On Giving Up Brown

Without doubt the social distancing that's required of us now on the pathways of Halibut Point diminishes our enjoyment of the Park. But I'm realizing that the restriction of normal human contact has a give-and-take April aspect like this month's temperamental weather itself and extends the period of wintry introspection that prepares me for the vivid encounters of spring. I am aware in these topsy-turvy days of my ambivalence about re-engaging with the usual hubbub of energies. The annual social renaissance will be both more selective and richer.

Although we are more than a chronological month into Spring my sap has not fully come back up from the roots of solitude. A bit of warmth touching the color brown is enough to soften the monochrome of solitariness.

Blue, a cold color, makes the browns come alive. The grace note of a squirrel's animation sparks a leafless tree into fuller wonder. If you're a derivative creature like me who can't live entirely on sunshine, air and rain, it helps to remember where your treasure is stored.

The embrace of blue empowers a banquet of browns in the dormant landscape. Water and sky strike my eye with a chilly aspect. I'm drawn toward visual entertainments on the leafless land.

Sweet repetitions of phoebe, phoebe, phoebe overhead nevertheless prove nature's intentions of proliferating itself on the receding frontier of brown.

A  phoebe inspects the renovated Visitor's Center to see whether last year's nesting spot under the eaves still holds promise for procreation. It settles instead on building its family residence under  a sheltered overhang in the quarry wall.

Eastern Phoebe

Perched on a branch over the palisade the phoebe models color subtleties that blend it protectively into the background yet make it an elegant palette of brown.

Hickory leaf

Brown is the overt color of decomposition and decay. All organic individuality in nature returns to humus that fertilizes new beginnings, and to the busy soil of endeavor where life's strenuous reach takes hold.

The freshness and vigor of green signal a new proliferation of growing cells to fund all possible activity. I give it's pace and responsibilities a reluctant greeting. The spongy, muddy, reassuring earth recedes from view beneath the clamoring verdure.

Blueberry budding

In the pact with life every continuing organism resumes its cycle of testimony to the work of bearing fruit.