1st Week at Fish Camp: Dandelion Wine + Eagle Eggs
I am at fishcamp this week, already. A weeks earlier than I usually go.
I’m glad I came so soon. Look what I would have missed.
Pure dandelion wine. And fiddlehead soup.
And did I mention the joy of the journey here?
Here, my FIRST LOOK at my beloved Harvester Island after the winter.
Our four feet of snow is gone. And—-on my first walk, I found something that felt miraculous, personal, a shot of deep joy:
The eagle’s nest that has been abandoned for five years is inhabited again. Carefully, oh so quietly, I will watch from a far place, camera in hand, as these babies are born into the world.
How can we not keep watch? How can we not answer back?
Why is your notice, your voice so important? Because the Book of This World is unfinished without your story.
I believe that Creation begins with a Creator who generates the entire spinning exploding cosmos with nothing but words: let there be, let there be, and there was. And God pronounced it good, very good. Why wasn’t it perfect? Because the world was not finished. Our work since we were given the breath of life is the same work given to Adam as the animals paraded before him: to speak back, to name all that is, to finish what was started, to offer it back to God and to one another.
Could it be that God intended creation to be a conversation instead of a monologue? God speaks, utters forth and the word-birthed cosmos responds often better than we do:
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. . . . Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world” (Psalm 19: 1-2; 4, ESV).
In Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, the crowd greeted him with such great gladness that the Pharisees appealed to Jesus to shut them up. But he can’t and he won’t because “if they’re silent, the very rocks would cry out” (Luke 19:40, ESV).
Yes, this is hyperbole, this is a mystery too deep for me, but of this I am sure: God speaks and all of creation answers back—in joy, in praise, in truth. That’s what I’m doing here. That’s why your story matters. And that’s what this book is about.
The world is birthed new every day. We’re still naming the word-spoken world; we’re writing the story of our days. The story of our place. The story of our life.
We’re answering back.
What do you name your life, your place, this world today?
(Me, I’m going with Dandelion wine. Despite the ongoing sadness of co-vid deaths, the sun will yet not stop bursting from the earth. The eagles will not stop laying their eggs. Let joy sprout, let life hatch whereever it can.)