Antidote

The news about the Germanwings plane crash that greeted me this morning was more than I could bear to try to digest, so as an antidote  I took Ozzie for a walk around Spring lake. It was busy this morning with mothers pushing strollers, toddlers pushing their own strollers, kids on bikes and scooters (it's spring break), three elderly men discussing the fact that one of them had been banned from eating bread (by whom, I wondered), dog walkers, fisher people in boats and on shore, and even a man launching a sailboat at the boat ramp. It was all so blessedly normal and timeless. 

As a backdrop to the human activity, the yellow iris had bloomed in the reeds next to the lake, which is filling with algae due to the lack of water to flush it out. The low, shady spots in the path were covered in what looked like plant fuzz but turned out on closer inspection to be frosted dew.The air was still and the trees were mirrored around the edge of the lake, home to a new pair of swans. The geese were vociferous, honking and calling to one another from the islands in the lake, and the red winged blackbirds have returned in full force to hang out in the weeds and speak of their winter adventures in foreign climes.

In the colony  under the redwood trees, a ground squirrel stood sentry while the rest went about their appointed rounds among the rocks riddled with their holes and tunnels. I tied my jacket around my waist and sat in the sun to watch two ducks getting  ready to start their day, mimicked by their inverted reflections.

There is balm and solace in the constantly changing yet somehow enduring natural world.