My friend Terrianne Swift lives in another state, sees another landscape. Yet we share the world and ideas, we email, we recognized each other-- how? As fellow seekers? Artists? Individuals who tremble for the pain of the world and wish to hold it gently?

From my writings on this blog, you know of my daily walks. In a recent email Terrianne wrote of hers. Her words bring me such a tender, clear holding of each described detail that my breath comes more easily and my heart feels more open after reading. I feel like I've been blessed. I share this with her permission:

-A break for a description from my walk today:

I chose the longer walk home from CircleK, the one that takes me down an alley behind a house and a few businesses. I thought of you, your daily walk ("Give us this day our daily walk, and forgive us our trespasses"?), how far my little path is from the scope of 'natural world' you encounter, and yet how satisfying it is to me.

When I walk there, I see a gravel lot where some small house trailers are stored, the gravel uneven and after a rain holding pools of water where the birds splash and cats drink--puddles too shallow for waves, so they perfectly reflect back the sky and trees. There are rabbits, a groundhog (surprisingly quick on his/her feet when startled), goldfinches, and a pair of cardinals in the stand of honeysuckle bushes--leaves still green now in almost-November! but the red berries showing, and a lot of vining somethings.

Those have climbed onto the cinderblock Genuine Auto Parts building, a building I've come to have affection for maybe just because it's been centered in the view from my front window for the last 5 years. The building-long sign is peeling, there's a small erratically blinking neon sign in the window that seems cheerful against rainy days, and the back of the building has become a semi-abstract painting, in my eyes--the unidentified ivy vine that's now turned the bright red of a maple, not that sharp red (do you see these colors the same way I do? we've talked about that) of poison ivy, the patterns it makes as it winds up and across the wall, the way the wild grapevine has strung itself, hanging from the building's corner...

Across the gravel lot there are two cellphone towers where the birds like to loudly gather toward evening--I think it's a mix, not all starlings, though there are a lot of those. And of course a mating pair of red-shouldered hawks often circle, hoping to snatch dinner.

So--there it is, dubiously beautiful, almost always satisfying.

~Terrianne Swift