Another do-over. The clumped clay rubble where the old propane tank used to live will slowly become a soft, pain-free place for bare feet.

You wonder why it took so long to do something about the west side of the house. For years, you diligently blasted the sparse weeds along the brick skirting with your electric trimmer, telling yourself, “Nothing wants to grow here in the shade of the fig,” without a thought to amending the soil or sprinkling seed.

Last year, masons repaired the wall, making everything worse, so that only the hardiest weeds took root. You clicked your tongue and hurried by on your way to the laundry line or to inspect the chestnut trees for Japanese beetles.

And then a few months ago, it got even uglier when you changed propane vendors. Euliss, the new company, sent out a crew to deliver a horizontal tank to replace the old one, leaving a mound of clay clods and three concrete blocks where the upright tank used to sit.

You haul off the blocks and rake the barren dirt smooth, then stand back, pleased with yourself for having “fixed” the problem, and continue walking past the grey scar for another month or so.

Then one morning in that stolen hour between coffee and the meaty part of your day, you wander outside to pull a few cool breaths and see those leveled dirt clogs in a different light. You get out the wheelbarrow, roll back the tarp over the compost pile, and get to work.

Be kind to these tender seedlings, you tell yourself sprinkling water in a soft, fine spray—protect them, believe in them, and they will thrive.

It wasn’t laziness that kept you from fixing this eyesore, it was lack of imagination. You don’t have to accept anything that does not serve you. Barren ground can always be amended and a new story, if tended, will take root.

Bob started tiny Columbine seedlings under lights more than a year ago and when they were strong enough, I planted them in an amended garden along our east-facing fence. They seemed to like that spot over the winter, blessed with the morning sun, and now they delight us with their showy blooms.

“You’d be more grounded if you would just sit still.”
“You’d have more fun if you were more like me.”

“What can you possibly see of the world, moving so fast?”
“I see everything in a delicious, swirling blur that makes me dance!”

“From where I sit, I see sun on cedar, the stars slowly striding. I see the earth turn.”
“I see all that, too.”
“I don’t see how, in all your tumult.”
“I travel from the mountains to the sea, while you can only see what’s in front of you.”

They spoke no more for a time and life continued as it always had, with the creek splashing past, the rock steadfast, water streaming down its sides, both contemplating the slow ease of the heavens.

I cannot be water, thought rock, nor can I be sun or tree. And water thought, I can only be what I am: rain drops sweetened by root and stone, home for water creatures, drink for deer and hawk.

“Look here,” said water, “I am home to the fishes!”
“So am I,” said rock glancing down at a sheltering trout.

Days passed, decades, with rock keeping water from losing its way and water washing rock with playful spray. Water softened rock’s edges and carried small bits of granite to the delta. Rock sweetened water with tangy minerals, and they began to see how well they worked together.

“Hey, will you look at those colors!” Rock called out to water one morning.
“Yes,” said water, “They are magnificent!”

“Like you,” said rock.

“Awww,” said the stream, blushing pink, “You are my rock! Thank you for making me sweet and keeping me safely contained.”
“Thank you for washing my face and giving me reason to laugh.”

And they lived in harmony for the rest of their years.

This week—thanks to the generosity of our friend, Lyle, who has secured a gorgeous beach house in Placencia—we will revisit our old haunts for the first time since 1998.

To prepare, we have been reading the journal I kept while managing a remote jungle lodge in the Cayo district. Mountain Equestrian Trails specialized in horseback riding tours to pristine swimming holes, Mayan ruins, and stalagmite caves with ancient pottery, so there was plenty to write about during the fourteen months we ran the lodge.

Here is an excerpt from a piece we published on our website in the early days of our adventure:

Our life in Belize is good and the pace of life is refreshingly slow. The people here are friendly, mind their own business and have very few expectations. We rarely hear anyone blame someone or something else for their position in life. Since nobody owns very much, there is nothing to insure or buy alarm systems for. People spend a fair amount of time working with and talking with their families. Most Belizeans don’t work outside the home. They have a simple, easily maintained lifestyle – with lots of time to enjoy family, friends and nature. Homes are built from material available in the forest. No one has a mortgage. Few Belizeans own vehicles, which eliminates the need for car payments, insurance and gasoline. Family milpas (gardens) are common and therefore the grocery bills are low.

Read more here.

Once upon a time, a child was born into an imperfect family in an imperfect world and spent their entire life trying and failing to be perfect. Amen

Once upon a time, there was an imperfect child who grew into an imperfect man who went on T.V. and told millions of children that he loved them just the way they were. Merry Christmas!

