There's So Much There There...

Another end-of-the-year walk along a path that is familiar in spring and summer (familiar, though always surprising), but which is now silent (no red-winged blackbirds calling from the cattails and treetops) until the sun touches the tops of distant trees and the Canada geese decide to honk themselves up into the sky to meet the warmth. Open water is becoming scarce; a thin layer of ice crinkles the surface of the pond. The orioles' nest is gone; with no ongoing maintenance, one of these windstorms brought it down.

I play the "there" game as I walk: There's where I saw the migrating palm warbler. There's where the snapping turtle crossed the impoundment. There's where I watched a dragonfly emerge from its larval skin. There's where the watersnake likes to sun on early summer mornings. There's the spot on the trail where a patch of sunlight might attract ebony jewelwings.

And on and on. It is a luxury to have a "there" place, a place one knows so well one could write a place-ography of it. There is loss, too—a favorite tree (or several) taken by a hurricane, a favorite view destroyed by new power lines. But I keep returning. I keep expanding the "there" list.

In this season of solstice, remember: Light is returning, slowly but surely, as this old world makes its way around that old star. Keep adding to your "there" list. Onward we go.