Tag: Dry season

Becoming, Daily Round, Friendship, Hospitality, Nature, Noticing, Photography

Good Friend for a Dry Season

by Kitty10 Comments on Good Friend for a Dry Season

No rainfall since May 6th translates to bone-dry gardens, a sketchy water level in our well, and a daily round of discernment regarding who and what will receive a portion of the precious remaining water to share.

One of my new friends this summer is a pensive Gray Tree Frog who prefers silence and solitude. Though the males of the species often live solitary lives, my friend seems to be a particularly brooding contemplative.

He appeared relieved the morning we met, however, when I gently filled a flower pot’s rim with water. By the time I set down the hose and grabbed the camera, he’d already settled in for a soak.

I suspected my presence–and with a camera–may have challenged his comfort level, so I allowed him privacy to enjoy his bath, but returned later to make sure my guest was content, and found that he had changed locations and colors.

I learned his color changes are possible due to chromatophores, star-shaped pigment cells in his skin; different chromatophores contain different granules of color. A change in his coloring can be triggered by a number of different variables: excitement, humidity, light, temperature or surroundings. The morning we met, he first matched the table beneath the plant, and when we parted, I think he hoped to be camouflaged from his over-zealous hostess, so I retreated, assuring him that I was at his beck and croak.

He comes to the deck at night, nocturnal fellow that he is, and when we meet in early morning, he’s almost ready to sleep. I would rather he wouldn’t burrow into the soil surrounding my potted houseplants, but it is damp and cool, and what he favors.

I wonder if he changes color at night, if he is most fully himself when no one is looking. Maybe at midnight a rainbow shimmers across his back…

At dawn, I sit beside him as he broods. I think about the ways I change colors and camouflage myself in various crowds. And how I love water, and solitude, and peaceful companionship.

I am learning we are not so different, he and I. We sit together and dream of water for a bone-dry world, and of the star-stuff mysteries we are.

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

Balance, Centering, Loss, Nature, Photography, Spirit, Transformation

Thirst

by Kitty6 Comments on Thirst

A drought has altered the course of the daily round. We’ve had no measurable rain for weeks. The grass has retreated to brown dormancy and the river is diminished to a shallow, narrow stream flowing around islands and sandbars.

The temperatures have risen to the mid-90’s during the day and linger in the upper 70’s at night.

We wake early to water the gardens, just enough to keep the vegetables and flowers alive and the birdbaths cool, clean, and full. The lawn crunches underfoot and high hot winds from the south and southwest blow the dust of the dead everywhere. Moisture’s life is short these days.

Life takes on a kind of dreaminess, all the sharp edges soften; energy is conserved and afternoon naps overtake us rather than offering us the possibility of accepting or declining their invitation. Sentences are begun and then linger in the air; pauses breathe through them and conclusions may or may not transpire.

It doesn’t seem to matter.

I walked to the bridge early this morning and observed the river life community adjusting to its receding environment. I noticed a carp roll near the shoreline, its usual bravado intact, until it ran aground upon a sandbar now risen above the waterline, and found itself high and dry, surprised by utter aridity. It flipped its way back into the river, the energy of relief propelling it safely to deeper water.

Several kinds of turtles live in the river; today, I watched a young Eastern spiny softshell male try to conceal itself among rocks. Unfortunately, the shallow water allowed the polka dots on its shell to remain fairly vivid. It dug deeper into the mud and eventually disappeared under a cloud of riverbed.

A larger turtle I couldn’t identify seemed surprised to discover itself exposed where formerly it had felt safe. It struggled to navigate over and around rock deposits it’s been accustomed to comfortably swimming above, encountered a sandbar, and finally swam towards the safe deep channel at the center of the river and submerged.

Four years ago, to the day, yellow police tape closed the bridge to bike and pedestrian traffic, due to the flood-mad local rivers overflowing all their borders and boundaries. People boated down the main streets of a neighboring town, left or lost their homes, re-routed their driving—if they could drive at all—and wondered at the power of a real and present earth they had barely noticed or counted as a living force, given the busy and important routines of their daily lives. The idea that their clothing, televisions and Lazy-Boy chairs would be carried away by the river left them speechless and confused, at least for a time.

Things change. Balance is all.

I thought about the dry seasons of my own life, when grief, loss, or a challenging transition left me unmoored and separated from the fluid source that normally waters my spirit. At such times the sacred has no meaning and rituals are empty of blessing. There’s no sense of solace, and words like “faith” and “trust” taste tinny and bloodless.

The river life reminded me again that Spirit’s channel runs deep within, true and always.

Life’s rocks and sandbars can be navigated and droughts survived; new meaning and story can emerge and transformation can be realized in its own time, if I live from the deep peace at the center of my spirit.

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.