Outside, between the swish of wet tires, I hear only a sliver of insects hissing lazily in the cool of morning. A jet soars into the soundscape, then trails off. It is followed by a far-off rooster, the plop of water sliding from our metal roof, and finally, the laugh of a red-bellied woodpecker.

We hear the outside world from inside our mothers’ wombs, while sleeping, and after all other senses have lost their grip, we hear from our deathbeds.

I call Bob, who has woken to ants on the seventh floor of a Hampton Inn somewhere west of here. I describe my sounds and imagine him straining to hear what I hear from so far away. I promise myself that he will soon join me in idle listening. He reads me the weather forecast and solves the Wordle in two tries, beating the bot. And he tells me he will retire in thirty-three weeks, just in time for my sixty-ninth birthday.

Spring Song may well have hung in my Nana’s home. At some point I stumbled on a print and brought it home. Rumor has it that the little girl is Glücklich’s blind daughter and that the the child has her eyes closed in the original painting.

A robin sings from a bare birch branch cast in muted light with only a muddy hint of spring. The girl is wearing a brocade jumper laced in green, sitting on a bench, her face turned towards the bird.

In Spring Song, I see the spirit of my Nana and am filled with gratitude for her and for my happy childhood days at her house. As I drift off to sleep at night, I look at the little girl and see myself as the pampered little girl. I feel the spirit of my childhood as it connects with Nana’s childhood, she as much the little girl as I am and the two of us connected in a sense, to all the little girls of the world.

Bob took a photo of a Blue Heron as we were canoeing down the Myakka river in the early ’90s, and later painted it in watercolor. It is one of his best early works, definitive proof that he does have artistic talent despite what he heard as a child from the adults in his life.

There are several ghosts in this one. There’s the spirit of my mother’s intrepid cousin Beverly, and of Bob and I at that heady moment, pivoting to leave Colorado, madly in love and ready to eat the world. And there’s the tug south, that yearning for the tropics, a spirit which will never die.

How cold it was in Colorado the day we left for Sarasota—15°F below—and the car wouldn’t start so we called a tow truck or a cab. How fresh the thick Florida air from Beverly’s screened porch, teeming with spring, no ice or snow in sight, only alligators slipping from the shallow beaches where they’d been soaking in the sun.

Beach Birthday, by Bob January, 2022 depicts the Topsail beach Bob chose for celebrating his birthday. It highlights a moment in which Bob is sitting on the veranda gazing out at the waves and at his wife lying in the sun after a swim.

The spirit of this picture is my love, Bob, the barefoot boy who speaks Twi and identifies with the fish. The man who transported me to four different tropical islands to live in heated splendor. This is us at our best, relaxed, with salt water licking at our ankles.

Tall Boy’s portrait of Little Corn Island’s cliffs has of course, captured his spirit, his quiet presence, towering and just. And by extension, his wife Maribel and our months there in Nicuargua, our Thursday snorkels, the ruined coke boat, the beans and rice, the pistols, the coconut palms, and the dogs.

The etching of Seabiscuit holds the spirit of my cousins Frank and Mark, and our childhood together in the neighborhood they shared with our Nana. It invokes memories of summers on the lawn, of playing pick-up-sticks on the dining room table after Sunday dinner, and of the Stone Church Fair where my little cousins bought this print with me in mind because they knew how much I loved horses.

Seabiscuit summons those sublime and safe years, all the magnificent food, the strawberries and cream beneath the shade of the big oak, the chocolate chip cookies, tetrazzini, poppy seed bread, potato leek soup, and English muffins drowning in butter. Here are the night crickets, our skinny beds beneath the looming screens, the dogs chasing through the leaves to the top of the hill, and the drone of a lone motorcycle near midnight.

Here are the roses and the tomatoes, the chives, the living room dancing with light from the prisms, the jade plant on its own table, the porcelain swan, wings arched over a keepsake bowl on the cutout shelves between Nana’s green chair with its matching dial phone and the dining room table where stories were told and olives placed on fingers.

This photograph of Jesse in his green halter—the halter Julie brought me the day I brought him home as a two-year-old—tied with the end of a lead rope for riding, conjures Jesse’s spirit. He is turning to look back, ears focused on something about to happen, coat shining with summer, his eye as deep as a well. Here I see the spirit of Bob and I galloping across the fields, eyes stinging from the wind, in a gait so smooth we could have passed a glass of wine between us. I see pride, solace, joy, and freedom.

