I have been struggling for the past few weeks to find a way to express myself through my writing. I have felt insufficient, and redundant, and plain. The awakening of the plants and birds and animals of spring has filled me to bursting with the passion of life and I have felt the ache of inexpressibility writhing in my marrow. Finding this essay was a break-through; it reminded me that I have the voice and the words to tell the whole world of my love of this earth. I'd like to share these thoughts for now, written two years ago but never grown old. I will use them in the coming week to inspire myself to tell again the story of my springtime soul.
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I knew, when this summer began, that I had changed over the course of the past year. That everyone had changed, and that coming together again we would all be different. What I did not expect, however, was to continue to actively change throughout the summer. In my mind I pictured a pause on life, a three month lull in the changes that had consumed me in the midst of the school year, in which I would spend time with old people and old places (despite my friends’ changes) and get a few self-assured breaths in before diving into a new year of constant alteration.
Neither the people nor the places here are old. Even the people I know best have changed, for the better as far as I can tell. The places are different too; or maybe it’s just the eyes through which I’m seeing them now. As a result, I have found myself changing more drastically in this last month than any of the months I was away.
I have found a sharp, almost painfully beautiful sense of life in the world around me. Every blade of grass, flower petal, speck of powder on the wing of resting moth is a bundle of energy, part of the eternally existent and perpetually shifting amalgamation of energy that we all are a part of. One day, I will find myself the translucent material in the wing of a dragonfly. Or if I’m lucky, I will be a piece of bark on a tree on a mountain, overlooking the beautiful landscape of New England.
I have realized I cannot be separated from this land. To pull me away from the mountains and valleys and fields and flowers of New England would be to cut off my breathing, to reach into my lungs and systematically puncture every small bubble within them. Everything, every rock and flower and insect has a place and a name. Even the things I fear, the blood-suckers, the man-eaters, the carnivores and the hunters are part of the natural destruction that strikes a balance in the world.
I have regained my sense of self here. I have found my independence again, something I fear I began to lose at school. I have longed to separate myself, find myself a mountaintop to sit upon and look out over the hills and mountains, lakes and fields of my homeland, alone. I have wanted to venture through the woods, solitary, finding myself and my long-gone loved ones in the roughness of the hickories under my palms, in the coolness of mud against my fingertips, the wetness of brooks against my calves and feet, the joy of richness against my eyes. I have recovered strength in these longings. I am in the midst of locating my home.
I don’t know who I am. I never have. But I’ve never been as close as I am now. When I sit in the dark and look up at the stars I can feel my own presence as though I was another girl, sitting beside myself. I always get to understand who I have been immediately after I change; I know my 5 and 10 and 15 year old self so much better than I know my almost-20 year old self.
Almost 20 years old. I have lived on this earth for a fifth of a century. My life is more than a fifth of its way through. I used to feel as though I had not accomplished anything, but now I cling to memories of wet grass in graveyards and the feeling of gravestones under my fingertips. I still feel the prick of thorns in the raspberry patches of my youth and still feel the bright red life of the berries dying my skin and lips. I remember the feel of my Daisy’s fur beneath my fingers and the joy of her tongue-lolling smile as she chased me down hills through the snow. I remember the edges of the small pond that seemed the size of eternity to a little girl, and I remember the view from the top of the mountain I climbed last month.
My life is like stained glass, so many different fragments bound together to build a life; bound together not with lead, but with love. Every day creates another memory, another fragment bound together, until, from the many windows I construct, four walls will spring forth. There will be my house of worship, my spirituality, and my love. I will pray only to the power that I can find within myself, and no one else. I will not seek protection via any means other than my own, I will not seek answers beyond what I pursue through my own mind and hands. I will not wish for miracles that I cannot create within my own life.
I may not know myself, yet. I may be building a life of colored glass, such a fragile, easily-fracturing material. But love will be my guide, and the trees and stars, and those I had lost who I have found, hiding in the rocks and rivers. I do not yet know quite where I am, but I am anything but lost.
Who can be lost , who has befriended the earth?
