A Sense of Place

Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins

A friend of mine visiting from the Twin Cities asked me a few weeks ago whether people here just get used to being in such a beautiful place.
I suppose some who've lived here for a very long time, or the kids I know who have always lived here, might. For me, though, the answer is no, at least not for any serious length of time. During bouts of depression, when it's difficult to get outside, I might forget for a few days or even a week, but inevitably something about this place will sneak up and knock me right out of my head. The ever-changing moods of the big lake, a wolf appearing like a phantom on the side of the highway, thunderclouds rolling in over the water, the bright green of new leaves striping the hills.

Sometimes, on particularly smart days, I remember that I can go get knocked out of my head on purpose. So that's what I did last weekend. I threw my dog in the car, my camera over my shoulder, and took to the woods. We dipped our toes/paws in the (cold!) Kadunce River, hiked until the moon came up, then came out of the woods and crossed the highway to the lake. One of my favorite poems says, "There are hundreds ways to kneel and kiss the ground." On a day like this, in a place like this, hundreds don't seem like nearly enough.