Filling the gap

The drought has exposed a new area of earth bordering the pond. Usually covered in at least several inches of water, this newly revealed space now is filling with opportunistic plants.


Where grass had grown to the water’s edge, now a ring of flowers rims the bowl.

Almost without skipping a beat, nature covers herself. She uses every inch for some purpose.
And what, at first glance, seems loss,
in time, and with growth, becomes a beautiful change.


Like the pond, my life usually is so full that little space remains between work and the activities of our lives. When one is cut back, the void seems unnatural—barren and exposed, until something begins to fill in. I’ve wanted this “dry” spell for me to be profitable, yielding something of beauty that I will feel less of a loss for experiencing.

I’m filling the gap with the writings of Opal Whiteley, “America’s forgotten interpreter of nature,” a young girl growing up at the turn of the century in the logging camps of Oregon’s forests.
Her diary, written as a gifted, some say genius child, is full of emotion—a love of nature from being totally immersed within it.

How can this little child’s diary be measured on a scale with works that argue the technical explanations of global warming or statistical accounts of habitat destruction?
It is simple.
Her lesson is not one of intellect,
but of emotion.
Her lesson teaches love.

Nodding Bur Marigold

“In the end we will conserve only what we love.” Baba Dioum