Pocket Full of Miracles

 I spent a gracious long weekend walking and talking and breathing the air of the NW Georgia mountains. It had been over a year since I had been to Saultopaul to be blinded by the beauty of those ancients and to return home a different person.

Walking is the beginning of the process.

 "Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.  Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.  The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves."  ~John Muir  

It works slowly, easily, step by step.

Close conversation, thoughts and feelings, science and nature woven with words into art......  With each step, I am losing sight of the worries and details of my working world. I watch instead the leaves underfoot, the diagonal shadows of vertical tree trunks, the rich green waterfalls of moss tumbling over silent stones.

After a day, I can't wait to get back out into the woods. Even though the calendar said it was still midwinter, I started thinking about the sleeping blanket of wildflowers at the Shirley Miller Wildflower Trail in a nearby "pocket" of Pigeon Mountain. http://journal.uswildflowers.com/?page_id=901.Would they be early because of the rains and relative warmth of this winter?

Susan joined me in enthusiastic curiosity, so we took a short ride over to The Pocket to see for ourselves. It wasn't the explosion of colors I have seen in the past, but rather, a quiet bubbling up of  the most subtle, sweet, delicate early ephemerals- Dentaria, Sanguinaria, Hepatica, Lindera, and the luscious rich foliage emerging for Erythronium, Trillium, Mertensia, Polystichum, Geranium. It was the moment before the moment. Anticipation, wonder, the eternal, inevitable push towards the light......nestled at the foot of an ancient mountain, bathed by the cool clear solvent in the chemistry of life.

I came home again, changed again.
 And in quietly processing the weekend blessing,

I turned again to Mary Oliver, and found this poem from her latest book- The Swan.
It says it all.

The Poet Dreams of the Mountain


Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all the fits and starts.
I want to climb some old gray mountain, slowly, taking
the rest of my lifetime to do it, resting often, sleeping
under the pines, or above them, on the unclothed rocks.
I want to see how many stars are still in the sky
that we have smothered for years now, a century at least.
I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,
and peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.
All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!
How silent the trees, their poetry being of themselves only.
I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate thoughts.
In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall.