It’s all reflection, folks…

Let's walk down the road to the Eagle Pond this fine April evening

Count yourself a lucky soul, if a pond exists within a stones throw of your couch.  If one doesn’t exist, fathom it out.  Trespass if you must.  Ponds speak to your underwater longing. You can find yourself while pausing cross-legged in pine needles beside a mirrored pond.

April branches above the pond

Don’t just stare at the jeweled waters.

Look up.

Tree branches speak your silent language too.

Listen deeply.

On golden April pond

Visit the pond in April and July, red-leafed October and white winter.

Ice teaches a different lesson than still waters.  Croaking frogs tell another story altogether.  And fish?  Don’t even get me started.  You could learn from fish from now until 2015 and still you wouldn’t be able to absorb all their underwater teachings.

Another golden cattail view

Try photographing one pond scene 10,000 times.  Never turns out the same, does it?  Life is like fingerprints.  Your mind will only tell you it’s the same pond, same old, same old.

Don’t believe!  Everything is new, fresh, ever-changing!

The reflection of trees and life

The pond reflects who you are.

You reflect who the pond is.

Seriously, folks.

We only think we’re separate.

In truth (I’m whispering now):  it’s all reflection.

White pine reflections in oh-so blue water

How do you decide which photos to show others?

Only which photos melt your own heart.

When our own heart melts with beauty, that’s when we share.

To share another’s beauty is not true to the pond–or yourself.

The woods beside the pond

The woods beside the pond is as fascinating as the pond.

You could lie your cheek against dried white pine needles and dream until summer.

Unless you’re hungry.  If you’re hungry, wait to see if you’re really hungry.

Sometimes the pond can feed you in invisible ways, saturating you with peace.  (That’s what we really long for, some days, more than that chocolate or chicken soup.)

Monet pond

Monet sat and painted beside every pond in the Universe?

You don’t believe me?

Take out your own paintbrushes and dabble with light.

You’ll see.

Buds

Buds have bloomed beside every pond in the Universe.

You may bud there, too.

Stranger things have happened.

Upside down, downside up?

We often think there is a right way to view the world.

There is an upside and downside, we surmise.

But if you pause by ponds often enough you’ll see that it isn’t so clear-cut.  An Ojibway elder once nodded and explained, “In the spirit world, everything is backwards.”

It may be upside down, too.

Don’t cling too tightly to your viewpoint.
Jump in the pond instead.

Light paints white pine needles

Light also paints our viewpoints.

Look differently as the sun dances across the sky of your days.

Blue shimmer before nightfall

Especially let shimmer dive you deeper into dreams.

The logical world refuses to live in shimmer.

Shimmer yourself, baby, into who you know you are.

Sunset surreal

It’s all surreal.

Don’t kid yourself.

What is real can never be spoken.

Ever.

Growing up beside the pond

We all grow up beside the pond, sisters and brothers.

The pond of life.

I would tell you more–but the pond says enough words.  Come visiting.  Come home to mama, come home to yourself.

It will teach you about yellow butterflies. Flop-footed rabbits pausing to sip.  It will teach you about fawns left beside the shore while Mama Doe wanders off.  It will teach you about shivering before dawn, and stars reflected in the pond, the sparkling majesty of them.

Find yourself a pond!  If not today, tomorrow…

Deer slept here, beside still waters

If not tomorrow, this month.

If you wait until next month it may be too late.

We mustn’t postpone your inevitable reunion.

Birchbark lingers on toward summer

Remember: it’s all reflection, folks…

The pond reveals it all.