HOPEFUL

Lessons From Nature

Read today’s post below. Note: Please be patient with me as I work out the numerous details of setting up graphics, colors, and logos for substack posts. A lovely person is going to help me with this later in November.

In my memoir (hopefully published in 2024) I talk my about experiences with nature beings when I was four years. I lived in a small city in southern Maine and had recently moved to my grandparents’ home where the grass was luscious, birds tweeted before sunrise until well after sunset, and a multitude of insects flourished on the ground and in the air. It was 1951.

The energy indoors was daunting, actually at times terrifying; no matter the season,I escaped to the outdoors with my younger brother in tow. I was severly myopic, though that had not yet been discovered. My primary source of play was focused on insects that I could hold, carry out detailed inspections, and whose energy I could feel in my hands.

Seeing grasshoppers jump up from the grass tickled me; I was intent on catching one in my tiny hands. After numerous attempts over a period of several days, I slid in the grass, my hands cupped; to my surprise I came up with a grasshopper. It was wiggly, indicating it wanted to jump away from me, its captor; I manuevered my hands, gently pinching its body between my index fingers.

I was mesmerized by its huge eyes and soon felt the grasshopper was staring back at me. Inexplicably, our eyes locked onto each other; soon I was falling into a tunnel, landing in an unfamiliar place where I was flying over tall deep-green grasses, birds were by my side as we flew over water where I could see fish swimming below its surface.

This place was peaceful; I felt safe here, filled up with love, held by an unseen energy when a distant voice said, “Return here whenver you want; grasshopper is always with you and will lead the way; fill your heart with the feelings you’ve experienced here.

Without warning I had returned to where my bare feet touched the ground, the grasshopper in my hand, wigglling, leaving stains in my palms. I kissed its miniature face, releasing it to hop away on its own adventure.

During that summer, continuing my travels into unseen lands through grasshoppers’ eyes, I became hopeful, believing that the possibility of safety, serenity, and peace would be waiting for me outdoors, and if lucky, in a land away from the terror inside my home.

My heart still jumps with joy when I see a grasshopper, a spirit whose presence remains with me to this day.

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