Personal Note

On Saturday we made an unexpected, fast trip to central New York to see my parents and try to help out while my mother is in the hospital. We're still here and expecting to be here for a few more days. In spite of the difficulty of seeing people I love having to go through suffering - and being helpless to stop it - I'm grateful to be here, and for the time we're spending together. It has also been one of loveliest springs I can remember. To get to the hospital, in Cooperstown, New York, we drive east over the hills from the Chenango Valley into the Unadilla Valley, and then over another set of hills to the valley filled by Otsego Lake. The road winds and curves around farms and streams and sedimentary outcrops, through hills now green as Ireland with newly-grown clover. Flocks of deer lift their heads in the middle of meadows and keep grazing, unconcerned. The pastoral landscape constantly varies - here a farm with a little orchard and a barn with an old cobblestone foundation; there a barnyard with goats and chickens and a flock of cows heading up the hill after milking; now an uninterrupted stretch of woods giving way to a high wild area with a swamp and a beaver dam at one end. I find myself nearly gasping as one scene unfolds after another, even though it's all familiar from years past, and know I'll never stop loving this particular configuration of rocks and soil and vegetation that will always represent home.

As I walked along the lake this morning, three fat large-mouth bass swam in the clear water just off shore. The sun was so bright, shining toward me from the east, that it made the body of the smallest fish translucent. One fish then turned and lazily swam toward me so that I could see both eyes at once, glinting orange. I waved my arms but the glare on the water favored me; the fish turned again and swam off, unperturbed. This scene -- the shoreline and myself, looking into the water -- are a recurrent dream, and today I felt myself shifting between partially-remembered dream sequences and the real interplay of lake-life and observer. These dreams are sometimes disturbing, and always strange -- I'm quite sure the water represents my unconscious mind -- and I've never fully understood them. I left the shore after a while and walked across the road to the woods, and followed a deer trail through the undergrowth to the edge where the woods give way to a farmer's meadow. The deer had been there last night, from the looks of the fresh scat and scuffled earth under a copse of thorn apples. I backtracked, looking for hepaticas, and found their leaves and some spent blossoms under a tree where they've always grown. I sat down then, with my back against the the tree, and gazed across a sea of white trillium. I was there a pretty long time, long enough for the woods to settle once again into my eyes and heart, creating a strong memory of the white blossoms; the scent of the warming earth under its cover of leaves; the pair of warblers overhead in the budded branches of a hickory, singing the spring.

Comments

[mare]

My wife's family is from Cortland, so that's not too far away from you. Cortland is also one of the poorest regions in the state of NY, so I've been told. I hope your mother recovers fast. My own mother is also sick, but I can't visit her for a few days since she's in Europe. I try to visit every 8 months or so, even though that's not good for my budget and global warming. Immigration has its drawbacks.

And it's indeed a nice and early spring. I was in the Adirondacks yesterday and truly enjoyed the nice fresh air. But I can't describe it as poetic as you can. Thanks for doing so, reading your blog is always a pleasure.

[peter]

Some of your best writing is nature writing. This was lovely.
I remember watching sunfish darting about in the clear water around my grandfather's dock in Canada, seemingly suspended in midair with just a ripple now and then to remind me that I was on the outside, looking in.
For all that I grew up near the Susquehanna, I have no such memories of the river. Maybe it was a boy thing -- what I DO remember is heaving rocks at swarms of clustering waterbugs that would scatter and reform, seemingly indifferent to my assaults.
Didn't Freud have a lot to say about water dreams?

[Lorianne]

I thought of you when I posted a pic of hepaticas yesterday:

http://www.hoardedordinaries.com/archives/000821.html
(scroll about halfway down...)

[Bill]

Wow, that was nice, Beth. I have only been where I am for eleven years. Like everyone, I sometimes think of moving, but I couldn't leave the rocks. If I left now I would never get to know myself. I think I am somewhere in the "configuration". If I saw warblers in another state, or even in a nearby county, what would they tell me about my warblers, in my woods, on my rocks?

[Bill]

Also love the place names of the valleys. What a home you have!

Also: you leave the lake, the waters of your unconscious, to walk into the woods where you come to berth in a "sea of white trillium"! You are dripping wet!

Hope your mom could taste your borrowed fragrance! I know I'm incoherent here, but I am imagining you must have been a refreshing presence to your parents, as you were, mingled with spring in the home woods you all share.

[leslee]

They don't call it Vermont, the Green Mountain State, for nothing. Beautiful observations and writing, Beth. Glad you have the lovely spring coming to life for comfort and a break from the anxieties of your mom's illness.

[dale]

(o)

[susurra]

When the rest of life seems rocked with turmoils it helps to sit on the ground and let the earth connect you to a little piece of stability doesn't it? I'm sending you light and hope.

[language hat]

Thanks for the post; we're wishing your mother well.

[Lois]

Beth: As I've said before, I send you much love and support during this time of caring for your mother. In this post, it sounds as if you are truly allowing nature to nurture you. We so need grounding during these life passages! I alsoloved your post on Jung. I am deeply grateful for his spirituality. I will have to read this memoir.

[Darius]

You write well. Contact with nature has been a major force in the development of my inner life as well.