The Finality of Peace

 

The more I thought about the prompt for this week, the more I realized that peace is really pretty fleeting.

And it should be. Too much is left to do, to see, to learn, for any of us to find peace while we're still able to draw breath. Only in death should we find peace.

And that made me think about cemeteries.

I took these photos in Scotland a couple of years ago. The gravestones there are a metaphor for the triumph of life over death, because they're covered with lichens and mosses growing right on the dead stone.

 Maeshowe on Orkney might or might not have been a grave. All that's known for sure is that it's very old and that on the equinoxes, the sun shines right in through that door you see and strikes the center of the back wall. (We were there for the autumnal equinox.) A legend says that a group of Norsemen once took shelter here during a storm and that two of them went insane before they were able to leave.
I entered by bending at the waist to walk through a tunnel, then, when I reached the open part under the dome, turned around and walked right back out. Did not like the way it felt. (This was before I heard the legend.)

The graves at Beauly Abby, like many in Europe, were in the floor of the church. I was taught as a child not to walk on graves and it's still difficult for me. Yet the people who attended services here obviously had no problem with it.

Balnuaran of Clava was pretty definitely a grave, and very, very old. The feeling of peace here was amazing. Perhaps the stone-age souls buried here have really found their rest.

Growing Wild

House plants and I don't have a good relationship. I'm one of the few people I've heard of who can kill a philodendron while trying to nurture it. 

On the other hand, outdoor plants seem to thrive under my neglect. Wild strawberries and violets covered the ground under the old mailbox this spring. A resurrection lily, mowed down repeatedly last year, popped up next to a pile of rock this summer, blooming as if carefully tended.


So my response to plants might be a little peculiar. Trees have always seemed to me to be almost sentient, like the Ents in The Lord of the Rings, and I always feel like they're trying to tell me something terribly important--I just can't understand the language of the wind in the leaves.

You might recognize the photo above as the background of my blog. I love it because not only do I feel like the trees are alive, but I feel like woods fairies could be peeking out from behind the ferns, giggling at my clumsiness and inability to hear the earth speaking to me. The photo to the left was taken in the same area, Reelig Glen in the Highlands of Scotland, and shows a little more of the play of light through the mist and leaves. The paths that lead through the glen are the paths that Victorian ladies once walked, but few of their footprints seem to be left.

This wasn't the only area in Scotland that, perhaps encouraged by a vivid imagination and love for fantasy, seemed magical to me, and it wasn't the only area to which I felt an immediate, elemental connection. But it was the area where I most felt the presence of the verdant life that had been Growing Wild for more years than I can really comprehend.