Just in case anyone hasn't heard, Mr. Fred, my significant most loved, enduring friend forever, and love of my life, i.e. husband is coming!!!!! As of this writing, he will be landing in Baltimore in 1 week, 1 day, 3 hours, and 20 minutes -- but who's counting? It has been 6 months of East is East and West is West, no I got that wrong, we are both West. I guess West is a matter of perspective. Anyway, back to the subject matter at hand.
After 31 years of marriage and raising a family in one of the most beautiful places on earth, Santa Fe, NM; we are re-retiring to the land of "milk and honey" where rivers are born and abundant life grows at every turn in the road. My definition of beauty has taken a turn. Before, beauty has been described in metaphors of starkness with many contrasts and abstract lines intersecting to create land and sky scapes of linear vastness and grandeur. That is not so here. The beauty here is in the softness of a Monet or Renoir painting with no hard lines and a constantly changing landscape.
Since arriving to this small, remote valley high in the Allegeheny Mountains of West Virginia my senses have been blown away by the continuously changing landscape. It is a living picture, in constant motion. Every sunrise brings an experience of new life that has never before been seen by these eyes, except in drawings and pictures and words that painted imagery in my mind. I feel much like the child raised in the city who has never experienced farm life, finding out that eggs, come from chickens, and that vegetables are picked from plants. I know these plants exist, I've bought them at the nursery or Walmart. But suddenly I am finding them in their natural state--growing wild in the woods and forest from whence they came. WOW!! Mountain sides of shasta daisies, snowball bushes back in the woods, sweet cherry trees all through the countryside, growing wild. Every week it seems like there are new discoveries to be made.
One of my most precious moments was when I was walking by a tree and noticed moss growing all around the base of the tree. I stopped to look at it and found a group of wild violets nestled in the roots of the tree amongst the moss. I love violets. I have never seen real ones, only sketches or pictures, but this was one of those moments that took my breath away. I knelt down and took a few minutes to just feast my eyes upon the lovely sight and relish in the joy that they were every bit as delicate and beautiful as my mind's eye had ever imagined. If time would have allowed, I would have sat down and soaked in the joy and quiet of the moment and location...but had to get back up and continue on to where I was headed. Of my first 6 months here, that was probably my best and dearest ah-ha...as the love for the violets dates back to a book I read about this very area as a kid. The young lady of the book's favorite flower was violets and the author's description so vivid that like the young lady, I too fell in love with the violets and looked for sketches and pictures of them to keep.
Now Fred is coming and I will be able to share this wondrous valley and the surrounding mountains with him. I do hope he enjoys the beauty and serenity as much as I have come to. I really think he will. He will be arriving just at the peak of the autumn color. What a time to settle in and see what the land has to offer.
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