CHASING DOWN THE MUSE: Revived by nature’s vitality

Starting out on my morning walk that day, it looked like rain, but nature, as is its wont, held out for surprise.

Just minutes into the early jaunt the cool, brisk winds pushed the cloud cover eastward and the sun burst over the hill bringing with it a rainbow plumped with color.

The scattered remainder of clouds danced in the blue clarity like fat cherubim.

As the fullness of frothy waves crashed on shore, the Laughter Club laughed on the beach and the gulls laughed back. It was quickly becoming a day filled with abundance.

When I ran into my friend Shirley on the Boardwalk, we could speak of nothing but the energy and lushness of the morning. When she said in parting, “Would that I had the vitality that nature does,” I laughed in ready agreement. Nature certainly did have it all over us mere humans on that glorious morning.

Human beings are forever striving to harness nature. Sometimes we are successful, and sometimes we are not and even the successes come with a price.

I understand our need to do this AND I think we need also to respect the very power of nature and honor its glory”¦and sometimes its fury”¦as well. That vitality that is nature’s usually wins out in the end. It can be awe-inspiring and energizing to watch that vitality unfold. It is good, as Walt Whitman said, to stand “apart from the pulling and hauling”¦watchful and wondering at it all.” It is also energizing.

Later on that same day, as I drove out to visit my mother in Palm Desert, Shirley’s comment returned to my mind. Well it might as I had been really pushing myself (Whitman’s “pulling and hauling”?) lately to be everything to everybody including myself, and I was feeling the wear and tear of that. I could use some of that energy we had been seeing. The sky on the drive was thrilling in all its movement and variety “” rich with “vitality” “” and I found myself wondering what lessons I might learn from this fullness of nature.

Whenever life “” through much my own doing, of course “” seems to throw just too much my way, it seems I turn to nature for renewal and sustenance. This day was no exception. Knowing this was just one of many distance-driving days for the week, I sought to focus on the splendor that nature was parading all around me, instead of resisting the miles of travel I would be encountering. This was easy to do as massive, billowy clouds scuttled a path through the deep azure sky to butt up against the San Bernardino Mountains. And once through the pass, the openness of the flat desert land was restful to my eyes. This watching and wondering stuff was working.

Now, I have arrived at this day of writing somehow intact despite the pressures and joys of everyday living. I have moments in and with nature to thank for that. Whether being thrilled by the rollicking splendor or simply enjoying the “quiet” sounds of nature on a powerless Sunday morning, time with nature is revitalizing. I listened to the wind through the trees, the bleating of goats, and the mixed chorus of birdsong with cawing crows chasing a screeching Cooper’s hawk mixed with the softer trills and chirrups of small birds and the Nuttall’s woodpecker’s percussive pecking. I watched the powerful, pounding surf and tumultuous clouds rushing across the sky. All of nature’s abundant vitality seems to have fueled and fed my own energies.

No, I probably don’t have the vitality that nature displayed on that day just a week ago. It was pretty darned special. I do feel that somehow a small portion of that vitality was imparted to me in the enjoyment of it.

I do have “” and feel blessed in “” gratitude for the myriad lessons found in nature and its unfolding displays.

In my mind I still see the cloud-shadowed moon in all its magnificence low in the inky eastern sky as I left my mother’s home in the desert and, later, as higher in the sky, it marked a path across the surface of the dark ocean here at home. What a day! What a life! What a force nature is! If, in observation, I can receive even a bit of that vitality into my own being, I have done well.

CHERRIL DOTY is an artist, writer, and creative coach exploring and enjoying the many mysteries of life in the moment. She can be reached at [email protected] or at (949) 251-3883.