Who am I?

Do other people ask this question of themselves, I wonder? The last few weeks have been so difficult and I've had down days and days when I just wake up fighting fit and raring to meet the challenges. Today is one of limbo. I don't feel low or like fighting. I feel like sitting quietly by myself, thinking, of all the things that have changed me during my lifetime and all the changes yet to come.

I've been in this house just over two months and already I feel different. I'm more aware of the weather and the season changing outside my window, I'm letting nature show me how to make small changes to use the best features of this landscape. I'm watching the trees blow in the wind and noting the areas good for planting and those to be avoided. It's another part of the journey I'm on, a good part.

The wind is building up outside and there feels like a storm brewing. It started at the beginning of the week with the strange yellow sky and that feeling of waiting, of the land holding it's breath. The days since have been unsettled but today it feels like the storm may well be here. Birds are tumbling through the sky along with the falling leaves and a few rain drops smack hard against the window.

The lake was so eerie on Monday. The birds were silent and the sky heavy.

We found rock caves and watched the leaves tumbling down the hillside.

The lake was still and the boundary between water, earth and sky was blurred.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

By Wendell Berry

I've posted this poem before, but today it has a deeper meaning for me.