CHASING DOWN THE MUSE: Sharing the beauty of nature

Lie on your back on a breezy sweep of beach and stare at the undersides of magnificent frigate birds. — Ellen Meloy in “Eating Stone”

After cold days and rain, spring has arrived, albeit early, like an abrupt exhalation. Where there was only drab brown and gray, verdant, velvety green lies on the hills, mottled with splashes of orange, yellow, and purple. Caught up in the delight of it all, I drift off, somewhere else in my mind…

Lying in the deep green grass, I can smell the red-brown earth beneath me, still damp from recent rain. Hearing the whir of wings that suddenly cease nearby, I open my eyes and roll over onto my back. The grass softly rustles with my change of position as I seek the source of the whirring sound. Ah, there. A ruby-throated hummingbird sways at the top of a leafless stalk of mustard left from a previous year. The cerulean blue of the sky provides backdrop as he once more takes off with a whirring hum of his wings. My 10-year-old eyes try to follow.

In that springtime when I was 10 years old, we lived near the edge of the town of Covina in the San Gabriel Valley. It was a very different time and a very different sort of place than the Southern California of today. I spent many lazy afternoons wandering the hills and what were then country roads near our home. It was a time without worry, a time of pleasant exploration. Especially in spring, when all of nature was burgeoning and plentiful.

Many long afternoons I would simply lie in the tall grass, watching the lazy spring clouds pass by as I listened to birdsong I could not yet identify. I suppose now that I was building my own domain of knowledge about living things in these lazy hours, what neurobiologists call a “naïve biology.” For me, at the time, it was all about the senses, the feeling experience of it. As I languished there, I would compose in my head how I would tell what I felt being in that place, seeing those things. There was a longing in me to share the discoveries.

When I would arrive home with armloads of lupine that would fill the house with rich shades of purple for too few hours, I would be bursting to tell of the slim web that glistened in the sun, of the sharp smell of the grass as it broke beneath my weight, of the trill of an unknown bird. In the bustle of my growing family, there was often no one to listen. I would go to my airy room and gaze out the window, curtains billowing inward as I tried to capture the thrill of it all down on paper, in pictures and words. The images and sounds and smells stayed with me and are still there at times these many years later.

On this beautiful not-yet-spring day I recall those long ago times as the breeze here in Bluebird Canyon nudges my skin. The neighborhood Nuttall’s woodpecker sharply pecks at a nearby tree. A chorus of wrens and finches sounds in the yard. Bees buzz in the pittosporum ungulatum (mock-orange) tree just off the deck. Offshore I can hear the harsh revving sound of a racing motor. It is, otherwise, a beautiful, peaceful day here. On a day such as this, there is a pulsing call to the season ahead. I can almost feel it in my blood, in my bones.

Ellen Meloy also mentions in her beautiful book, “Eating Stone,” that close attention to the natural world makes us “aware not only of our own human identity but also of how much more there is, an assertion of our imperfect hunger for mystery.” These beautiful days we are having are, for me, a summons to explore that mystery. I cannot seem to get enough of it. Nor can nature itself, as I shoo out the bees and the lone, lost young hummingbird that have wandered into the house on this glorious day.

And, what a blessing. I can once again, as I have done so many times over the ensuing years, share it all with you.

CHERRIL DOTY is an artist, writer, and creative coach exploring and enjoying the many mysteries of life in the moment. She can be reached by email at [email protected] or by phone at (949) 251-3883.