SOLSTICE AND MOONLIGHT

Private thoughts often clash with public perception. That is why there's a danger in keeping a public journal. Revealing the sacred mechanisms of your inner self always encourages adverse reactions and willingly invites opposition. Fires rage.

After the smoke of the conflagration initially settles, however, a reassuring calm and clarity prevails: and I realize that this is my special place and all others are merely interlopers treading on uncertain terrain.

Despite the dangers and vulnerabilities, there is an intense satisfaction and curious comfort knowing the intruders are there. Without the recurring footfall of  interlopers the silence would be deafening.

Thanks for being here.

Wouldn't it be more simple to speak in layman's terms, Jon?

Probably. But it would be far less poetic.

Moonlight and summer solstice. A full strawberry moon. Moonlight floods the open spaces with dazzling silver light and starkly shadows the forest with intriguing shrouds of mystery. The night is alive with all things nocturnal: owls and bats, 'possums and racoons, crickets, frogs, coyotes and wild dogs.

The coyotes have been abundant these past few nights - howling and shrieking, uttering grievances in a barbaric language that often sounds unnervingly human.

 back yard in moonlight

(and moon rising in header photo)

Last night, just after midnight, piercing screams came from the trees that skirt the cow meadow. The screams continued and increased as they moved closer to the house. Then I heard something running through the tall grasses just beyond my bedroom window. I looked out and saw nothing. 

I dared to venture out on the front porch but could see even less. Clouds were obscuring moonlight and a surrealistic vagueness prevailed. The porch is on a much higher level than the ground. It's more like a balcony.

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks -

it is the east and Juliet is the sun.

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon

who is already sick and pale with grief

that thou her maid are far more fair than she.

Be not her maid, since she is envious....

Long ago, pathetically long ago  I used to know most of Romeo's soliloquies by heart and I could recite them with reasonable conviction. Unfortunately these oratory talents never impressed anyone.

Why did I mention this? I'm simply marveling at the artistic dimensions of my youth.

Nowadays, I have trouble remembering my phone number.

The lightning bugs - or fireflies - are everywhere. When I was a very young child in New Jersey we called them lightning bugs. My family moved to California when I was five and I didn't see lightning bugs for the next thirty years. They are not a west coast pleasure. It's very satisfying to see them again.

Remember those haunting blue orbs that I saw in the forest last summer? They are completely gone. I never saw them again. I'm certain they were some type of firefly.

Summer nights are enchanted here in the wilderness.