Returning

 Sorting through my books is bearing some good fruit! I am finally reading the book Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. The book was published in 1968, and Abbey was already bemoaning the decline of our national parks. He was no fan of the tourist industry. This book, written while he was working as a seasonal park ranger in Arches National Monument, is illustrated by Peter Parnall. The illustrations are black and white drawings of Abbey's sketches of petroglyphs he discovered in the area. The images are distinctive and wonderfully alive. Abbey was a keen observer of the natural world. Athough he passed in 1989, we need his witness more than ever.

I have also returned to The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl, illustrated by her brother, Billy Renkl. It is a beautiful book of 52 seasonal meditations about the animal and plant life Margaret witnesses on her walks, or even just looking out the window of her home in Nashville. The general idea is that one reads and returns to the same meditation for about a week before moving on. The first time I tried this practice, I was just too restless, and I would find myself thumbing through the book, partly because the illustrations, done in paint, drawings, and collages, are so beautiful. I am grateful I picked up the book again when I have some extra savoring time.

The full moon tonight is called the buck moon, a time when male deer's new antlers are in full growth mode. I just read that the full moon will peak tomorrow morning. While we here in North America will not be able to witness the moment of absolute fullness, hopefully we can remember to look up tonight and watch a beautiful full moon rising in the southeast sky. We humans have been viewing the moon for a very long time. Let us join our ancestors by looking up in awe.

From this week's meditation from Margret Renkl (page 163):

"In one fallen tree, the transformation has been unfolding for so long that a little cave has opened up where a branch once joined the living oak. Over years, dead leaves collected in the cavity and turned into soil. In the shelter of that death-opened place, new green life has sprung up; moss and clover and some sort of trailing vine I can't identify. In the center, as carefully arranged as if a florist had planned it for a centerpiece, rises one woodland violet. Everytime I see it, I remind myself to come back in springtime to see it in bloom."

I am reminded that life renews life in mysterious ways. May we all take a moment tonight and receive the moon's healing light.