"In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts..."(or the Diagnosis Part II)

I live in a stunningly beautiful place. Surrounded by madrones, manzanitas, and vineyards, the property on which I am lucky enough to live also affords me glorious views of the oak-studded California hills, a sometimes-rushing-sometimes-dry creek and, particularly spectacular at the moment, three dogwood trees covered in ivory, four-petalled blooms.

In the mornings I walk down the road, past lizards sunning themselves, to the vegetable garden. Here, the farmer’s constancy is aided by the alluvial soil and everything grows brazenly, from the springtime favas and rhubarb to the summer’s sweet corn and tomatoes. In the afternoons, when I take the dogs out gopher hunting (they catch nothing but definitely enjoy the dig), quails traverse the road unsteadily, like besotted dowagers in party hats. Driving home on a moonless night I must be attentive to the jackrabbit zigzagging across the road; the foxes are faster so I only catch a glimpse of a bushy tail being sucked into the brush. Occasionally, a pointy-eared bobcat lopes across the driveway. Frogs sing me to sleep and coyotes disturb that sleep with high-pitched cries no different from the ululating wails of women in grief.

As the determinedly hot days give way to unhurried breezy nights, the uncluttered, certain sky becomes a layering of Braille on an indigo page. It is easy to breathe deeply here, to find one’s angle of repose. But as much as the beauty of this place brings me a contemplative stillness and unquantifiable gratitude, I am restless.

I remember this feeling from many years ago. I was living in another rural, wonderfully beautiful place: the Pocumtuck Valley in western Massachusetts. Farmland, rolling hills, a river, plus the New England seasons. After two years living there, I had to leave.

Now, as I did then, I realize that when I live so close to nature, I am overwhelmed. As I should be: Nature is profound in its beauty, power, mystery. Here I have fallen into an intoxicated stupor of submission. It is exactly what the poet Rumi writes about: that drunken love one experiences upon meeting G-d. All there is for me to do is luxuriate in this beauty. And so, prostrate before Nature’s magnificence, I do nothing. I feel too small, too insignificant. What can I possibly do to contribute to THIS?

Knowing my smallness in all of this makes me ready to leave Eden. But not out of a sense of inferiority, rather out of an understanding. Yes, in the grandness of Nature I am small. Just as a single jackrabbit or oak tree or creek is. But small and solo don't mean insignificant.

I don’t know that I will ever live in a place as beautiful as this one again, but I have been given an inestimable gift to have lived here for six months. I have been embraced by Nature--indeed by G-d--and shown the grandeur of this world to which I am not merely a witness but a bonded actor. And now strengthened by that embrace, I must go do my part.

(Note: Blog title from Wordsworth's poem "A Few Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey")