On These Spindrift Pages

Yesterday I had the good fortune to go on an invigourating hike with dear friends at the blissfully quiet Elora Gorge Conservation Area. At times the sun broke through the clouds drenching our faces in much-needed vitamin D; the blue in the sky a gorgeous shade of cornflower tucked between spring snow clouds, as evidenced in the shot I took above at the entrance to the conservation area.

As we walked, I breathed in the sharp spring air and delighted in the company of friends who I have missed in my four years away out west. Since coming back, I have had little time to write here as I get used to my new-old life back home. Some days it is as if I had never left but on most days I am struck by how much has changed. How much I have changed. Older, wiser, easier to laugh. Stronger. Yet at times weary from the sheer volume of change over the past 4 years. The uphill battles. The long drives. Touched by grief from losing a parent. Yet underneath all of this challenging ambiguity is a slowing growing gratitude for small mercies experienced each day. The touch of sun on my face. The laughter of friends. Fulfilling work that challenges, stretches and rewards. A cozy home. Family within an afternoon drive. A bedside table crammed with ready-to-read books.

And on some Sunday mornings, the chance to reflect and to write. I don’t write here as often as I did. Life is moving too fast for these spindrift pages at the moment. But I do hope to pop in now and again, if only to remind myself to take the time to be grateful and share my gratitude with those I love and cherish.

I will leave you today with one of my favourite poems about writing. It is by poet Dylan Thomas:

“In my craft or sullen art exercised in the still night when only the moon rages and the lovers lie abed with all their griefs in their arms, I labour by singing light. Not for ambition or bread or the strut and trade of charms on the ivory stages but for the common wages of their most secret heart. Not for the proud man apart from the raging moon I write on these spindrift pages nor the towering dead with their nightingales and psalms. But for the lovers, their arms round the griefs of the ages, who pay no praise or wages nor heed my craft or art.”