September Morning

I don’t really remember my walk to the lake. I just remember the irritation of encountering unseen cobwebs on that early autumn morning – strong silken strands wrapping around my head and across my face all needing to be pulled away. Early September mornings are often like that at the beginning of a warm and dry day. Invisible cobwebs fastened between objects with care and designed to snare the last of summer’s insects. Part of life’s gravity is its need to survive winter’s night and to save the land from having to remember things like spiders from past years. Maybe the irritation was more the spiders’ at having lost their carefully crafted webs than it was mine at having to brush them away from my face. But some of summer’s last insects had unknowingly been given freedom for one more day of living by my passage along the path. I know that this season is busy for nature as she works thoughtlessly and automatically to create and rebalance and maintain the space for all life that can be accommodated and to open new opportunities for life that has the imagination and the will to experiment with its own survival.

It really doesn’t matter but the experience of walking through cobweb after cobweb dominated my walk to the lake that morning. Head down, shoulders scrunched-up and a walking stick raised ahead and in front of my face with all my attention focused on detecting strands of web across my face. Even that discomfort never kept me from arriving at the open margin of the lake. It just kept me from sensing the world beyond my own body. All this just made my arrival at the lake that much more special. This world has changed in 2 weeks. I am a lone human here today and that is different. The spiders have marked the trail with their webs so I can know that others have not come before me and I feel welcome here. Warmed by the sun and greeted by this natural place.


On arriving and standing still at the lake margin my head is freed to rise, my shoulders relax my bent arm drops from in front of my face and my attention is freed to take in this quiet morning scene. I notice the broad arrowhead of light floating weightlessly on the rippled surface of the lake. It extends from the water’s curved horizon in front of the mountains and tapers to an invisible point that seeks to speak with my heart. The light is like a floating shawl of sparkling diamonds shimmering with quiet excitement on the water surface. Just like the point on a compass - the light seems to follow me no matter where I move along the lake shore. The arrow-head of dancing light rests wide under the brilliant eastern sun and narrows to a simple and certain knowing right in front of my heart. It seems to know exactly where my heart is and I am certain that it would find me even if I turned away from the sun. I want to reach out to join it. It is such a simple thing to notice but there is much love in the world and so much beauty that rests calmly in this scene.


Looking across the lake I realize that I have been on the other side of those mountains before and so I know that the world’s beauty continues on and on beyond them – far past anything I have ever been able to imagine. The part of me that holds on to a sense of owning some aspect of my self is always frightened and a bit uncertain in the face of this infinite place. I am really no different than that branch on that arbutus tree up there above me. It reaches into the sky to find in every moment just the place at its very edge that it needs to be and in that instant knows where it must go next. Failing to heed that knowing could bring the end of its living. I am not really different from that branch growing with the tree – I am just where I need to be at this moment and I am listening to understand where I must go next. We need to feel excited with the taking of a step rather than hesitant to leave where we once stood. There is so much birthing and so much dying in a life and yet we still think of lines instead of circles. Perhaps that is what happens when we never get a glimpse of what may lay beyond our horizon.


I wonder what would happen to my experience of this place if I opened completely to the full depth of love that surrounds me without fearing for its loss. Standing on the ground in this place helps me remember that I do miss those I loved who left - but sadness is full compared to emptyness and it owns its own beauty like the shadows between dappled light that finds its way through lightly dancing leaves under a warm autumn sun. Everything seems to change when I hold a lens of gratitude in front of my heart. Everything passes from us and I was lucky to know them while they were here. So I offer this moment in my heart and instantly, I am less alone than I was a moment ago. Love is a bit like the sun's light and must be always there even when it hides behind a cloud or is away from a neighborhood on its regular mission half way round the world.


Light is as invisible as a vacuum to our eyes. It is able to pass right by with out noticing and without being noticed. Only if an object interrupts its path can it be ‘seen’. It seems the same for so many feelings - they are infinite and unsatisfied until they meet a surface to interact with.

There is beauty in this place and knowing that there is also beauty beyond its horizon of mountains puts me into ease. My walk back from the lake’s shore will be easy as all the strands are broken and all the voices quieted. My body is warmed by the sun and my spirit loostened by belonging.  The spiraling color of a big maple leaf marks the coming of fall and invites me forward to smell wisps of wood smoke tangled between trees by my house.