The author of the essay on nature appearing below spent many years as a Rangeley resident until moving to NH. His love of the area’s beauty was never lost, and so it was appropriate to write as shown. GCA
George C. Adams
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Return to nature
The gracious hovering of hummingbirds, the yellow finches, and all the solace of goodness that covers the ground will outlive the pandemic enormity. Come all to nature and its strength, so to spend time in peace or be it you spin down too early and beauty be gone.
The asters bloom now in late August, the sun sets earlier, while it is reassuring to see the purple loosestrife and golden rod afield. Tree sparrows are plentiful, but geese with their honking are missing. An intruding comet passed through in quiet brilliance. The cooler morning air fosters silent fog and the day’s best hour.
Nature makes its call to order, and you better beware, or you will miss the best part before bareness all prevails. Indeed, you do not need to do anything in the moment, and it is better if you do not. Just sit there, be a stream-watcher or a hillside sunset dweller, observing shadows advance along the treetops, seeing bright streaks and long beams. Soak up the glow, the silence, the idle mind.
Camping days
I have done all this a decade ago, and it still resounds within. This one private camping locale is made up of a large water body in Maine’s foothills to Katahdin land, a treasure where lakes are deep blue and complement golden needles under foot in the late of day. The immense tree trunks support permanence and longevity. I was alone and grateful, partaking again and again and speak now in occasional writings of those days, those splendor moments of life so true.
Peace Once Again
Phillips Preserve, 1998
I found it my custom to roam around a bit from my campsite at the Preserve, and when I saw this tall view in late summer with golden needles under feet, I knew the moment was elegant and born. The sun was low, the lake body being my favorite blue and the thoughts ever mild and persevering. Then years later, when coming across the moment again, I let my senses return to pure calm and gentle peace. Even now, as I discover the spot once more, it is there still, all those tall trees of beauty and shimmering shoreline, a place to bring the now and then for the euphoria of it all.
A greater law
Beautiful as the land is, it is slowly losing ground to its inhabitant’s extravagances, issuing forth loud and clear rebuttals, as do not lean on me, for I speak the forceful law of science. Beams of beauty like our flower gardens and adjacent roadways are today seething with water from your thoughtless open acts. Do not compromise with the atmosphere. Do not hide waste in the local stream. Oil and water do not mix. Each of these offers a science prohibition. Tides are unrelenting and wind power is free. Amazingly, the violations tend to heal if given time. Call a halt to war on biodiversity. Abide by a greater law.
My own roadside tale
During the time of mid to late summer a year ago, the idea for my worm story evolved. I was making my daily conditioning commitment on a country road, performed with the common walker and, therefore, with head down, which allowed observing small creatures on the pavement below. Amazingly, I observed a half crushed large worm as he struggled to gain headway for home on the other side. Without hesitation I placed him in the nearby grass, and the next day he was missing, and so the story was now committed. Being a month before the holidays, I composed a heartful essay on this one worm, and included the likes of a glob, a pencil-thin small banana-like oddity, and a caterpillar, I named Mr. Whiskers. The two-page delightful tale gave holiday folks inspiration and a good deed for all.
As I continued my walking habit into late summer of the current year, I could find not a single pavement creature as in the year before, and so, in caution, I wondered of an environmental connection. Not that the now existing pandemic onslaught could be the cause, but the entire world seemed surely to be out of tilt just now for reasons in some sort of suspecting ominous neglect, as scientists are warning. In my undoing worm survival case, I wondered might it connect with biodiversity, and the fact of so many species now being annually brought to extinction, a huge injustice to our entire planetary system.
At the time of this writing, one big hopper did appear, and being not yet October, I thought the road critters might now be back. Unlikely, but how nice to end on an upbeat note, hopeful for some news of survival in tomorrows and beyond.
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