the world before me

These delicate beauties are Pellaea andromaedifolia - the coffee fern, which is a native California species. Since the leaves are new, they're a luminous tender shade of green, but as they age they will turn reddish-purplish-brown. I find this plant truly beautiful in all stages of its life.

I've walked this path more than a handful of times, but I had trouble realizing that today. I'm so used to picking my way through dry brush that the lush green grass flanking the thin leaf-littered trail made it seem like a whole new place. The power of atmosphere!

This is Artemisia californica - California sagebrush, which makes up much of the chaparral here on the west coast, and smells amazing. Fill my room with California sagebrush, black and white sage, and forest dirt and MAN will I be a happy camper. The smells are half the reason I eagerly revisit the same trails over and over again.

I've had trouble sleeping in on weekends, so last night I decided in the morning I'd go for a walk at Eaton Canyon. I haven't been there much during the months of late winter/early spring, so it was really delightful to experience the verdant flora exploding and asserting itself - it felt like the woods and ground were vibrating with all their earthly delight. I felt like a carefree hobbit in Tolkien's Middle Earth, a feeling that grew stronger as I ate almond butter-honey sandwiches for breakfast on a dry carpet of oak leaves, listening to birds and the quiet sounds of the mountains. When the shouts and babble of other Sunday morning hikers steadily streamed upward it was time to call it a morning.

A friend sent me this tidbit by Goethe recently:

"...and so long as you haven't experienced

this: to die and so to grow,

you are only a troubled guest

on the dark earth."

Beautiful and true as it is, I can't let this be my existential mantra. Another friend I showed it to put it quite eloquently: "I like the quote, but it isn't a necessary thought process for every day." Still, I mention it because I want to remind myself/others that in the face of adversity, however slight or severe, one should let their inner light prevail and hold off and overcome the darkness, if possible.