Loving the Landscape

This mornings read, from Deepak Chopra's The Way of the Wizard, suggests (for I believe that all readings are suggestions that we personally need to explore for ourselves and decide which of them are our own truths) that when we label something or someone, then the path of that interaction (with a person) is predetermined by the label and that the labeling of an object or think, (like a tree) takes us away from the spirit of that tree.  I have often wrestled with this conceptually because I have found that labels can be huge time savers, they can convey significant amounts of information which could or could not be accurate.With this in mind, I, who have not been walking lately, set out on a morning walk.  As I prepared my tea to take for the drive to the trail, this image from my friend Sandy spoke loudly to me.  I left wondering just what might be solved.

Perhaps it is the trail of footsteps that lightly disturb the leaves, left perhaps by a deer or the wind or even a person.  Ah, the labels, wondering if applying a label to what disturbed the leaves will tell me more about what or who passed before me.

Ruffled Path

As I walked I wondered about writing and painting,
"How can one share the essence of love that one
experiences through nature and life, what would
be the essence of a painting that would share with
another the love behind, embodied in the image."
Would this become another label?

Over the trestle I walked looking at the water, considering it high this time of year and then wondering if the lack of water lilies and pads led me to think the water was higher than usual.  Was it just another illustion?
Then a splash of color caught my eye, heart, interest and then my camera caught the image.  My mind wandered to wonder if the tree chose that location for life on the riverbank or was it just a random happening?  Am I just anthromorphizing?

 If I love this would it be wrong to acknowledge the labels that mankind have come to use in identification?
What of it is love?  The joy of being on the riverbank? For me or for the tree? The miracle of color in the December landscape?

What along the way asks us to stop and reflect on the perfection that is around us?  Today, in the low light of this grey December day it is the perfection of a shelf mushroom (ah, damn label) or the colors that catch the eye and heart yet again?

Walk on,
one foot after another,
in keeping with the walking
I find myself simply counting the rhythm.

Tonight I get to count,
in my being,
the rhythm of the dance
but for now it will simply be the rhythm of the steps.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve,

over again, one, two...







Now another rhythm captures me, that of the stately pines as river's edge.

Then finally today, a realization that the sandpit that I have walked by for years, that was simply a sandpit is actually connected to the Shaw Brother's Sandpit that is along Rte 237.  Boy, look at those labels!  Then I wondered if the removal of the trees and the sand brought us closer to the heart of the earth by the opening and allowing us to touch the under layers of the earth, the sandpit?

Good day, good thoughts.