Pathways

footprints on the path

Someday I am going to write a resource page on pathways, but today is not that day. Today I follow the muse, and just share some recent thoughts on garden pathways and those of life.

January with its New Year mark is connected in my mind with a picture of a path. Right now, I am at a new gate, going into a new garden year, but the pathway itself has continuously stretched over a much longer journey of time. I am interested in working in this new garden. There are some things I want to either see within it, or create, however. I’m not one to leave my garden unmarked, simply having passed through.

Really,it is inconceivable to me to imagine that one does not in some way impact the ground that footsteps have impressed in some way. Some of us tread lightly, others more heavily, but we all leave an impression and change of some sort.

No time is that more evident than in winter, especially in those places with snowfalls. That thought is something of an old one for me, something that illumined my thinking while traveling in a car as a passenger (as I often do, since there are better drivers than me!). I don’t know about you, but the passing scenery really sparks my imagination. I wonder who lives there in that house, how old this barn might be, why someone would let such a fine house deteriorate so, or why someone keeps something ugly and lets something better decay. All sorts of stories and questions. During this one day, after a period of snowy weather, I was noticing the tracks left by creatures and events from some time previous to the one where I passed by. At some points a dog was marking out his property perimeter, other places someone had fetched their mail. There were myriad stories left in the snow that without it would never had been known to me. And I thought of finding visiting deer and the travels of my cat, on little cats paws, and then to myself and my fellow human beings. How unaware we often are of the travels we make through another’s life. We think we leave no footsteps, but that is simply because we don’t have eyes to see them… they are there. Just as footprints in the snow, they are there.

And so it is with what I do along the footpath of this year… in my garden and in my endeavors elsewhere, I can be either thoughtless or intentional, but I will leave an impression. Maybe unnoticeable, maybe with some fanfare, but the steps will be there, and I will look over the place in the not so distant future, and what I have sown will return in some form to me.

And now it is January, a time to plan… looking both forward and backward, but not completely an open book with well marked dates and settled events. It is rather a beckoning journal and the pen sits nearby, and my dreams and visions are waiting to be drawn in and given form.

Notes are to be made about changes to make to the path, whether I need to repair a gate or two, and what I will plant and what I hope to accomplish. This winter rest is fine for planning and envisioning, but soon I will be hard at work in the new garden, with all hands put to the plow and just trying to keep up with the whirl of activity that I know is going to start soon. Then I hope that the quiet time of standing at the gate, imagining the plan and direction, will bear fruit to guide me through a year that will be viewed with satisfied backward glance and something of the good of each season.

An Early Winter

This year I wish for my path to have borders of flowers circling some plots of fresh vegetables, a bench under some trees to sit and take time for the joy of just living. I want to have a place for children to play and for people to talk, a place to eat together in the expansive dining room of God’s own sky and the green earth. It is a good wish with a loose plan.

May God will it, and my hand and heart not grow discouraged in the making of it.

Because a garden is worth the time and effort of making.

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A Few Preference I Have For Pathways

• I like a path to go somewhere. It doesn’t have to be important, just a seat, or a little something to see like a special plant, but I like it to have an end destination.
• I like pathways that are wide enough for two.
• I like pathways to sometimes hold a little mystery.To take a turn or two, and end up somewhere surprising.
• I like pathways to be safe. It is no fun to fall.

Just a few of the things I prefer in a pathway.

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© 2010 written for Ilona’s Garden Journal. Copyrights apply.