Golden Hour

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

-Mary Oliver-



When I recently read this stanza from the poem - Sometimes, by the late Mary Oliver, I had an “aha” moment. YES! YES! I shouted to myself…that is what I do! That is how I use social media. I see, I snap, I share. Look at that pond full of water lilies! Everyone needs to see this I think. Not everyone can, so I take several photos from different angles. I zoom in. I zoom out. Later when I get home, I review the images and carefully choose the photos I believe tell the story of what I saw. This is why I stopped my car, or wandered off the trail or paddled into shallow water.

By paying attention to my environment, I have often discovered the most astonishingly beautiful flora and fauna that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. My natural state as I wander through this world is one of awe. The play of light in the late afternoon and early evening attract my attention like a mini skirt at a construction site. I just have to stop what I am doing and immerse myself in the amber glow of what is commonly referred to as the golden hour. Photographers and film makers have long known this to be the ideal time for shooting. It enhances everything it touches.

During the long light-filled days of summer in Canada, it has always been my favourite time to poke around in my garden. The calm. The quiet. The serenity. The hour prior to dusk - a signal that whispers, slow down now. Your earlier pace of  doing this, and rushing there are done. There is no need for hurry or have-to’s. This is my time, or your time. I’m not alone in my basking in Zen here at Kyeema North. The deer saunter onto the lawn from the forest, casually grazing, owning it like they once did and think they still do. A beaver slides effortlessly through the glassy, still water toward his feeding spot amidst the lily pads. Bees, laden with pollen bumble from blossom to blossom now, a heaviness in their flight, barely able to lift their striped fat bottoms and carry themselves home. Even the Osprey, belly full from an earlier hunt and feast, seems to swoop and glide through the cooler evening air with less of an agenda.

I am not separate from any of this. The deer, the beaver, the bees, and the Osprey have included me in their inner circle. There is no threat. No fear. None of us are startled or alarmed. Sometimes I talk to them - whomever comes close. The Hummingbirds seem more curious than George himself. First the hum, then the pause, mere inches from my face, then the swoosh as she departs. Was I invading her territory? I wonder. Or, was she just stopping to show off - the amber light giving her added radiance?

Perhaps these many golden hours I have witnessed and absorbed all these years were a foreshadowing. This is what lies ahead - the slowing, the calm, the perfect light, the appreciation of it all. It was always there. At 20, 30, 40, 50, 60.

The glimpses, like breadcrumbs, leading me to the here and now. For years, that amber light dangled like the proverbial carrot with promises of more peaceful evenings than I could ever imagine. And now that I am here and embracing this magic night after night, I never want it to end. This spell-binding loop I find myself in, like I have the prettiest horse on the carousel.

Who wouldn’t want to share this? Keeping it all to myself seems selfish. So Mary, wherever you are now, if it is anything like golden hour…I’m in.