A look from a litte further

This week was nothing spectacular in the ever so interesting life of my yard. The leaves were moved, and I saw no change. The cobwebs were swept aside, and I met no revelations. The lawn was mowed down and there were no miraculous discoveries to be found. Like putting makeup on a corpse before a funeral, we cleaned the back yard before the icy hand of fall sweeps down on it like a guillotine. I expected in all of this to find the strange and beautiful, but I saw nothing. My world has been shifting so slightly beneath me this whole time thatin my eyes it hasn't changed at all. The one thing I did see revealed this week was the familiar stark blue sky that we become so accustomed to in the summer, and along with it, my favorite color.
It's not just sky blue, it's when that crystal clear blue is sandwiched between two clouds, it's the blue that frames the sunset and hides on the opposite horizon, that drapes along the skyline like a lace lining. It's a delicate and beautiful blue that begs with all of it's being to blend in, wishes to live its days unnoticed and reflect the beauty around it. It's my blue, and I saw it this week, slung low in the sky to contrast every leaf, complimenting without wanting to be complimented.

Plum Tree and blue sky

(Field notes 10/4/14)

 



Other than the mysterious and rebellious blue hiding in plain sight, it was static in my backyard. That was until I got a little perspective on a trip to Apple Hill. I don't think if it's a commonly known tourist spot here, but its a lovely place just past Placerville, California with a series of farms that all boast a new and exciting fall adventure (i.e. pumpkin patches, hay rides, picking apples in orchards, farm animals, craft booths, fishing ponds, and some of the worlds best caramel apples.) The whole place has an atmosphere of comfort and ease, the sweet simple life we've all gotten a little too out of touch with.

I know the trip there and the farms themselves are riddled with gorgeous views and autumn dipped trees, I was expecting it.

Roadside Aspen Trees

(Field notes 10/4/14)

 

What I didn't expect was to see so many similarities to my own backyard: black widow webs, the very thin kind with no apparent pattern; soft grass littered with fallen leaves that have lost all their green and stir in the wind like the smolders of a dusty fire; my blue in the sky, framing the horizon speckled with far off pines. It was like realizing that this huge beautiful piece of the world, this oasis I glimpse only once a year is hidden underneath my nose in my own back yard. As the sun set that day and the clouds turned to wisps of pink against my mysterious blue sky, I watched out my window as a new world that I had known my whole life flew by. Under that cotton candy sky I finally understood--this view wasn't their place or my place, this place could belong to anyone who sees it. Anyone who dares to look at the sky and take a place beneath it with their head in the clouds; get their hands on their little slice of beauty.

Our perception of the world is not assigned to us at birth, we are not to be held in one place. We are free to roam this earth and find all of its little treasures, to stick our hands in the earth and our heads in the sky and say, "This is mine." This world is ours to love and appreciate, no matter how close in we get or how far out we see. We can all feel just as at home under the cotton candy sky.