The Perfect Present - Christmas 2012

As usual a lot has happened at the pond in a month. Leaves have sailed off the paths down back now, and as the song goes,  the "Earth stood hard as iron".  Ice is appearing not just on the little bodies of water off the pond, but also on what is called the Lagoon on a map of Horn Pond I found online. Seagulls are congregating on the ice in the Lagoon, which just seems wrong for a bird that to me is a symbol of summer, closely linked to fried clams, sand buckets, and the Hampton Beach boardwalk. Earlier in the month there were many rainy mornings when I didn’t even bring my camera out - and some really magnificent foggy mornings where I could not get down the pond fast enough. Now more and more there are beautiful icy mornings where everything glistens and today, on Christmas Day, a light covering of snow that makes all things new yet again. Yet again.

 

As I got out of the car I was greeted by 2 juvenile swans at the boat launch on Sturgis Street - Swans for Christmas! I couldn’t be happier, as my friends had been missing for quite a while. We have several swan families on the pond in the summer, others have told me that they come back year after year, and often I see them here throughout the winter. It was strange to me that they all disappeared what seems like several weeks ago. The swans did have a particularly hard year here, and I didn’t know if they fled to the Mystics or elsewhere – in any event it made me smile that these 2 returned with the snow. 

It is amazing how the pond changes, season by season and day by day. Something wonderful leaves - the song of the peepers fade away, the swans or waxwings move on -  but then we are graced with soft snowy borders, crazy geometric ice patterns, and birds walking (or standing!) on water.  The pond whispers that the march of wonders is endless if we stay open and pay attention. Of course sometimes I miss things and people from the pond, and missing has its place of course, but I know that takes me out of the present and I might miss the sharpness of the air in my lungs, the blue jay’s call, or the flowers turned into cups of snow on the path by the cattail marsh. There are losses too here of course, and losses everywhere. Heartbreakingly bad things happen, as the flags flying at half-staff in Lion’s Park remind us - we can lose the people and things we love in an instant. A reminder to love those around us fiercely right now while we are all still together and to do the best we can with each moment. And when bad things do happen, perhaps during those sad times the pond can console us with its constancy inside the promise of something new, around the bend, when we are ready.

 

Since many songbirds have moved on, lately I have been hanging out at the land bridge (which I now know is called properly ‘the Causeway’ according to that handy map I found) to watch the geese. I believe that Horn Pond must be starred like a Motel 6 in the travel guide the geese use in their southerly flights, because morning after morning there are flocks on the lagoon and on the main pond too. If there is a flock looking restless and the light is good I will often pause several toe-numbing minutes hoping some of them will start their day’s travel. Such a riotess mess of honking, running, splashing and flapping that results in miraculous lift off after lift off! Although some day I hope these takeoffs will serve as my ‘personal panning practice’ right now I am just trying to shoot fast and actually get something flying in focus! And occasionally I do. So my photo folders are still fat in December, just now with these sometimes comical, sometimes graceful fowl, instead of the songbirds of summer. That march of wonders thing again.

  

Well. Here I am on another literary cliff. I have more to say of course, another page or so more in my drafts area ranting about the past, present, future, decisions, waiting, and that elusive Bodhi tree, but something inside me is urging me to put it off until next time. My thoughts aren't quite settled anyways, and somehow it just doesn't feel right to go into all that right now. This is after all a Christmas post, and perhaps it's best to leave you with thoughts of the Perfect Present. For today, the decisions can wait, breath can flow easily into the belly, and we can marvel at the gift of a light snow on a beautiful pond. As my dear friend Aaron used to say, we can leave our (fill in the blank - worries, decisions, disappointments) on the other side of the door, and just feel the snow on our eyelashes, the pull of a white path, the rush of a goose flying overhead, and realize that, exactly right now,  all is well.