My eyes are awash with goldenrod glow as I look out the bathroom window and across the eastern field. It’s a gently waving sea of nonstop saffron-topped stalks, fluffy and ethereal, beckoning more than a quick glance. Not to be left out, the sun lifts its face over the tall cornstalk horizon, filtering through a row of volunteer sycamores and sending gilded sliding board beams downward, every silken spider-spun strand backlit by this morning crescendo. An ode to Yellow if ever I saw one. Each drop of dew hangs perfect and patient, knowing their fate in the hours to come, giving themselves over to it anyway.

For going on three and a half weeks now, I’ve been walking every morning because I don’t want to miss this first performance on the land’s perpetual stage. There’s something soul-filling, starting one’s day in the company of trees and light. When my feet reach the meadow, after stepping carefully atop the moss and late-summer clover on the paths to the north, a mixed grove of black walnut, cherry and more sycamores soar past my head and I receive their presence with an appropriate sense of smallness. It’s funny—we still call this stretch of land “the meadow”, though it no longer meets the criteria for such a classification. When we arrived, it did. Trees lined the creek but they were youthful saplings then, still figuring out their future, and the open expanse of grass and wildflowers compelled me to add more gossamer dresses and skirts to my wardrobe, just so I could traipse through on an early summer afternoon, plucking wild raspberries from their thorny stems (in slow-motion, of course; don’t want to be snagging cuffs or sleeves). Yes, we really do live like this.

Now, the “meadow” is well-established as another section of woods on the land, with the vein of a creek pulsing through it. We maintain the open space as best we can, and allow for a bit of thicket-creep along the banks so the birds and rabbits can hunker down when the thunder and rains move through. But where did the time go these past twenty years? As I walked this morning, I grew wistful remembering the early weeks of this year’s summer, with the 10’ canopy set up just on the other side of the mulberry stand off the front deck, and how we sat in its shade for hours, reading or sewing or just talking about whatever mattered most that particular day. During my two-week vacation in late June, I took my lunch there, while the kittens competed for my attention or napped at my feet. I worked on a bee-themed embroidery project beneath that canopy, and sat in uncomfortable “what’s next?” contemplation and fervent prayer when the protests began. In July, a six-day string of thunderstorms and wind prodded us to put the canopy and chairs away; we simply moved our outdoor living to the deck, huddled beneath the narrow overhang where only a slight misting of rain would reach us and dampen our shirtsleeves. It’s just water, it’ll dry soon enough.

When I would visit my dad at the nursing home where he spent his final years, I wondered what his fellow residents remembered about their lives, what they missed or what made them feel wistful in light of their current circumstance. If I were in such a place right now, today, with my mind firing on most pistons most days, I think I’d go mad within the week, and hope that should my life’s events turn in such a direction, I’ll be pleasantly confused as we take that final trip down the gravel driveway, across the bridge and past the buckeyes. We all have our worst imaginings; this is one of mine. I quickly reassure myself that it’s Sunday, early morning, I’m healthy and upright in the meadow-turned-woods, and I can still feed myself.

In fact, and to my surprise, the longer I stood beneath a rickety stand of older mulberries at a middle spot in the meadow, the more I felt safe and happy as I recalled the earlier days of summer. I stretched out full length on the soft bed of those memories, feeling content as the wistfulness evaporated, not a trace of melancholy left behind. My immediate future held a bowl of steaming cooked oats with fresh apple chunks and a generous spoonful of peanut butter, finished off with a drizzle of my friend Jonna’s honey (traded for a couple bags of granola. I got the better end of that deal; I owe her another bag or two). The rest of the walk ends on a lighter note, and I send up buckets of gratitude that my memories of The Canopied Summer of 2020 are vivid and intact. Perhaps as I keep collecting the days and years ahead of me, I’ll choose gratitude for what was over regret for what is, whatever that “is” might be. So far in my life, even in the middle of a worst imagining made real, there has always been something to be thankful for, some crack in the dark mortar of despair that can’t hold back the light determined to break through.

How can a simple morning walk yield such a rich harvest of meandering thoughts?

Um…I think that’s what walks are for.

And the sun still shines over the goldenrod to the east, a symphony of reassuring yellow and spiderweb strands. Life is good, no matter what.