lake landing

Still Life, On the Rocks

What does a family do when they leave 104' for a rainy, lightning-filled island forest?

• Exhale.  
• Fill tube socks with ancient grains from the pantry for bean bags.
• Take those even-more-ancient jars & create temporary terrariums.
• Hold open our mouths & throw back our heads to drink it all in.

His Dragonfly with My Damselfly

• Save just-born fairy-bugs after their two-year status as water bugs.  It's a slow, fascinating process:

They emerge from the water as cricket-like creatures, find a quiet spot on the rocks & proceed to poke their heads out of their skins & crawl out of themselves.  Their wings are nothing but buds & their tails are still short & thick.  After a long, patient observation, the wings & tails begin to fill out, literally growing & forming before our eyes.  Color appears, & somehow, magically, they develop these crystal-clear slips of stained glass that will eventually hold them up in the sky.

Maybe more fascinating is the fact that many of them don't make it to the "perfect-form" of dragonfly or damselfly.  If they emerge from the water on a particularly wavy or windy day, those sweet wings will stick to each other or bend or otherwise form in a way that doesn't allow them to fly.  Sometimes we will "save" these bugs, picking them up & bringing them to a flower pot or laying them in the blueberry bushes.  And sometimes they become food for the ducks.  It's a reminder that life happens, it's not completely in our hands, there are mysteries & reasons way bigger than our understanding.  And there's no doubt that they're all miracles, all totally perfect.  I wonder about that desire to "save" things.  Is it a form of compassion or a form of judgement that "something's wrong."  Maybe nothing's wrong.  Maybe it is.

We just try to stay awake to the wonder.

Bustin' His Rump, Earnin' His Keep

• Get to work making our home a home.  De-rock the beach.  Set up our offices to work.  Unearth old clothes & fill the dressers.  Move around mattresses & make our beds.  Jump in to that cold, clean water & wash the plane away.

Land.