We called him the wonder horse, the best there ever was, and god bless Julie for giving him the greatest gift, a fine home after we decided to leave the country for Belize. Julie welcomed him, pampered him, and gave him a beautiful, long life. Jesse was my first horse—a childhood dream realized in my thirties. I trained him myself and he was the envy of my friends. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for me. If I told him to step off a bridge, he might have done it. And he saved my life at least once.

If you enjoy stories about nature and inspiration, please get yourself a copy of “Nature’s Healing Spirit: Real Life Stories to Nurture the Soul.”

Carl lives on a wooded promontory with a view of the flood plain. Mainstay in an ever-changing world, he’s been standing tall for decades. Yesterday I walked the half mile through the woods to spend time with him. I went in the morning before it was hot, armed with a spider stick, and prepared to retreat if accosted by too many black gnats and mosquitoes. But summer storms have reduced the spider webs to bearable, and mosquitoes and gnats were also at a minimum.

My legs are strong and sure on this familiar trail. I hit my stride about five minutes out. I’m drenched in living earth, fragrant with pine needles and leaf mulch. Generations of trees surround me, from tiny sprouts to giant sentinels. The air hums with woodpeckers and cicadas. I swing my head to the left when a squirrel rustles in the undergrowth. Sometimes deer startle me, leaping up and blasting away like gunshots. Once I came across a fox, scratching fleas. Another time, a Barred owl swooped down to take a better look and flew back to its perch to keep an eye on me.
Carl receives me in his reassuringly taciturn way, eyes forward. He reaches out with solid, steady limbs and I feel safe. Without a word, Carl and I are in our happy place once again. He is a beautiful example of his species, an American Beech. Or perhaps he is, as I often joke, a son of a beech. Nature gave Carl markings that resemble a human face on the side facing the stream. He has a jaunty mustache with a twig sprouting from the corner, like a pipe stem or cigarette. This year a praying mantis chose to build an egg case on his cigarette.

Old forest lore referred to the majestic beech as Queen of the forest. Their trunks are smooth and straight, mottled with white and gray spots. They have the peculiarity of retaining their leaves all winter, only losing them when new growth pushes them out. Their leaves provide a spark of ocher in the cold, monochromatic months. Surely this tenacity is one of the things that appeals to me as I walk towards the winter of my life.

The neighbors pooled their resources a couple of months ago to build a cedar bench for my sixty-second birthday. Lyle and Amie loaded it in the tractor bucket and carried it to Carl’s side. Jason and Doug dug holes and sunk the legs into the earth. It is sturdy and wide and smells like my mother’s cedar hope chest.

I climb on and sit, legs dangling. The size of Carl’s bench turns me into a youngster. I lay back and peer up through the understory at the sky. My heart swells and my eyes get moist. Time stops. I’m alone and connected. There is only this moment and this place and yet I’m aware of all the moments of my life. All the good ones, anyway.

I think about my friends who cared enough to add this bench to my favorite spot. I recall our many shared meals, the birthday candles and wishes, and remember delicious Sunday dinners at Nana’s. My thoughts wander forward to our daughter Emily’s wedding and our first glimpse of her baby boy. I think about Bob and how lucky I am to have a partner that gets my twisted sense of humor, and how relieved we both are that he is well and recovering his smile.

I caught part of the TED radio hour the other day. They were talking about aging and time. As we age we become more positive, yet joyful occasions often bring a tear to our eye. We find ourselves experiencing the past, present and future simultaneously. Surely holding our grandson for the first time will trigger a montage of feelings; all the way back to Emily as a tiny girl, and fast forwarding to imagine little Nolan as a grown man.

This is why I visit Carl in his special place. To think, remember, imagine, let go, connect, rejoice and weep. Carl seems to understand, he never questions. He just stands there with his cigarette and looks off across the ages.

This is how we’ve been entertaining ourselves in isolation during our customary southern summer heatwave: we stalk the wildlife around our house, and on the weekends we go to the parks in search of more of that nature thing.

We come by our new hobby honestly. My father was a professional photographer, and Bob has a long history of exercising his photographer’s eye.

I was getting a bale of wheat straw out of our storage shed when I came across a two-foot snake. Of course, I ran for Bob, afraid that I’d found a copperhead. He obligingly dropped what he was working on and came outside to assure me it was only a young black snake digesting lunch.

I tried not to imagine the animal inside the snake but quickly lost that battle.

