Equinoctial thinking

Today is the first day of __________ fill-in-the-blank.

…the rest of your life – pullleeeeease.

..my life back at home after a whirlwind trip to the California desert filled with stark, barren beauty, toxic salt, tears and discovery.

…AUTUMN.  That point on the calendar where day and night are equal.  Is it equilibrium; poise?  A stable footing from which to go forward?  Opposing sides having arrived at peace and understanding?

Or is it more like arm-wrestling or tug-O-war?  A pushing/pulling stasis that while appearing balanced, are in fact  comparable forces that cancel each other out and hold us in place.

Who knows? I’m guessing there’s a lot more tension in balance than we ever dreamed.  Gravity pulls us down, our skin holds us in, and circumstances dictate the shape of our days.  It’s so easy to take this balance for granted.

I love this time of the year.  The air is cool and moist; this morning my sunflowers were bent under the weight of their heads and even though the sky was completely clear, dew was dripping from their petals in a private rain.  The pressure to keep up with watering is off – thank goodness.  Hose wrestling season is over until next year.  The harvest is easing.  Who knows when I’ll have another tomato season like this one?  Tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, squash, basil, cucumbers, salads, fall raspberries.

As I celebrate this bountiful season I’m also learning to embrace a new balance.  My mother died last week.  Always a complicated relationship, now there is peace; the tension is gone.

a salty inland sea

A avowed “desert rat,” she absolutely loved her southeastern corner of California.  Where others might see a wasteland, she saw enormous space and breathing room.  The unlikely presence of the inland Salton Sea only adds to the other-worldliness of this strange place.  I know I could never live there.  But yesterday as I traveled back across the state into San Diego for my return flight home as I felt the noise level rise, the pace quicken to frenetic, and the traffic thicken, I began to miss the desert as well.  Not the heat mind you!  106+ is way too hot for living creatures.  But the beautiful sky at dusk, the pungent fragrance at night, the utter blackness of night.

a bitter beauty

As a gardener and a lover of the natural world, I found this strange landscape to be very comforting during a difficult time.  Saturated in heat, surrounded by open space and drenched in salty tears and sweat, like a good cleasing sauna I felt the tension and toxins of the past leave my body.

Tagged as: the environment