We've been fussing and fuming about the recent extended snow showers. They are anomalous for this time of year. We're close to and will soon probably set a record for snowiest October in the Twin Cities. More snow is in the forecast for Sunday. Melting continues off and on so the total accumulation hasn't kept growing. It has made much of the landscape very pretty, although it is disconcerting to see the leaves on the lilac and forsythia bushes covered in snow. Warmer temperatures are forecast to return around the beginning of November. We've now decided that the time and circumstances are appropriate, if not optimum, for practicing this advice from former president Theodore Roosevelt:
"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
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| one of yesterday's snow showers
Photo by J. Harrington
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We haven't (yet) been able to pin down the specific source of this quotation but that doesn't make it less valuable. In fact, thinking about Rachel Carson's delightful book The Sense of Wonder, it occurs to me that experiencing wonder at our unusual spell of weather would be more consistent with maintaining a sense of wonder than the fussing at inconveniences and uncertainties we've been bemoaning. If everything is always consistent with our expectations, how can we then honor a vision like the following?
“A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full or wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantment of later year…the alienation from the sources of our strength.”
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| a lilac bush today
Photo by J. Harrington
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Having read Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching" several times, we're going to focus on remembering: "Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished." We'll see if we can actually keep this in mind for at least the next few seasons, or the end of whatever this one is, whichever comes first.
The things that one grows tired of—O, be sure
They are only foolish artificial things!
Can a bird ever tire of having wings?
And I, so long as life and sense endure,
(Or brief be they!) shall nevermore inure
My heart to the recurrence of the springs,
Of gray dawns, the gracious evenings,
The infinite wheeling stars. A wonder pure
Must ever well within me to behold
Venus decline; or great Orion, whose belt
Is studded with three nails of burning gold,
Ascend the winter heaven. Who never felt
This wondering joy may yet be good or great:
But envy him not: he is not fortunate.
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.
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