New Leaves

The mornings are very cool here, and perfect times for Cassie and I to go rambling through the thickets and hedgerows of village and woodland. I have a particular fondness for the quality of light at this time of day, high and clear and still, pastel hues shading toward richer deeps along the horizon and in the cedar fringed coves of the Clyde River valley.

Once in while (usually when I am indoors), my inner critic asks in a plangent tone of voice why I bother with art, haiku, photography, paper making, botany, forestry, rambling in the woods, blogging and other such useless (she says) activities.

Well, this morning I have an answer for the old harpy - I do it because I love the Earth with a passion which goes way beyond expression. If my inner critic longs for pleasures more trite, mindless and acquisitive like shopping and reality television, then she had best be on her way and without delay. This is where I belong and this is right where I am staying. As Joanna Macy wrote in World As Lover: World As Self:

"For some of us, our love for the world is so passionate that we cannot ask it to wait until we are enlightened."

The new maple leaves which Cassie and I discovered in the hedgerow just after sunrise this morning are not rare or threatened by any means, but they are beautiful, and every single one is unique.