Our faithful sun in a buttermilk sky.
Happiest day, beloved world! I love you! Bless you! I affirm you’re doing well.
Right after our Ride on Earth Day, I was fortunate to be part of a webinar organized by The Power of One Voice and beamed out to schools. After I presented the National Park System as a source of education, (it’s been called “The Greatest Open-Air Campus in the World,”) a source of patriotism; a prescription to improve people’s health and a source of joy that make me one of the happiest people on Earth, the moderator said:
“I didn’t expect to fall in love today, but I did. When you talk about the national parks, we can see how they transformed not only your view of the external world, but your view from within. You’re looking at the world through eyes of beauty for many years now, and it gives you wisdom.”
Exactly. Everyone can achieve and live in this ecstatic state.
I’ve learned that what we focus on grows, and right now there is an orgy of nervous, vengeful energy flooding our world as some of us see a nemesis finally appearing to face justice. But feeding negativity and anxiety only breeds more of it, so I am holding myself accountable to focus on love for all and the beauty in, through and around us.
It’s still National Parks Week through Sunday, and after my visit to our local Hope Royal Botanical Gardens that I shared Monday I feel as if I have the Grand Canyon National Park only a 20-minute drive away. Once your soul has been touched by sublime beauty, everything natural and unique that you see (actually almost everything I see) takes on a quality of awe.
Today’s Joy Train Ride began when I was regaling my friend about our fantastic birding tour with BirdLife Jamaica and she said,
“Wait, what? You went to look at birds? What were the birds doing?”
She apparently thought they might be caged. When I told her we went to look at birds just flying around she laughed as if I’d lost my mind. Because “birds are everywhere flying around. Why did you have to pay a taxi to take you to look at birds?”
I understand how she feels. In case you have similar perplexity, today we’re retracing my evolution as a “birder” in the hope that you will be intrigued to try it, or to try something else new.
So here we are on the banks of my gully in Clarendon, Jamaica in the 1950s, my back against a tree, contentedly listening to the birds pecking in the underbrush and watching them zoom through the trees. Some were big and some were small. Some were black and some yellow. I noticed their beautiful presence but thought little about them.
Now here we are in suburban Fort Lauderdale in 1992, and I’m out on an early morning walk with my bestie Frank, whose status recently changed to lover.
Out of the blue he says, “Oh! That’s a red-tailed hawk calling.”
What?
The male Painted Bunting is among the most lavishly colored birds you’ll ever see.
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