Bike Ride in Weybridge, VT, October, 2024

We recently returned to Vermont after two weeks away. I was worried that we might miss the color, but as it turned out, we didn’t. This has been a glorious, splendid, explosion of color kind of week. I have felt uplifted, amazed, transported, and grateful to be surrounded by glowing light and an array of crimsons, oranges, yellows, golds, yellow greens and dark greens all around us. I can’t get myself to go inside. We have biked, hiked, worked outside in our garden, walked, gazed, cooked out at the fire pit and savored every moment. From dawn to sunset of these blue sky, mild days we have forest bathed in the glory of fall in Vermont.

Hiking Philo Ridge, Charlotte, Vermont, October, 2024

There is an exhibit at the Middlebury College Museum of Art now curated by Katy Smith Abbott entitled An Invitation to Awe. The Middlebury College Campus, the campus newspaper, describes the exhibit this way…

The exhibit showcases the various ways in which awe is experienced in people’s lives through the categorization and organization of the selected pieces. The awe of the natural world, awe through acts of humanity, and awe that is sacred or religious. This is how “An Invitation to Awe” invites its audience to consider the exhibit’s core questions of “where and how is awe most prolifically experienced?” Where and how do we find awe in our lives? What do we consider to be moments of awe?

Children naturally approach the world with curiosity, wonder, and awe. If we are lucky, we can accompany them, nurture those qualities in them and in us, and learn from them.

Granddaughter Delilah, age four, creating a nature journal at her request

I have been filled with awe with every breath for a full week. I am full of gratitude to live in this place on earth and to return here.

When I am Among the Trees

by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,

especially the willows and the honey locust,

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, “Stay awhile.”

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It's simple,” they say,

“and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.”