After the city, where we had always lived, those country years were startling. . . . The surprise of animals . . . in and out, cats and dogs and a milk goat and chickens and guinea hens, all taken for granted, as if man was intended to live on terms of friendly intercourse with the rest of creation instead of huddling in isolation on the fourteenth floor of an apartment house in a city where animals occurred behind bars in the zoo.
-- Elizabeth Janeway
This reminded me of a one recent pre-dawn; the glint of Orion's sword flashed fabulously against its black velvet backdrop. It was mesmerizing. Not much later, the dense green of the forest was alight with a thousand tiny flames of yellow-leafed candles beckoning on the deeper autumn. The reds hadn't come yet, but the big browns were already crunchy under my feet. The air was thick with the moist and cool of the seasonal-adjustment now fully underway and the faintest whiffs of the evening-before burnings hung heavy in my nostrils. All conjuring up some kind of familiar, yet not fully known, ache for something both past and present. Quite a union on many levels. It was great to be alive. And still is....
There is a joy in beauty.
