Adventure, Suffering, Renewal

Dan and I explored Kennesaw Mountain on Sunday. It is a beautiful spot for a small hike and also a Civil War battle site. When we got to the top, this butterfly landed on one of the cannons mounted there. It is a striking image of paradox, of beauty in spite of, in tandem with, maybe even as a result of, suffering.

As my explorations of Georgia continue, I am deepening in my writing on the natural world and her suffering. I am working on two new poems. One is entitled Little Boxes. When I was in middle school, my rural hometown underwent a period of development during which it rapidly adopted suburban box stores and housing. I am currently living in a very suburban area, and I remember those early feelings of frustration and disgust with the overuse of water and pesticides, the roads that are only suitable for cars, and most of all, the cookie-cutter architecture that overtakes forest and pasture. In the poem, I describe my mother singing Pete Seeger’s Little Boxes to us as we watch the new buildings take shape. The next poem, tentatively titled Here in these Waters, looks at various aspects of suffering through symbols of water, then earth, and then the joining of water and earth. I read a draft of this piece at last night’s poetry open mic at the Callanwolde Fine Arts Center in Atlanta.

 

Still, as I look more bravely at the destruction of the earth, it is amazing how much healing and abundance the natural world continues to offer. Here are a couple photos from adventures in Georgia that have helped me find renewal.

 

A translucent oak leaf behind a very fancy diner in Alpharetta. Both are strange.  

The Alpharetta Greenway… I guess VT isn’t the only place to see flooding this year! (Also, my thumb. Oops).

View of the Blue Ridge Mountains in northern Georgia (near North Carolina)

View of Atlanta from Kennesaw Mountain. Also amazing clouds.