Month: May 2021

Her paths are peace

“Walk with nature, her paths are peace.”

The narrow footpath snaked between the trees, bushes and emerging ferns. On the way to the main lake the trail followed the shoreline of a shallow bay, about 10 big steps from the stagnant water, strewn with trees that had gone down and now served as sunbathing platforms for turtles.

It was a quiet afternoon in May. Quiet save for the melodies of birds, most notably the notes of the rose-breasted grosbeaks. It was so tranquil, so peaceful, that the words, “Walk with nature, her paths are peace,” kept easing through my mind.

The words graced a framed poster I had many years ago, a gift from my parents who must have seen the budding naturalist in me as I progressed from my teens to young manhood. I assumed at the time the words came from a Bible passage.

The verse was overlaid on a scene of a welcoming trail winding between large trees, with the splintered sun shooting a ray onto the path. I wish I could see that poster again, but somewhere in half a dozen moves through college and early job days, it was lost.

I tried to find if the exact verse existed, but my Biblical search only came as close as Proverbs 3:17: “Her ways are pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.” The “her,” however, in this instance refers to wisdom, not nature.

There is wisdom in nature, so perhaps the poster creator took liberty with the verse. It doesn’t matter, for my search took me down intriguing paths, one that led to naturalist John Muir’s words, “In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.”

Muir also wrote, “Nature’s peace will flow into you as the sunshine flows into trees.”

My search also found Henry David Thoreau, who penned, “An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.”

On this afternoon, on this pathway to my fishing spot, nature was teeming but peaceful. Turtles lazed in the sun. I heard frogs. The newly-arrived songbirds’ melodies rippled through the air. The honking of two geese reverberated across the lake and then was swallowed by the calm water surface, which shared the blue hue of the sky. A great blue heron stalked fish nearby, and I could hear its wings when it lifted off.

I sat in awe on the shoreline, thinking nature doesn’t make a sound that is not peaceful, nor a path that is not peace. I thought about having never found that exact verse, but having found many times what it told me.

No overlooking spring

As I walk along a trail this morning I am surrounded by spring—the birds, buds, flowers, blossoms, and even the fresh smell of the season. I’m reminded that there’s something new emerging or migrating my way every day. When will the first trillium show? When will the chesnut-sided warbler land in front of me?

I am engrossed in spring, always on the verge of uncontrolled exhilaration and anticipation. But it wasn’t always that way. When I was a boy, spring was something that happened while I was riding bike or playing ball. When I wasn’t pedaling I was bouncing rubber balls off the house foundation or milkhouse while the countryside all around me was showing an amazing rebirth that I largely ignored.

Oh, sure, I took notes of frogs and tadpole eggs in the creek, and the cottonwood tree’s profuse shedding of white catkins. But I paid little attention to the arrival of songbirds, wildflowers popping through the leaf litter, the buds of lilacs and blossoms of wild plums, or the winter constellation Orion the Hunter slipping out of sight behind the glow of a spring evening’s twilight.

All these years later, I’m looking over what I overlooked in those early years. Spring. With the knowledge of the years and yet with the wonder of a child, I’m amazed every day now at what’s happening around me. And there’s plenty yet to learn. What bird is that? What bush is producing those stunning white, fragrant blossoms? (I’m quite sure the photo accompanying this blog is of pin cherry blossoms from along my path today.)

One morning this spring without fanfare the ospreys returned. One silently inspected its high nesting perch, while its mate was no doubt fishing in the nearby lake, which was freed of ice just over a month ago. The pair have come all the way from Central America to make our neighborhood their summer home again.

And now, as I walk along, there is the wood duck coming and going from its tree cavity on the edge of the marsh. A ruffed grouse is drumming, red-winged blackbirds are working the cattails, crimson buds are decorating red maples, and tiny green leaves are dotting sugar maples, just as an oriole with its breathtaking color alights on a branch.

I take it all in. I watch and listen as a child.

The way of May Day

The spring wildflowers of my childhood were all spring beauties or May flowers. It would be many years later that I learned there actually was a flower called spring beauty, but that May flowers weren’t the name of a particular flower, rather a general term for any wildflower blooming in May.

My childhood days included picking the spring flowers for May baskets. I’m sure I picked spring beauties along with others I would come to identify, such as hepatica and bloodroot. Now, memories fill me when I see the emerging whites and pinks of flower petals in the greening woodlands and along trails.

It’s May Day today. When I was a kid the May Day tradition was encouraged by teachers with an activity project. I rushed home from school in the late afternoon, disappeared in the woods for a time and returned with wildflowers in a small paper basket made in school. I proudly presented them to my mother, who gushed over their beauty and my thoughtfulness. (Many times my dad had already picked flowers, and mom would have two bouquets.)

Then, at the urging of my mother, I picked another handful and arranged them in a small basket my mother supplied. She thought it would be nice to take them to the elderly woman across the road. I happily obliged, for there was a prize for my surprise delivery.

I handed my offering to the neighbor woman. In return, there were cookies and, more importantly, a scooter that was once their children’s waiting for me to ride. She told me, as she had many times, where the scooter was behind the thick white door of an old shed.

With one foot on the scooter and the other kicking up dust and momentum, I passed their barn on my way to a creek that slipped beneath the driveway. There, I lingered a bit to look for frogs. Then I returned the scooter to the shed, where it would be tucked safely away in the darkness until maybe another ride that summer, or surely next May Day.

The years went by, and our elderly farm neighbors passed the farm along to their son’s family and moved to town. I moved, too, and many May Days I wasn’t home to bring wildflowers—always “nice ones”—to my mom. But at some point during the spring I would. The tradition continued in one form or another. Until last year.

My mother is gone now. But I remember. I hope anyone with a mother or grandmother, or a friend, thinks about showing the kindness of a May basket today. Or any day in May would be fine.