windfalls

In the midst of my wandering compass-less through the narrative tracts of wilderness (Genesis 1) and Eden (Genesis 2), comes a storm. Last night, the wind kicked up to 50 miles per hour, the rain pelted the earth and tropical warmth swept through our wintry air. I stood outside for a brief moment in the middle of the night, and discovered I had fallen into a coven of trees celebrating their arboreal sabbath. Their branches were freely swaying, in a melodic, care-free, unfrenzied, way. It was clear that at that moment, I was the trespasser, the visitor, on their property, when usually it is the other way around.

I was enchanted and awed by the wanton callousness, blitheness, of nature. It cared not about the seasons, or whether we had had our fill of rain, or the fragility of our power lines or the unimpeded necessity of roads. It did not care about long-distance truck drivers or anxious mothers or vigilant, over-worked repairmen.

The storm just raged on. Actually, rage is not the right word. This storm was not an angry storm. It had no attitude, no point to make, nothing it wanted to prove. It was just a storm that did what it was meant to do: blow things around. To be in its midst, in its simple rawness, was to be in the wilderness, if even for a moment.

Humility overwhelms us when faced with such a storm. We can do nothing to stop it; it will cease only in its own time, demanding its own price. It will rearrange the world we have created at its whim. It reminds us that despite the blessing of Genesis 1 when we are given the calling to "master the wilds," we can never really do that.

Yet, if we can't master the wilds, we can learn from it. And we can become better masters, of both ourselves and the natural world around us, by tending well to such lessons. How wonderful it is to match our pace to the earth's; to count the minutes of the day by the arc of the sun as much as by the face of a clock; to breathe in and out in sync with the wind; to match our pulse to the rhythm of the tides.

Our civilized lives are richer for having been in the presence of the rawness of nature. Our inventions, constructions, productions are better for being modeled on the 4 billion years of experimentation nature has already invested in life.

I went out the next morning and discovered a quieter, if messier, world. The ground was littered with branches, those over-wrought limbs from the celebration of the night before. A windfall for me, I thought. I will gather them up and saw them and burn them in my wood-burning stove. I have come to greatly appreciate these windfall offerings; these unearned, surprise and warmly welcome gifts that come after nature's modest, self-indulgent, blow-out.

But I also realize that the practical lessons of living in the presence and company of nature is a windfall that we too often overlook, and one of even more enduring, and pleasurable, value.