(A Not So) Nearly Wordless Wednesday: "Every Fair Face"

Never lose an opportunity to see anything that is beautiful.
        It is God's handwriting - a wayside sacrament.    Welcome
        it in every fair face, every fair sky,  every fair flower.
                                                                             (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

It was a gorgeous day, warm and blue and bright with a cool breeze which danced with the bees and the little flying things that love it more than even I do. The grass had been mowed and the air was sweet with its moist, green fragrance. So on our walk, after the soccer hoards and the new volleyball hoards had quit the park and left it to Dunc and me to enjoy all to ourselves, I did what nature demanded, which to quietly lay down on the grass, heedless of its clippings, which wanted nothing more than to inch their way into my shoes and under my socks, climb into the sleeves of my shirt and work their way against against my skin. I did not mind, though, because the sky was too blue not to marvel at, the world around me too perfect not to rejoice in.

And Duncan, being a Golden Retriever, and a lover of all things, did what his nature demanded, which was to forget his ball and amble to my side where he could lean over me, where he could drool for a moment, obscure my view, and then slobber my nose with a great big kiss.

What a lovely view I have. And what a lovely day.




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Happy

The landscape belongs to the person who looks at it. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

There is something about the sound of snow––the first real snow of the season––that, despite the change in temperature and the bland whitewash of the world, that seems to make it alright. It is a crisp sound, not quite musical so much as rhythmic, a delicate whisper as it alights on brittle, yellow leaves or sidewalks where only a few days before ants scuttled back and forth in their blind way, their evening shadows long and dark on the sunset gold pavement. It is a sound I have learned to love these past eight years on my walks with Duncan.

I did not want to go out. It took all my energy to get dressed this morning, to pull on my coat and mittens and take Duncan out into it. But he was sitting in the window watching it come down, his tail twitching anxiously, a very soft whine in his throat. He didn't want to miss a moment of it. So I knelt down beside him, put my arm across his shoulder and leaned in close to his ear. "I have never liked winter," I told him. "You can ask anyone who knows Papa and they will tell you I have always favored Spring, but winter is beautiful when you're out in it and I can't help but smile when you make snow angels. So we'll go outside and we'll both be happy together."

And we were.

His Nose

There are times our walks could hardly be called walks. Duncan simply moves from one spot to the next, his nose hard to the ground, pushing against it as a plow pushes into the earth, moving, it seems, without moving, one slow step at a time, oblivious to the world with me standing impatiently beside him. There is almost nothing I can do to urge him forward, to rush his careful passage over a realm that is entirely invisible to my eyes. I see only pavement or the same patch of grass he's been enamored with for ten or fifteen minutes. But he is diligent in his exploration and so appreciative of each and every odor that crosses his path that I can only stand awkwardly by while he sniffs a pebble or a rusty spot on the iron fence until everything else vanishes. His nose is literally a million times more powerful than mine so I accept my blindness and stand dutifully by, watching and waiting.

Dogs use their sense of smell far more than we use our eyes. Their entire world is comprised of fragrances, things we can't even fathom. Our noses tend to adjust to scents and within minutes––sometimes seconds––of encountering them, they lose their potency or fade into obscurity. But not so for dogs. Their nostrils are designed to keep smells fresh and vibrant, which allows them to follow a path we can't see, telling time by how fresh the scent is and how it grows weaker over distance.

And then there is me, stopping every few feet to breathe in the Lindens, which have just come into bloom. It is an overwhelming perfume, one I've grown to love as much, if not more, than my precious Russian Olives. Roo sits patiently beside me while I bury my face in the blossoms to breathe and breathe until the scent is gone. He glances this way and that, as though embarrassed by my love of something so obvious and easy and as mindless as Justin Beiber. And yet I follow his example, learn the lessons he teaches and appreciate the world, not just the visible, but all its aspects, from the texture of the leaves to the songs of the birds always rising above the ever-present traffic on the surrounding streets. 

I cannot imagine what his walks are like, but I like think that to a dog everything smells like new Summer flowers, that everything is worth stopping and sniffing.

Earth laughs in flowers.  (Ralph Waldo Emerson)