These pictures are from a walk we went on in early September. One of those days where suddenly it's not summer anymore and you know you better get some more outside time before it's REALLY not summer. It always happens so you think I would be prepared but I am never ready to let summer go. It doesn't last long enough where we live in upstate New York and there is so much fun to be had when the days are warm and long. Whether we are picking berries, wading in the creek, watching the fireworks, going to outdoor concerts or just lounging on our wonderful front porch we are always so content during summer. A return to my own childhood for at least a few weeks.
I LOVE summer. I want it to last forever.
And then…..it's subtle, it catches you off guard but it can't be missed. The light changes, the air changes. It still looks like summer but the earth has made her turn while you were sitting around the campfire eating roasted marshmallows. Make no mistake it is time to get out the socks, the pants, the boots, the scarves, the crockpot, the extra blankets.
Goodbye flip-flops.
Goodbye front porch.
Goodbye wading in the creek.
Why do you have to leave the party when I was just getting started????
So it was on this very day that I woke up and I could feel that shift in the light and the air and a depression starts to hang around me like a rain cloud. I eventually will embrace pots of soup and heavy sweaters and movie night and turning on the heat but when that first unmistakable sign of the changing seasons shows up I am not ready and…..
I am not embracing it.
At all.
Not even a little bit.
We decided to go for a walk to a place we had driven by a hundred times or more and always wondered about but never took the time to stop. It is a nature preserve full of walking paths and fields and woods and flowing creeks. We played in the water a little bit, took a nice hike and then we decided to follow a second path to a different spot in the creek and Lilly and I rounded the bottom of a steep hill and walked straight to the water. We must have played there for a good five minutes until Scott said 'turn around'…..and this heart wall was behind us. Ahhhhhh…….Amazing. Breathtaking. A beautiful pause to just stand there and take it in with our hearts and our eyes. Who started this? How long had it been here? Lilly and I always find hearts in stones, shapes on the ground, shells and other places in nature so we immediately went searching for a heart to add to this altar in the woods.
I love that people took the time to make this offering. I love to think of how many people had the same surprise moment that the three of us had that sweet day. I like the feeling of being part of something, of being connected to strangers who care about art and beauty and love. I like to think of our hearts that we placed that day as our thank you to the summer of 2013. Thank you for family reunions, for friends that lingered on my porch with either coffee or cocktails, lots of picnics and playgrounds, a camping trip to the beach, outdoor concerts and Beatrix Potter plays in the garden, wading in the creek, picking blueberries, watching summer storms roll in from the comfort of our covered porch, making pizza over an open fire with my beloveds, for new friends and old….thank you. I'm going to miss you but I know it's time for you to go and I can't make you stay.
I will meet you on my porch May 1.
Be there.
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