BearWalks:Taller than Bear Flowers  

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In a state of recuperation now, and retrospection....

There was a certain spring to my step when first I wandered out. The woods have re-leafed (after that horrid frost had shriveled them) now to an early spring state. Where they would normally have relaxed in the warm nights, and unfurled lazily, the leaves are instead vibrant and excitable. The smells have returned...soft smells, wet smells, green and yellow smells. Entering from the woods closeness into the meadows, is like walking from a tightening crowd into a spacious candle store, you are wrapped at once in warm scents of foxtail and columbine, of lavender and sweet-grasses. The heavy nodding of last years spent tall grasses is all but over now, yellow still in the veiled moonlight most are broken and splintered standing in isolated groups watching the new grasses lifting.

There is pasture where the deer will loiter surrounded by these many scents, so I thought with my measured pace to come into them unawares. Lumbering in the deeper shadow where older trees had given way to anxious scrub I blended as well I could and stopped just short of revealing myself. Pausing there awhile, close to the ancient drip of a stream nearby to cover my rustlings, I watched, but saw no movement. Now and again a soft breeze stirred up the leaves nearby and had the curious effect of stilling the chirping frogs and even the insistent whipoorwills decreased their fervor. The moon had mostly gone her path and I moved with the lengthening shadows onto the meadow hoping to catch yet some movement there.

The clouds were thin and what ones there were pearled in tufts across the ceiling, wrapping the moon in robes of silver and one angelic halo. Then, onto the meadow. I would not have wandered far upon it, the woods edge being more sheltering, but, there some distance ahead appeared some shaking. My curiosity grew with each step I took and I crouched low for surely I had found some fellow creature here sampling the various smells as I. Stalking now, approaching slowly I witnessed someone I had never seen before. Standing in 5 grand columns some flower had risen there clear over my head. She stood amid spiked leaves in soft earth like razor grass and her blooms climbed step by step on her columns, each a bell shaped globe. To the touch the flowers felt like flesh and I suspected bumblebees to greet my sniffings. That smell was light, like honey-suckle and new-toy plastic, very fragrant to the touch of my nose.

I wondered how I had missed this beauty standing there before. Was this the first time she had put out these flowers? I stood upright measuring myself to her and she was the winner. I couldn't help but sample each bulb, deciphering the differences between each and savoring them at length. I lingered there somewhile and marveled at the wondrous beauty, for such a gem I had never seen through my sojourns but apprehend there are more to come.

So here I share these things again having returned from my ecstatic journey revived for that to come. The spirit was a gentle presence this time through my journey and I have traveled once more safely, with something having been added into my being, etched there upon my very soul. I thank you for your prayers and love, be assured they are returned.