Slow down and notice - October 2021
Once per month, we will be sharing some words with you all from a dear friend of ours in our local community. Brynn is someone I deeply respect and love. A wise and kind friend, clever and curious, deeply rooted to the land. Her love of the birds, the trees and the humble weeds on the land she inhabits stirred something in me. Being in her life made me long to love them as she did.
In watching her I’ve learned that building a deep connection to nature requires time and attention. More than anyone else, she has taught me how to slow down and notice the small, beautiful details of the seasons, of seemingly tiny or insignificant living beings. In my own life, noticing has led to reverence, which has led to love.
I hope you enjoy her reflections each month, and that they inspire you to slow your pace, listen more closely, look, pause and notice. May it lead to a growing love of all that surrounds you! - Sarah
October 2021
As I sit on the land, I hear the leaves give up their fleshiness, I feel the coolness of lengthening nights delivered by the breeze, and I smell the trees drink up their green allowing their inner colors to emerge. My eyes long to track the emergence, from dogbane to poison ivy and cottonwood to ash, but by the time these words are read, the moment they encapsulate will have vanished. The acceleration of change is watery and windy, nearly impossible to grasp.
Two weeks ago I observed the lambsquarter, almost leafless and laden with fleshy, green seed pods. Now they are crisp and brown. Tiny black seeds await their release by fierce wind or the brush of a passing body. That same day I listened to the land wake up, quietly. The cacophony of bird song passed, the soundscape is now one of tiny chips and chirps, the scolding of squirrels, the one-note call of the flicker, the rustle of leaves. There was also the sound of munching grasshopper mandibles. Those leaping invertebrates, now heavy-bodied and slow after a summer of sheddings, are depositing their eggs in the ground before becoming, themselves, a meal for all the kingdoms of life. I ponder a life lived out spring through summer, culminating in a generous outpouring of possibility in seed and egg, or even the flesh of one’s own body. I wonder: What constitutes a life?
Today, as those thoughts of the season coalesced, a flitting monarch weaved its way through the still-fat cattails. Will she be the one that flies south this year? The annual migration is not hers alone, but one that is threaded through several generations. She is evidence that life is both ephemeral and eternal, with edges that are both finite and fuzzy. This time of year, more than any other, connects us to the circularity of the solar year, the wholeness of life. May we reap this season’s offering and let our gratitude flow wide and deep for all that came before us and for the seeds we cast--with our thoughts, actions and intentions--to what lies beyond.
Life, what an exquisite privilege.
Katie Rubinstein