Nothing you haven’t seen before, if you have followed this blog for a while. The same vistas, the same trees, the same kind of birds. A recurrent destination for my walks, Sauvies Island. And yet….

Yesterday, the light was moody. It felt like dawn had lingered into mid-morning, reluctant to leave to wherever dawn goes, a darker place perhaps.

The birds were moody. Resting one minute, then driven into the air by the hunters’ shots or a hungry raptor chasing their weakest links, no safety here.

Snow geese, on their migratory routes, in dire need of refueling and rest, where constantly erupting into their airy circling, feeling threatened.

The ducks were just trying to hide, making themselves small in the water.

The clouds were moody as well. Forming bulwark banks in some places, wispy sheets in others, breaking on occasion to remind us the sun still exists. Flecked and blue skies in alternation, until the rain came and washed the light into uniform grey.

The corn was moody. Late, dry stalks whispering when not drowned out by the cries of a thousand geese. Bordering on water that came too late in the year to be of use. Or maybe it was the hunters whispering in their corn-clad hide-outs.

I was moody. But as always, nature soothed with magic. The sandhill cranes danced.

Each return to this ever changing place reminds me of possibility. I might not gather paradise, but at minimum a distraction. If lucky, a kind of peace that descends temporarily from that everlasting roof of a sky.

I dwell in Possibility

BY EMILY DICKINSON

I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of eye –
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise –

Might even spot some flying swans, reminding us of nature’s gift of transition.

Music today is Debussy‘s perfect capture of moody possibility.