This is such a rich, lush time of year it almost feels excessive. Everything we welcomed in Spring so eagerly is here in such abundance we almost stop seeing it. Why do we do that? Drive right past something stunning because we're preoccupied or bored or moody, so our attitude makes it invisible? Or even annoying? We miss so many opportunities to restore by not looking at anything but our screens - or just simply rushing through our lives. But even from the window of our cars, on the way to the something really pressing and important, we can notice the color of the light this morning. Like everything else, it's tending toward the golden now. Instead of complaining it's too hot or it's raining, what about those thousand shades of green that are starting to randomly take on bits of gold? The birds and the insect whirs and chirps are so loud. How do we tune that out?
The soy bean field I drove past this morning was all rich, dark green, and this afternoon it's one third gold. Tomorrow it will be all golden while the next field will be untouched. Some of the corn fields are crisping and drying to tan/gold now; some are still waves of green bending in whooshes as my car sweeps past. I love to look in the rear view mirror to watch the tops undulate like ripples on a lake. Even if we don't look, that's all happening. Sheesh, there's so much action just driving past those stubborn, chopped down ditches between the road and the fields. They can't help but produce too. As the car approaches, blue and yellow butterflies whirl up out of the blue chicory and the butter colored daisies and dancing green grasses with long tips of golden seed. When it rains, the colors shine and the dimmer light makes them deeper. And then we get the cloud action at sunset with the golden light making them luminescent in spots before they start to shade to orange and pink and blue. We have such stunning clouds on the prairie. Always changing shape and color, taking up half the view. We don't need mountain ranges, not that mountains aren't beautiful too.
We don't need to wish ourselves to some exotic spot out away from the boring fly over states either. Nor do we have to strain to appreciate the excess. We just have to decide to savor the ordinary extravagance of the zillions of birds and bugs and vegetation, the endless parade of abundance and color on the ground and in the air. I love edges, and this is the edge right now that shifts us from summer to fall. It will pass whether we see it happen or not. Why don't we see it while we're perched here on this edge?
