More Small Pleasures: Life’s Miracle, Life’s Bounty

It’s fall up here on the mountain. The aspens have turned to gold and the cottonwoods (my personal favorite) are just beginning to take on their fall color. There’s a nip in the air some nights and in the early mornings too. The grasses have gone to buckskin and the light has changed. I swear it’s more golden and it’s NOT my imagination.

I am sitting the gallery for the first time in over a month (see previous post What Matters in Life?) and our wonderful planters have started to go. The plants are dying as winter approaches. But Anna showed me the coolest thing: the nasturtiums put on little seedpods. We can collect them and have all the seeds we need to replant in the spring. How cool is that?

As I was harvesting these seedpods it occurred to me that this is a wonderful example of life’s yearning unto itself. The plants and flowers are dying and yet they’re giving us something, as they die, that will allow us to plant them again next year. So these very plants will live on. They are seeing to that. Wow.

A friend recently asked me if I thought it was silly to get excited over simple, small things. I told him that I don’t think so. In fact I think it is how we are meant to live—pared down enough, slowed down enough—that we notice the small pleasures and have the time to delight in them.

There was a time in my life that I wouldn’t have noticed the hawk taking flight out my window or the smell of bread baking; the color of the sky at sunset… the nasturtiums putting on seedpods. And I am very, very grateful that I notice them now. I believe the simple small pleasures, like laughing out loud when I am alone, strung together, are powerful. Life has its dark side too and when it rises up  (and we all know it will eventually) and takes our attention, these will be our salvation. These will be the breadcrumbs that lead us back—out of the darkness and once again into to the light.

Love to you all,

Jeane