It was a sunny Tuesday afternoon. I was practically giddy with excitement, having successfully installed my new, hand-crafted poetry box* in front of our house near Asheville, North Carolina. In the same way little free libraries offer books to passersby, poetry boxes display a poem to read as well as offer copies for the taking.

There was no question which poem would be my first—an inspiring piece by Derek Mahon that I’d selected weeks ago. I carefully slid the printed poem into the box’s plexiglass paper holder. 

Heavy, unrelenting rain began that night. But who could have imagined that the next three days would bring a record-breaking 18.34 inches of rainfall to our beautiful mountain town?

During the wee hours of Friday morning, September 27th, the full force of Hurricane Helene struck, creating landslides, flooding homes, toppling power lines and trees, and devastating communities throughout Western North Carolina.

My own family was incredibly fortunate.

Weeks later, many neighboring Carolinians continue to suffer from heartbreaking losses. While the recovery of some regions will take years, extraordinary efforts to repair, restore, and rebuild roads, homes, and towns are well underway. A measure of healing has begun.

Stories of neighbors helping neighbors abound and the generous outpouring of support from across the country has been overwhelming. There is reason for hope.

It’s a tiny triumph, I know, but my poetry box stood solid through the force of Helene’s wind and water. Believe it or not, when I removed the poem from its holder one day after the hurricane, the page was completely dry. Mahon’s words survived, clearer, stronger, and more meaningful than ever:

EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALL RIGHT

How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.

By DEREK MAHON, from Selected Poems (The Gallery Press, 2008)

* Poetry Box built by David Cooke

“Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.”

Carl Sandburg

“Walk on a rainbow trail; walk on a trail of song, and all about you will be beauty. There is a way out of every dark mist, over a rainbow trail.”

Robert Motherwell

“The only commandment I ever obeyed — Consider the Lilies.”

Their glistening faces

tenderest of pale skin

lifted to sky’s whims—

sun’s glare, cloudburst, hail—no toil

or fret, wrapped in today’s embrace.

“The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.”

Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Every Saturday morning, the Watauga Farmers Market is held in Boone, NC. The official start time is 8:00AM however the parking lot fills and lines form closer to 7:30. Individual vendors set up tables and displays in such a way to invite a comfortable stroll and room to move among the crowd. As soon as we begin our walk from the parking area the air vibrates with the energy of community, excitement and thankfulness.

My first stop is one of the many organic vegetable stands. On this particular visit, I became spell-bound by a pile of summer onions and beets. Deep purple, magenta and dirty white beets lay in a jumbled heap. Long tap roots poke out and twist together forming knots. Beets are a no-nonsense, rough and tumble kind of vegetable. If they could speak, I believe they would say, “you do you and I’ll do me!”

Bunched next to the beets, an assortment of beautiful summer onions radiate freshness and a garden party energy. Pearly white, pale yellow and dark lavender bulbs celebrate their arrival with fanfare and mouth-watering promise. I stood for the longest time taking in their joyful spirit, feeling immense gratitude for nature’s bounty.

Vendors offer organic mushrooms, breads, ginger and lavender infused honey, pottery, natural soaps, duck eggs, and an abundance of summer greens and vegetables. Arriving early, they set up their market space. Approaching the tables is comfortable. Conversations begin with sharing where they farm or create and deepen into what makes their offerings unique. Pride and passion are evident and every question is welcomed.

What is not shared is these same farmers/artists are also the same farmers/artists who rose at 5:00AM to do the farm chores and check the kiln before packing up and setting out to the market. Rising before the sun, they plan and plant, think and do. Quiet heros and heroines who love the land, celebrate the Earth and provide us with sustenance and beauty.

I say thank you.

“Water sustains all life. Her songs begin in the tiniest of raindrops, transform to flowing rivers, travel to majestic oceans and thundering clouds and back to earth again. When water is threatened, all living things are threatened.”

“I close my eyes and listen to the voices of the rain.” 

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

“Pursue some path, however narrow or crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”

Henry David Thoreau

“Perhaps, the most courageous thing we can do as a people is to behold.”

