Day 11
"Reading Kathleen Norris has me thinking about my own
geography- natural and spiritual.
She said that so many are turning to Native American spirituality to
find something they are missing.
But that one must turn to his own heritage and ancestry to find rootedness. It struck me because I think that is
what I have done…or at least begun to do.
My
geography is green. Not as in the
new common usage of the word, but more like southeastern green. I spent a large part of my life in
California, but now when I return to the west, the brown topography, while
stunning, seems foreign to me. My
landscape is green. And humid.
There
is variation. While all the
southern places I’ve lived, from Virginia to the Alabama Gulf coast have four
seasons, they vary in degree. The
winters of Virginia were stronger, the summers in Alabama more intense. Birmingham green feels more like
Virginia green than lower Alabama evergreen. I do love the beach, but feel more at home in foothills and
mountains, with rolling topography and sharper seasonal change.
And
my landscape is not always green.
Deep summer greens give way to other colors- reds, yellows, browns. Then all is stripped away into winter
barrenness. Winter, spring,
summer, fall. I don’t feel I can
be a whole person without all these seasons. Each one of them does something in me that shows me the way
of things, and resets some inner clock." from Steve's journals