Looking up to the orchard from the shade gardens.

On Sunday, the afternoon shed a spectacular light through the orchard at a slant to cast over the fields. This has become my favorite kind of light at the farm, an illumination effect that gives the landscape a kind of chiaroscuro quality in nature’s artistry. The lush green glowed while the gentle wind made the leaves dance in the trees & the chimes make music. My son provided me with an excuse to set aside time that day spent in nature, as I do want him to develop a similar appreciation for the outdoors as I had as a child.

The koi pond, with the water running once again.

Accompanying those sounds, the plash of running water added to the music of nature, as the birds visited feeders or played in the orchard, calling to each other. And I could see my son’s wonder, as he sat wide-eyed, taking in all of the elements contributing to this profound experience in nature, & I was brought back to memories of sitting on a blanket on the front lawn of my childhood home. His child’s eyes reminded me of Emerson’s famous passage.

With my brother Dan at our childhood home. 

And afterwards, when I looked at the picture of my brother Dan, for whom my son is named, when we were kids I felt a bit like E.B. White in “Once More to the Lake.” That sense of cognitive dissonance between experiencing a lovely day at home outside as a child, & then reliving a similar afternoon but later with my child Dan, now, as his mother. How time has passed.

White felt that passage of time slipping in his essay all too well, where he once was the son with his father fishing, now he the father with his son. The realization of all those generations of fathers & sons standing on that same spot doing the same thing made him feel confused, dizzy in the timestream: “I looked at the boy, who was silently watching his fly and it was my hands that held his rod, my eyes watching. I felt dizzy and didn’t know which rod I was at the end of.”

Rhododendrons at the farm.

Me as a girl, sitting beside the rhododendrons at my childhood home. 

Sometimes, when lost in introspection as introverts are wont to do, I feel that shudder of the “chill of death,” as White did. The poignant quiet sadness of knowing that I now am experiencing what my mother did with me, & her mother with her at their farm, & so on. Part of the reason I love the farm & value my grandmother’s traditions of jarring, gardening, & my own version of homesteading is to honor her memory.

Thus I think of White’s words, as we head into summer: “Summertime, oh summertime, pattern of life indelible, the pasture with the sweet fern & the juniper forever & ever, summer without end…”

Smelling the roses as a child.