I won’t lie; May and June have been tough months. On a personal level, my family is currently coping with injuries, illness, and loss, while collectively, our world grapples with an endangered planet, violent conflicts, and a pervasive mood of despair.

And yet, through it all, Mother Nature faithfully carries on. Her seasons and cycles persist, offering often unseen signs of hope, and opportunities for—dare I say—delight. Flowers bloom, stars shine, species propagate. In fact, when it comes to natural phenomena, May and June have been especially showy months here in the mountains of Western North Carolina…

First off, Pink Lady’s Slippers.

This gorgeous wildflower is a Carolina native from the orchid family.  It grows best in the partial shade of pine and oak forests, flowering throughout May and early June. I’d seen photographs of this exotic flower that loosely resembles a woman’s puffy shoe or moccasin, which stirred my imagination.

Once the calendar turned to May, a friend invited me on a hike to admire these beauties growing in the wild. She remembered seeing them several years ago just off a marked trail in the Pisgah National Forest. But once we got to the trailhead, things looked different to her. New forks had been added and some areas were no longer accessible. And so, the search—and the adventure—was on!

About a half mile in, we asked a returning hiker if she’d spotted any Lady’s Slippers and she said yes, she’d seen one. One. With our expectation bars lowered, we continued walking until my friend recognized a grove of pines about 600 feet off the trail. “I think that’s where they are!”

And so they were, not just one but dozens of delicate slippers in full flower, growing in neat bunches amid pine needles and ferns, their flamboyant pink pouches spotlighted by patches of sun filtered through overhead trees. It felt like we were crashing a fancy party.   

We walked carefully among the clustered guests, taking in their finery. Ribbed leaves formed a sturdy base for their long stalks, each of which supported a single flower. I moved in close to appreciate the intricate veining and soft, satiny texture of the blooms. What a treat it was to discover them—like a secret, exclusive garden. I couldn’t help thinking that sometime within the next two to three months, the flowers and leaves would wither away, disappearing without a trace.

Secondly, stargazing surprises.

The news had billed the Tau Herculids as a once-in-a-lifetime meteor storm. My husband and I retire early most nights, but we agreed this celestial event would be worth setting an alarm and getting out of bed to see. So, at 1:00AM on May 31, we threw on our robes and, with great anticipation, headed outside to our second-story deck.

It was a new moon and the sky was clear and dark (we’re lucky to have minimal light pollution where we live). From our vantage point, nothing obstructed our view of the handle of the Big Dipper, where the spectacle was supposed to commence.

We craned our necks and waited patiently. Although the display of stars was captivating, there was no meteor storm that we could see. Twice I detected a blur of motion in my periphery, but it was so quick that it may have been my eyes playing tricks on me. And yet, that night we were surrounded by a galaxy of hundreds of thousands of brilliant blinking lights.

Indeed, the real “stars” of the late-night entertainment show were the fireflies. They were flashing and dazzling non-stop, lighting up the darkness from the grasses and low bushes of our backyard to the uppermost edge of the tree line. Black treetops merged with black sky and it was easy to confuse high-flying lightening bugs for twinkling stars—they were that bright and intense. It was a mating extravaganza! Flash after flash after flash, tiny romances sparked in an amazing orchestration of patterns and rhythms.  

Knowing that these courtships would continue through the first half of June, I made a point of going out onto the deck over the course of the next couple weeks whenever I happened to wake up between midnight and 2:00AM. Unlike overhyped meteor showers, the passionate fireflies never disappointed; their stamina is simply astounding.

Thirdly, Blue Ghost Fireflies.

You can’t live in the Southern Appalachians without hearing about these colorfully-named fireflies—it’s the only place on Earth they are found. What makes them unique (and somewhat eerie or “ghostly”) is that they do not flash their lights, but glow continuously in their forested habitat. As with all fireflies, producing light is part of their mating ritual. They make their luminous appearance once a year during a brief mating season, which peaks mid-May to mid-June.

