Finally

80°f this morning...at 7am! Unheard of. Rose to 96, then suddenly dropped to 88, the wind picked up, and a good storm followed.

2:30pm

I am so thankful to get this rain. It feels like a huge weight and worry has lifted. More is predicted but if it doesn't happen, at least we had this.

Another worry is resolved, too: the part for the washer arrived several days early, and Larry and Derek fixed his extra washer (left behind by one of his daughters when she moved). They got it installed and it is running great. What a relief, and a blessing.

Thank you all for your kind comments about my back. Perhaps it was your collective good energy that helped it feel better. I did take it easier yesterday and avoided lifting anything heavy. Today we found Larry's old back brace, so that and the pain patches have me feeling almost new---but I am still not lifting anything over 5 pounds.  No sense tempting fate.

9:00pm. Another good rain at 5:00pm.

Listening to the news this morning, two stories caught my attention. First was a story about an unexplored forest in Macedonia, the second about a type of very rare, almost extinct whale that had washed up on a beach--unfortunately the whale was dead, but it was one of only half a dozen ever seen since it was first noted in the 1800's.

Isn't it interesting how we long for something undiscovered, a frontier, a wildness that we humans have not yet marred or killed off? Why, i wonder, do we have that longing? I remember when I moved here, how thrilled I was to know that no one had ever lived on this land. Yes, it had been farmed in some way,  but there was so much wildness to it. I reveled in hiking the hills, finding arrowheads and wild foods, and seeing my first deer (they had been almost entirely killed off by 1950). My first ever hummingbird greeted me through a window we had just installed, and in the woods and fields I found bellflower, wild ginger, hazelnuts, wild plums, butter-and-eggs wildflowers, Valerian, jack in the pulpit, and hundreds of other plants not known to me before. It was magic.

I guess people still want to feel that magic. I know I do. When I read David Gascoigne's posts, or see the glorious flowers and ancient buildings my cousin John shares, I feel it. When I stop on our ridge to watch a fawn cross the road, or watch the wren's babies fledge from their nest in the birdhouse on the porch, the magic is still there, waiting for me to see it. For me, it is close at hand, and I know I am lucky. Perhaps not as big as a whale or an unknown forest, but right here, right now. That's big enough for me. 

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