#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
I went looking off the trail for the pool of water where morning sun was lighting the skunk cabbage. Even when I am not actively writing my essay, I am thinking about it, and what to do about it. Tonight, as I posted #mydailywalk photos here of the skunk cabbage, and returned, as I do each spring, to this wonderful essay by the naturalist Craig Holdrege about skunk cabbage, I realize that what he says about how the skunk cabbage creates the environment it needs for its own growth is what I can do for the development of my essay. The woods, this daily journal/blog writing, this time I spend walking and paying attention to nature, and then putting words and thoughts and feelings and ideas down here, at the end of the day, is how I generate the active, warmth, movement my essay requires for life.
“This is the world of skunk cabbage over a number of weeks in March and sometimes into April: on the one hand, the enclosed, protected life just peering out of the still wintry earth, and a flower that remains in a bud; on the other hand, the active, warmth-, movement-, and scent-emanating organism that creates a unique environment for the first stirrings of insect life. Skunk cabbage mirrors the quality of early spring—flowering at ground level in a bud that doesn’t open, while at the same time helping to create the environment for its own development.”
All photos and text ©Kelly DuMar 2018