Leaving Chicago any minute. Jet engines are revved. We are all dutifully seatbelted in, electronic devices off.
Even though it's exciting to anticipate seeing loved ones I have missed this entire month, these 30 days have brought the loved ones I miss most of the year even closer. And so it's hard to go.
Hard as well to leave the layers and layers of resplendent green here as I race back to the desert. Having spent the previous 3 months in San Diego, seduced and spoiled by the lush palms, jacarandas, acacias, bougainvillea, and jasmine, I am stunned to realize that very scenery pales next to the irrepressible smorgasbord of botanical excess in the Garden Spot of the Midwest. That being my hometown of Elgin, Illinois and its surrounding environs. In all modesty.
I'm not talking here about the manicured trees and tulips on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago; I'm talking about the infinite timbered vistas assailing your eyes as you drive along myriad highways and byways, gleaming river ribbons teasing their way through the verdant opulence. Where man has not cleared and built, the emerald forests are relentless. And on the streets where homes have been planted less recently, there, arboreal majesty holds sway; often there are streets where lofty green gloved branches reach out to hold hands above, and shady canopies seamlessly dapple the persistent sunlight below.
The wonder I feel as my thirsty eyes drink in this green profusion is on par with the awe I experience when losing myself in the vastness and color of the Grand Canyon, being transfixed by the monumental impact of "purple mountains majesty," or being seduced by the hypnotic evermore of the crashing ocean waves. How so much beauty, surrounding us, cradling us, thrilling us, could ever have come to be, so infinite and spectacular, if not from a source so infinite, so spectacular itself?
These must be the storybook lands of Snow White, Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty. The mysterious forests of fairytales. No? Not technically, I guess. But. These vast and powerful armies of maple and oak, sycamore and ash, elm and pine and more are vibrant and virile as the Alpine forests and the Buchenwald (Black Forest) itself which soared my heart in those Old World lands I lived in long ago.
But it's here and now the summer glory finds my vision, feeds my spirit. And all that's required of me is to be still. Notice the willows? Oh, those weeping willows! Unrivaled elegance. The immensity of grace. Giants here fed generously by river and rain. Could Eden have been so arrayed? Punctuated by droves of lily, purple sage, bright geranium, delicate Queen Ann's lace, peony, pansy, petunia and on and on and on. Staggering diversity, finally triumphant. Replete with exuberant sound track... choirs of birds of every stripe attired in multicolored robes. Here a pair of bright red cardinals, there a sunny yellow finch.
Life. Loving itself.
I'll be back.
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