Moonbeam vision

We may be emerging from this collective trauma, or not. We’re still adjusting to the bald, painful fact that some old forms and ways are just not coming back.

Speaking of waiting on the past, a quick digression: My house was built in 1906 and still holds evidence of another time when old forms lingered and disappeared. The barn was built as a carriage house, for the carriage, two stalls for horses, a loft for hay and a built-in outhouse for the help. There’s still hay, now well over 100 years old, in the feeders. I’ve left it there. Just in case the horses come back.

So, in these times of change, are there places to go, to visit, that may offer any comfort or perspective? I do have a few ideas.

* Consider it’s not so much where to go, but how to go. There’s a term, derive (da-reev) that describes a way to walk around and explore in a slight dreamlike state. Staying casual, without overwhelming purpose, alert to dappled light. Time is slower, seasonal. Smells emerge. It’s not a hike, a workout, exercise or even “a walk.” It’s more of a wandering, an exploration of the time of now. Please don’t bother counting steps.

* No journey necessary: In your neighborhood, now is the time of forsythia. Where’s your favorite patch? Tell someone about it. And the lilacs are coming and the phlox.

* Contact the elements, things that move slowly: light, water, clouds, air, that are here and gone. Go to the waters of Fitzgerald Falls, Wawayanda Lake, the Wallkill River. See the skies and fields on The Drive up to Ochs Orchards, The Drive past the Brady Farm and Moe Mountain and the black dirt fields in Pine Island.

* Moonlight may be the most important element of all right now. What can we learn in and from lunar light? Just be quiet, wait for the evening’s moonlight and sit there. It’s called moon bathing. The April moon comes out around 8 p.m. It’s the “egg moon,” ripe and fertile with change and life. Oh, and the robins are nesting now.