A Bedazzlement of Blue

Blue Flag (Iris versicolor)

It was a cold, bleak and rainy weekend, but we went off to the Two Hundred Acre Wood in the Lanark Highlands anyway. I needed to be out there in the woods for several hours this weekend, and I really didn't care what the weather was going to be like.

As I opened the gate at the bottom of the hill, the wild turkey who is nesting in the cedars there raised her head and made a soft pprrrrp sound of greeting, then settled down on her eggs again. She seems to know somehow that we care about her and her children-to-be, that we wish her well in her nesting endeavours, and that she is in no danger from the peculiar two-legged creatures roaming in the field close to her hollow.

We rambled for miles and hours, and I drank in the good clear fresh air of the highlands - grounded and centered myself, sent gnarly roots and wispy tendrils of consciousness off into the earth, the rocks, the trees and even up into the clouds, taking in cartloads of good rejuvenating energy as I squelched along in oilskins and wellies. When the weekend was over, I felt rather like a big old tree myself, or perhaps one of the weathered glacial dropstones which inhabit the rugged landscape everywhere in the Lanark countryside.

Yesterday, there were dazzling clusters of wild blue flags in bloom by the spring below the eastern hill and its grove of towering beeches. The blooms were small islands of lapis lazuli brilliance among the wet leaves and the waving sea of opulent green ferns which surrounded them. Notwithstanding the dank weather and the drizzle, I came home to the little blue house feeling peaceful and restored to equanimity — my eyes still seeing the vivid colours of the wild irises — my nostrils still filled with the rich scent of all the rain-wet earth and greenery — my ears still tuned to the songbirds in the woods.