There's always so much to see, here in the country. Big sky, wide horizon, tall trees, open spaces. The width and breadth and height dazzles, distracts, diverts. There's too much confusion here, too much, too much of everything.
So I look at the smallest things. These lichens, growing on a sumac twig. A garden of delicate branched plant forms, miniature fruiting bodies, microscopic spores. An orderly wilderness, flowering, fruitful, spilling pale, delicate colors: olive-green, green-gold, golden orange, red. The finest filaments, branched like coral, jeweled and rare. A garden of green threads and gold, simple and tender, patient, poetic, rooted in a slender branch.
The tiniest things, the most beautiful, the most unlikely, the things not often seen. The things I want to see today.
Reading Note. What does it mean, say the words, that the earth is so beautiful? And what shall I do about it? What is the gift that I should bring to the world? What is the life that I should live?--Mary Oliver, Long Life: Essays and Other Writings