Evening is falling into the day like a silk scarf slips off a woman’s shoulders when she relaxes into a lover’s embrace. The lake is dead calm, and the fully clothed trees admire their reflection, flaunting their leafy abundance a second time over. As the sun sinks lower in the sky, the shoreline across the water is suddenly ablaze with the kind of light that can only last a moment, and then shadows move in swiftly. The flowers in the garden wrap their petals around themselves, and the swiss chard stands at attention as the cooler evening air encourages better posture than the heat earlier in the day. A float plane buzzes by, followed by two cars, and a lawn mower roars in the distance, but a shroud of stillness seems to overtake the landscape. Cicadas hum and frogs croak. The air seems to sigh and slide a hand down the curvy side of the hills. It’s a sensuous world out there, and nature is the first in line to extend an invitation to dance.
I pluck the lingering blueberries one by one, ever so often slapping at a mosquito or waving away a deer fly. The tiny fruits, each one a deep indigo blue, fall into my hands this late in the season, offering themselves for the taking. They seem to want to give themselves away, rewarding my desire for them. A stray blackberry bramble pricks my skin just enough to make me pause, and I notice the blue stains the berries have left in their wake on my fingers. I continue picking, lulled by the gentle drop of each berry into the container. When they take up as much space as I have for them, I make my way back to the house through the last bits of dusk. Grass tickles my ankles and a low hanging branch scratches the back of my neck as the house comes into view down the mossy hillside.
Placing the blueberries on the front step, I roll my shoulders back and look up, listening to the medley of life that has so graciously invited me in, giving thanks for this cool air, this gentle noise of night, this union with mystery, this place in that wild family of things.
Heidi Barr | Author 