"When I sit on the edge of a lake I am transported back in time. My senses are whisked away to a place where the sun was brightly shining, adventures awaited with my family and friends, my heart was open, and I was fully connected to the natural world. I was at my lake..."
Today, I teleport there with my vibrant mind, willing spirit and remembering heart.
Last week I was on a new life adventure and found myself sitting on the edge of a lake near to where I now live. When I had approached my destination, I gazed down into the water as I walked along the boardwalk that extended to a ramp that was suspended over the water to get to the deck.
I studied the edge of the lake and the waters that deepened slowly into a murky darkness as I walked by, always curious of the life found around the edge and below the water. On that day, I watched the ducks grooming themselves as they floated to my right.
I listened to the gentle lapping waters of the evening, my ears welcoming the sound as they rolled onto the shore and against the surrounding docks as I strolled. I remember smiling.
Every time that I find myself on the edge of a lake, gazing out over the gorgeous expanse of blues that are usually slightly different shades as the breezes skim the surface areas, I am spellbound by the beauty before me. I gaze out and observe, appreciating every liquid lake drop, as I notice the massive flat surface abruptly ending as it meets the shores, sometimes on beaches, sometimes on rocky shores, sometimes leading to cliffs, but often rising into treed landscapes.
That night I sat gazing out with the approaching sunset, feeling that familiar warmth in my heart and belly as I was, once again, overwhelmed with gratitude as I sat there.
I think all those years I spent at my lake, all those amazing sunrises and delightful sunsets fully visible day after day, year after year, for over 57 years of beautiful summers, experiencing a sense of living that forever changed me. It allowed me to become a human who fully appreciates the beauty of nature in all her raw glory wherever I am now. I spent those hundreds of days under the bright, summer sun with warm, fragrant forest and lake breezes, and hundreds of nights under the zillions of stars in a twinkling canopy and a swath of white in the Milky Way. I remember the bright moons that cast a yellow highway across the waters, and moved each night from my far left, appearing over the dark silhouetted landscapes, slowing floating across to the right to disappear behind the neighbour’s hill. I lived a life there that forever enhanced me as a human. It rewilded and enveloped me in a way that not everyone has the chance to regularly experience, and I feel very blessed.
Although I had attempted to capture the beauty with my phone’s camera again on this evening, the beauty is never truly fully captured in a device. Real views of nature are far more profound with the naked eye, and in real time, as most of us know. Mother Nature offers these moments to us, but only in that true and exceptional experienced moment is it truly and fully captured. I still tried.
I am always just perfect as I sit by a lake, appreciating a beautiful sunset, and although it is not on the property I was blessed to own for all those incredible years, I can be transported back there in moments like these, moments by another lake, gazing out, feeling fulfilled, as my soul reawakens my memories of a place I no longer go to. I know in that grateful moment that I have that amazing ability for my body to be anywhere on the planet…but my heart, my soul and my spirit I am transported back to a place I truly and deeply have always and always will love...
Lady of the Lake BC
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