Life is still happening and it’s been impossible to get back to my normal blogging schedule, but I have peaked in at your blogs and Facebook accounts as I can. Thank you for many smiles, memorable poems, much cherished comments, useful information, and often inspired and inspiring stories. Kudos to all. This post is for you, my valued blogger friends. Many blessings. Jamie
Homage to Saturday’s gathering, those present and those missed . . .
Some days are more perfect than others. Yesterday, Saturday, was one such more-perfect day. We spent the afternoon at friend’s cabin happily tucked in the woods under the benign watch of giant sequoias. Occasional bird song, soft breezes brushing trees, and the crunch of leaves underfoot where background music, while dappling drops of sunlight rolled and tumbled our way through the evergreen jungle above.
The cabin rests in rugged country and, not unlike the woman who lives there, the country is a wonder of wonders, a wild place for wild things. It is at once a writer’s nook and a healing land, where creatures, human and other, share the sky, earth, water and air and time is marked by sanity and balance.
There were ten of us who spent the afternoon, poets, writers, musicians, cooks, counselors . . . comforters . . . philosophers . . . survivors . . . saviors . . . We were mindful of friends who have moved on to that ultimate wilderness and mindful also of those who had to work, were traveling, or were too ill to come out and play. It is not our interests and inclinations that bring us together. These are simply the characteristics and qualities that make us larger than the accepted – though unchosen – path we share, the path of serious illness. This path does not define us. We are wild things and remain undaunted, undefiled, and undefined by virtue of our wildness. We are untamed folk living in a tame world. As such, we are mostly loving and at peace with things as they are and when we gather, it’s a very good thing.
Thanks to all for their generous contributions to the day’s success. Thanks also to my son who couldn’t make it this time but kept me going so that I could.
