Sitting Down Quietly

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, Anita & Bryan and their four children (our "Ontario family") could not join us for a planned cottage holiday at the end of July. Despite our disappointment, it was a wonderful week, away from the city, surrounded by nature.

One morning Heidi, our youngest, was standing at the kitchen sink by the window, when she excitedly motioned for me to join her. By the time I did, the beautiful humming bird she had just seen and wanted to show me was gone. She suggested I sit on the porch where she had seen it and it might come back.
I did and, before too long, there it was! Not only was it there, but it came up close to me and hovered around me as if I were a flower from which it could get some nectar. It was quite an experience.
I didn't capture the incident on camera, but it remains a vivid image in my mind and a reminder of what I miss when I don't allow myself to just sit quietly.

I believe my true nature is to be contemplative, but I was taught by example more than anything that this is a waste of time. My mother always had plenty for me to do; she did not look kindly on what she probably considered to be procrastination when it actually was contemplation!  Although
I must admit it was plenty of procrastination as well!

There was a butterfly garden at the cottage with lots of milkweed. I noticed our son-in-law, Chris, a botanist, walk around it quietly observing. He pointed to a butterfly chrysalis, hanging from a stem of milkweed, much resembling the leaves and stem from which it was suspended. It looked like a small treasure chest with a gold band of beads around it.

(Photo: Chris Friesen]

This was the first time in my long life that I had seen a chrysalis! I wondered, "What else have I missed"? I wanted very badly to see a monarch crawling out of its chrysalis but that didn't happen.

One morning, while sitting quietly on the dock, I heard a splashing sound. I looked and saw a strange and interesting creature that resembled a duck yet it was different. Its bill was longer and thinner and it dove from the surface. In all my seventy-plus years I had never heard of nor seen a cormorant. I learned that the Chinese and Japanese used cormorants for catching fish. They are actually more common in Manitoba than I realized and are considered a nuisance.

I did not know that bees sometimes make beehives on the ground. On a walk one morning while crossing a ditch, I almost stepped on one!

The German poet, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff (1797-1848), (whose impossibly long name I still have trouble spelling correctly!), spent hours in nature, literally with her ear close to the ground, listening to its sounds, becoming one with it. From this observation and quiet contemplation sprang beautiful lyrics that made her one of Germany's most famous female poets.

I fell in love with her work while studying German literature at the University of Waterloo. In 1992
I had the privilege of spending a summer in Germany close to the Münsterland where Droste-Hülshoff spent much of her life, and that inspired me to write my MA thesis on her work ("The Lady of Shalott" A Comparison of Selected Lyrics of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff and Alfred Lord Tennyson). She spent a great deal of her later life in Meersburg, South Germany, which Hardy and I were able to visit in 2011.

We have a new bird feeder, given to us by our children, and we have hung it so we can watch it from our breakfast table. This fall and winter we hope to see a variety of birds enjoying their feast, while we delight in observing them.

"Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, 

but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you." (Nathaniel Hawthorne)