It reminded me of the snake drawings in The Little Prince. If you haven’t read the book, this is a picture of a boa constrictor that has eaten an elephant. My Nana gave me a copy of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s masterpiece when I was about ten years old. This little boy, the prince, went on an adventure and met a great array of individuals. Every chapter held a lesson and I read the book religiously well into my teens. I was especially fond of the little prince’s encounter with the fox. Here is their farewell:
“Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

The red rocket dianthus in our kitchen garden is a moth magnet. These are a Snowberry Clearwing and a White-lined Sphinx.

One of our favorite subjects: a bullfrog. As soon as they hear the front door open, they dive into the pond, so we shoot them through the window.

Yin yang frogs on a lily pad, so cute!

A white-headed House finch sits with its more colorful partner after bathing in the birdbath. We can only figure that this bird was born without pigment.

Hungry Mockingbird nestlings in the Asian pear tree.

A Dragonfly on the Bengal Tiger Canna and a blue darner on the Autumn Joy Sedum

A box turtle munching on lunch in the shade of a garden tote.

A cottontail looking inside from outside our front fence.

We went to Chatham Beverage District so Bob could pick up Fair Game’s mail and spooked a rabbit. It’s cool how their eyes are engineered to see behind them as they run. It only takes one look from us with our close-set predator eyes to make a prey animal jump and run.

I love the blue herons with their yellow eyes and pragmatic stateliness.

But I have to admit that I am also captivated by the sheer improbable ungainliness of the vultures.

There have been precious few butterflies this year. Here is a Red Admiral on some thistle at Jordan Lake

I love how the bee is carrying its legs in a little twist, probably because it has just changed directions. Bees usually seem purposeful in flight, and it hadn’t occurred to me that they need to make adjustments to avoid running into butterflies. Only, this bee seems to be turning towards the admiral.

A pollen-laden bee on echinacea at Debbie Roos’s pollinator garden up at the Jordan Lake Dam visitor center.

A bluebird sits on a piece of big art in the North Carolina Museum of Art Park.

A female Ruby-throated hummingbird works a red canna bloom.

Finally, a squirrel sits atop our Bradford pear stump eating something that isn’t one of our orchard pears. Punks.

Nature isn’t for everyone. When we first moved to Oahu in 1999, I landed the receptionist job at a pharmaceutical company. Bob and I knew not one soul on the island, so I clung to the conversations with my new co-workers. Every Monday morning, one sweet lady would kindly ask me how my weekend had been and I’d tell her about our hikes and wildlife encounters. I was so excited to have someone to talk to that I ignored her puzzled looks. After several weeks of this little dance, she rocked back on her stilettos and smiled. “Ahhh, you’re into that nature thing!” She had figured me out.

Bob and I are into our fourth month of social distancing. During the week he holes up in his office while I play the entitled retired housewife. I don’t identify as an extrovert, but social isolation is wearing me down. Most days I keep myself too busy to notice, but on some days I wonder what’s the point and have a hard time making myself move around.

So, it’s a treat when Bob joins me in my little play world on the weekends. On Saturday mornings Bob goes to town to pick up our Red Roots Farm CSA share at Chatham Mills Farmer’s Market while I dust and vacuum. We had gotten a Friday evening thundershower and thought we’d go shopping for mushrooms after he got home. (Thank you, Tami and Lyle, for access to your woodland acres and trails.)

When we got to the second little stream, Bob paused.

“The birds have a lot to say,”

“That’s because it’s early.”

A little further on we spotted some red chanterelles (Cantharellus cinnabarinus) on the trail. While I was busy picking the tiny mushrooms Bob followed their trail into the undergrowth and was surprised to discover that they fizzled out about 150 feet from the trail even though the habitat was the same. We concluded that they must like being trampled.

We moved on to the next patch, me swinging my spider stick and occasionally backing out of a web I’d caught with my head, both of us sweating and swatting mosquitoes. We’d been smart to go before breakfast. Bob’s shirt was soaked, but we were forest bathing and bonding which doesn’t happen every day so I was happy.

Back home we peeled off our wet clothes. We ate breakfast. I cleaned up the mushrooms while listening to Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. It took me more than an hour using a soft brush. I put them on the scale and saw that we’d picked 250 grams, a little over half a pound. They’ll go well with that “chicken” vegetable soup I’m making for dinner. Fried on the side in salted margarine. Yum!

This is how to kill a hot summer day in good company, I thought. Every day should be like this. Every day will be like this after Bob retires.