A broken tulip

Consider the flowers of the fields, how they grow, said the Teacher. Consider their beauty.

There are those who have a kinship to the Teacher and find all the good of this earth coded in gentle petals and soft colours.

I am still learning. An unnamed, unknown wildflower sits with me at the table, floating in a glass of water.

I noticed this flower my first morning here in British Columbia. Mostly because it is one of the last ones standing in the face of Fall.

I try to find the flower’s name online, but it is harder than you think to ask Google for the name of a little pink something you found in the dip between hills.

I love the first days in a new place—or coming back to an old place—because your eyes and ears are open, curious, fresh. I find three ripe blackberries on the hill. Not a good harvest considering that the prickly vines smother the road and grab at my socks and trousers but still, it is a token of welcome. A ladybug has claimed the biggest and best blackberry. I eat the other two, leave with juicy fingers.

Since I can’t roam far in mandatory quarantine, I mostly stand and watch the mist. It slides between trees and blurs the sky into the air then shifts for a second to give you a glimpse of higher mountains. When it finally lifted yesterday, it revealed the mischief it’s been up to for the last week. The rolling green mountains across the road were dusted with snow.

The cold that brought that snow also knocked most of the white earring-like flowers off the roadside bushes—another wildflower I cannot name, whose language I cannot speak. Puzzling over them, I wander across the road and two bear cubs move into the bushes next to me, alarmingly close. I cross back again, look to see the large hump of Mama bear between branches. It was a silent meeting–neither the cubs nor I making any noise to give away the surprise.

Consider the beauty of silent encounters. With mist, with ladybugs, with bears, with the flowers of the field.