To learn more, I attended a presentation by Dr. Jennifer Frick-Ruppert, an environmental science professor who has researched them extensively. She explained that these fireflies are small—about the size of a grain of rice—and that only the males can fly. But they are “clumsy” fliers at best, hovering low to the ground, hoping to attract the attention of wingless females crawling and feeding in the leaf-litter on the forest floor. This species prefers moist environments and are often found near streams.

My daughter and her family live very close to Dupont State Forest, an area famous for Blue Ghost sightings. In past years, they’ve seen an abundance of the glowing bluish-white lights (said to be itty-bitty lanterns carried by the ghosts of fallen Confederate soldiers) right on their own wooded property. It was time for a Blue Ghost watch party! I’m not sure who was more excited, my two young grandsons or me.

At dusk, the whole family, outfitted with headlamps, trekked through the drizzly woods to a creek at the edge of their property. My older grandson was my guide, taking my hand, warning me of obstacles along the dark path he knows so well. When we reached a stand of rhododendrons near the creek, we switched our headlamps from white to red light and settled ourselves onto blankets and camp chairs. Once situated, we turned off our lamps completely and quieted our bodies and conversations, speaking only in whispers.

It wasn’t long before tiny lights emerged from the darkness around us—silent, steady, and magical. Some were mere inches off the ground; none flew higher than three or four feet above the forest floor. Some drifted, some darted, but most were traveling downward, seeking out females in the dark, wet leaves below. Their movements made me think of glowing minnows in a deep, black pond. A few came surprisingly close, swimming toward our outstretched hands.

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

W.B. Yeats

During these troubled times, I intend to regularly seek out ways to experience “wonder” in nature. That means getting outside of my head and outside my house to “behold”—to find courage by focusing fully on our amazing living world.

For me, this never fails to inspire a childlike spirit of adventure and discovery. But one must be willing to veer off the well-traveled trail, leave a cozy bed and venture outside in the middle of the night, or sit patiently in the pitch dark of a rainy, wet woods for as many hours as it takes.

It’s so worth it. Because even though such marvels don’t provide a cure for heartbreak or the ills of this world, they do provide a measure of happiness, along with some much-needed respite from life’s miseries.

“…Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination…“

Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

“‘I like geography best,’ he said, ‘because your mountains and rivers know the secret. Pay no attention to boundaries.'”

Brian Andreas, Story People

The Appalachian Trail, known affectionately as the “AT,” is a foot path extending 2,194 miles between Georgia and Maine. Early spring to autumn is the season for “thru-hikers,” those adventurous souls who walk the full distance in one hike, which typically takes about 6 months to complete. “Section hikers,” those who piece this magnificent trail together in separate trips of varying lengths, can hike the trail year-round.

On a recent trip to Virginia, a friend and I decided to explore the Weverton Cliffs Trail, a hike along the Appalachian Trail in Maryland. The trail begins with a steep, rocky uphill climb. Small, medium and large pieces of broken boulders line the path. After a mile of continuous observation of my feet and one hiking pole guiding each carefully placed trail boot, we arrived at a fork. The familiar white blaze of the AT instructed us to turn left. Below this marker, a blue lettered sign showed an arrow pointing right, indicating it was only 2/10 of a mile to the Weverton Cliffs which overlook the junction of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers.

As we walked the short distance, my mind prepared to see a great confluence of crashing falls and whipped up whitewater, full of conflict. After all, the Shenandoah emptied into the Potomac right here! Two great rivers, each with a rich history and boundaries to be respected. Competition and ideology were at stake.

Carefully stepping to the edge of the jagged slabs of rock, we looked down. Two rows of gentle ripples flowed peacefully, shore to shore, as if sharing a warm greeting in the calm waters. Lush green trees and shrubs lined the flow of water without a care. The rivers gently shifted direction as they merged from Maryland to Virginia to West Virginia. Two rivers, three states and nary a cross word or weapon drawn.

Mountains and rivers know no boundaries. A kinship abounds in the natural world. The very definition of kinship includes “of the same family” and “relationship by nature.” In this time of war, violence and isolation, may we find a way to notice what makes us kin. May we focus on learning the secret.