the gardens, forests and fields
around me. If anything, in seeking the Middle Path I err too much toward
consumerism myself.
In my view, average US consumers
are extremists. As they gather so much needless clutter around them and focus
on their own hungers, their own comfort and their own status in an
unsustainable social system, they are abandoning sustainable living patterns
pioneered by many kinds of living organisms during 3.5 billion years of Life on
Earth.
In contrast to this extreme
behavior, I am truly the most mild-mannered, hard-nosedly conservative,
middle-of-the-road person I know. Moreover, for the future I aspire to orient
myself even more directly upon the sustainable Middle Path.
*****
MOMENTS OF PERFECTION
This week the world has been fresh and vibrant. Showers came and went leaving
plants sparkling in spring sunlight, birds put on shows, new flowers blossomed
every day, it was neither too hot nor too cold, and the mosquitoes weren't bad.
The big Pecan trees above my trailer now sprout leaves and dense, dark clusters
of catkins of male flowers. Bugs swarm among the catkins eating pollen and
worms attack the succulent new leaves, so birds rush from branch to branch eating
bugs and caterpillars. On Saturday morning several Orchard Orioles and
Baltimore Orioles, both bright-orange-and-black species freshly arrived from
the tropics, along with some warblers and woodpeckers, made a gaudy circus
above me.
Some afternoons white-topped
thunderheads built up, and sometimes I just had to escape from the computer and
go watch how the clouds' towering tops billowed into the dark-blue sky. There's
power and purpose in these enormous, rumbling, dark-bottomed clouds. The
binoculars show how edges of the cloud boil and seethe and you can imagine the
howling, cold winds and mighty electrical charges at play inside the clouds.
But then take down the binoculars and there's just pretty white against pretty
blue, and perhaps later there will be a pleasant shower.
Right before dusk there's a fresh
spurt of activity among the birds and I walk along the woods' edges looking
into the interiors of trees lighted by low-slanting sunlight. What a pleasure
just seeing the colors of birds and butterflies in these theaters of glowing
green leaves and black limbs gilded with orange sunlight.
If I had a million dollars I could
never purchase the pleasure and contentment I have enjoyed for free during this
single past week.
*****