of infrared bliss, crepuscular rays of warmth shining on this new day with a brilliance of colors stretching across sky. Within this fresh dawn the topography of landscape is painted like wrinkles and geologic wearing and building revealing the finer subtleties. Inside this golden hour, who’s ever seen so many shades of green? The world reveals its true beauty in the morning. My worries melt away, they dissipate with the dew shimmering across my sight.

Everything slows for a moment, something deep inside of me stirs, and I feel alive in this moment and place. The different birdcalls multiply and grow, an amalgam slowly becoming separate, resonating from all around, pulses of life identifying themselves. I am learning to reconnect to nature, and thankful for the opportunity. I am immersed in a thriving and diverse tapestry of life. I can smell the Earth, taste the air, hear water listening to gravity, and feel the bark of trees and rock. Our state parks and untrammeled places are a tonic for the mind, body, and spirit.

Light moves across the ocean, bays, lakes, forest floor, balds, and rock of our Commonwealth as a grand unfurling, highlighting each and every member of our living and nonliving ecosystem, that spouting fountain of energy and interaction that is the basis of all life on our fragile and biodiverse planet. Creatures, plants, and people of all walks of life prepare for the day.

I stretch for my morning stroll through the highlands. And this morning I am thankful to greet the day outside, a subtle reminder we are not apart from nature, but a part of nature. Recreation takes on a new and basic meaning, and with this new day I feel created anew.