Letters Home #37 💌

Writing from: Banff, Alberta

Dear Ones —

Today I’m back with my wild garden, though it’s much earlier in the morning so the air has not quite warmed to a point of total comfort. I sit with a blanket draped over my knees and gaze up at the sunlight filtering through the branches of the birch trees in my yard. And there it is, about halfway up one of the trees, a clump of yellowed leaves that have given up for the season. Nature’s way of telling us what’s coming, the inevitable dropping and drooping and rotting into the quietude and bleakness of winter.

A blue jay lands suddenly on the porch beside me, hops around and flies so close to me I lurch my head to one side to avoid getting clipped. I watch it land on a branch and let out a cry. I wonder if it will stick around this winter, or fly somewhere more tolerable. Either way, I’m reminded that Nature just does its thing. That’s the beauty of it: as much as we humans try to interrupt the patterns and rhythms — that we’re on the verge of disaster with our changing pl…