While my postings have been scant over the last few weeks, my MooseBoots journey seems to accelerated a bit. May is filled with birthdays, anniversaries, bees arriving, more broiler chick arriving, duck enclosures to build, firewood work, and such. It doesn't look like it will slow down anytime soon either.
Tuesday, we attended our monthly outdoor skills class. It was the first in a set designed around making a birch bark container. Specifically, we dug up roots for sewing the bark. We needed to find small, straight, and fairly uninterrupted (no forks or branches) roots. There was something very soothing about the process. I found myself enjoying digging in the soil with my bare hands, feeling the earth, smelling the damp cover. Of course, any time in the woods is good time to me.
We also cut down a small pine tree that was doomed to a slow demise in the crowded forest. The intent was to sample some of the delectible inner bark. Alas, the crazy weather has put us a bit behind on the pine bark. Instead, we peeled the leathery bark off of the trunk and we shown how to fold it into containers. Each kid was given a piece of bark to work at home. My kids, as of today, have forgotten about their pieces, so I got to play. Although I have kept them wet, the cuts have gotten less pliable.
Like every new skill I learn, this has provided a real connection back to nature. I find such comfort and pleasure in simply participating in Nature. Most of us spend the bulk of our time outside of Nature. And, even when we are out, we have goals that get in the way - hike 5 miles, get to the top of the mountain, clear the brush on our property .... My MooseBoots journey has been showing me, very clearly lately, that this moment in time is unique and divine. My challenge, and yours, is to enjoy it, this precious instant in time.
It's so true! In our goals-oriented society, we fail, so often, to just savor the moment.
ReplyDeleteI have to share this moment with you: Precious is working one of the sticker Sudoku puzzles, and when she does, she puts the stickers on her fingers. She held up her hand with the square stickers on each finger and said, "It's a frog hand", and then proceeded to pantomine a tree frog climbing a tree ;). She definitely knows how to savor each moment. I reckon she could teach us all a thing or two ;).
I agree, good comment about not seeing the proverbial trees for the forest sometimes. We are fortunate to live out in the country, and have a cedar bush with a creek flowing through at the bottom of the hill below our house. Although I moved here when I married Ralph 25 years ago, I have never spent so much time down in the bush, sitting by the water, just observing...even walking through the cedars is such a great destresser - no matter how much house/yard/farm work is waiting for me. Taking the time to savour the moments - it's all out there, waiting for us. It's like the last line from the movie August Rush : "The music is all around us, all we have to do is listen."
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