I’m a big fan of the fine balance of nothing changing except whole worlds.

This can relate to books, art, conversations, people, places. To anything.

Sameness only looks/sounds/feels the same if you’re not paying attention.

Since the pandemic my walks have been pretty much limited to my backyard, where every winter I stamp out a labyrinth in the snow. This is the first year I’ve kept walking the labyrinth in every season. And it works just fine.

My penchant for nothing changing except everything fits well with traipsing the same paths over and over, several times a day in between reading, writing, chores. I’ve now walked these paths in rain and heat and snow and on windy days and perfect days.

Perfect being relative. Sometimes it means the weather, sometimes it means my own mood, which has me seeing beauty everywhere, swinging my arms, breathing deeply, thinking what else could I possibly want at this moment except to look at this precise shade of blueyelloworangegreenvioletcrimson.

Other times I’m walking my circles, feeling tense about one thing or another, muttering to myself about some scene I’m writing, arguing with a character who will NOT stop smoking, thus causing me to see a whole other side of her, which opens up a whole other aspect of the story. There are reasons these fictional types light up. It’s why I carry matches.

There’s comfort in the sameness then. The trees get me.

In this smallish space (larger than an average garden but not gigantic, not a park, not a meadow, not especially rambling) I’m allowed my many moods because there isn’t anyone to greet, no judgment, no bears, no coyotes, no traffic or intersections, and in the process of absolute walking freedom I always find a sliver of peace, of mind, of spirit. The things nature does best.

   

And in this confined space without distant horizon lines I see everything… woodpeckers, hummingbirds, doves, bluejays, the luminescent royal blueblack of the grackles and our beloved cardinal family who nested in the honeysuckle this summer, raised their kids, and who still hang out in the wisteria, like it’s their hood because, well, of course it is; and the hawk who sometimes sits at the top of a spruce until I shout and wave my arms about and it flies off (the doves audibly sigh); and goldfinches and things I can’t name, buntings or juncos, I’m really not sure. Geese fly overhead, seagulls too. And the crows crow about who knows what while the squirrels squirrel away things for me to find in spring. Or sooner. An apple in the nasturtium basket, a peanut shell on the chair were I sit to watch the sun rise.

Have I even mentioned the clouds?

Or the wild purple asters or the way virginia creeper turns scarlet and climbs to the top of the spruce tree.

Have I mentioned the last of the Queen’s Anne’s Lace, the zucchini, the green beans, the kale?

Every day my walk is the same.

And entirely different.