Learning to See

After a stressful day, Ox took me to Mint Springs Park late in the evening.  Most of the people had left the upper pond; some fishermen were on the lower pond.

We heard a bullfrog call several times.  I recognized, for the first time, though I had walked under it many times, that the leaning, distorted, blossoming tree was an apple tree.  We saw a silver flash and heard a flop – a fish?  As we walked around the pond the stresses of the day melted.  I felt very much one with the scene.

I think about all the people in my life who have taught me to see, hear, feel and treasure the things of the real world.

I particularly think of my friend Carolyn because of the spring green of the tiny hardwood leaves.  We were once walking down a sidewalk by a silver maple tree.  She stopped, bent her ample frame to pick up a small cluster of perfect maple leaves, held them to the light and just looked.  I had passed clusters of new maple leaves on the ground many times, but I don’t think I ever noticed them before then. The leaves were as beautiful as a newborn’s hands.

My father dragged his kids up into the mountains most weekends.  Sometimes, to keep us paying attention, he’d offer a quarter to the first child to see a deer, or a mammal.  When we tired, he’d give a gentle push.  We learned young that beauty was all around us. I learned to love landscape from my father.

Ox has walked me through city streets, up mountains, around ponds and lakes, and around neighborhoods.  He is almost always the first to see the movement of an animal.  He has taught me to think about how animals live and feel.  He always notices something I haven’t.  He taught me to love good music, too, not with an educated ear but with an attentive and grateful ear.

My daughters taught me to perceive as they observed the world around them with intention and absorption in the years they were growing up.

When we got all the way around the pond toward the sand, a pair of geese, startled to see us, took off toward the lower pond with loud honks.  We drove home.