A good friend asked for my first impressions of this new stage of our lives. If I had to choose one word, it would be ‘blessed’.
Homecoming
For me there is a real sense of coming full circle, of ‘home’, of ‘returning to the land of my soul’[1]. Although I have tried throughout my life to live authentically, have enjoyed each new stage and adventure, all the riches of experiences and connections, in returning to rural life there is a feeling of re-accessing a true, deep part of me that I associate with my childhood and teens. I was a child of nature, integrally connected with the rhythm of the seasons, with a strong link between external and internal realities. I have at times struggled to find that link amid urban overload. Here it is a sweet, familiar melody running through my living.
Always the lake . . .
As each day dawns, I am excited to experience anew the beauty of ‘most this amazing day’[2].
Cranberry Lake, a cranberry bog flooded during the construction of the Rideau Canal, is what I see when I open my bedroom curtains; it takes my breath away every time I glimpse it. In a house with more windows than walls, it is a constant presence, the backdrop to our lives.
Some days, the water has been sprinkled with diamonds or fine, powdery glitter. Then there are the times of mirror calm, when every island become a Rorschach inkblot, or of grey shot with silver, of rising mist heralding the mellow mornings of Fall; and, to start and end the day the sun (and sometimes the moon) throw fire into the lake, painting it in reds and golds or soft pinks and purples.
I have always loved the wind, but until now I had not begun to understand its subtleties; the lake shows me how its tendrils touch and change things, shows me the quiet spaces where the wind is not. I notice which way the wind is blowing – usually from the south east; even through this hot August, colder when from the north.
The lake roots us in change, it is never quite the same as it was. Out paddling in the flat calm of early morning, I understood both that that calm is always present beneath the water’s every mood and that in those moments of absolute calm it is can most fully reflect back the light – it is truly magical to watch it ripple on a leafy overhang.
[1] A reference to a lovely song I know through Neshama Carlbach, ‘Return Again’