Thursday, December 17, 2009

Green trees and God

I have always been facinated by trees ever since I heard Joyce Kilmer's poem Trees when I was in the second grade. Years ago when my husband retired we moved to a little cabin in the middle of 10 acres of virgin forest for a few years. What a total joy those years were. It is was in Florida in the sugar sand that only a four wheel drive could reach, and even then one experienced difficulty in getting through the sugar sand.

At first we visited the cabin on weekends, took our 4 Doberman Pinschers and turned them loose to run and experience wild life and freedom. My husband single handedly had fenced in that 10 acres inch by inch, so they were safe, unless confronted by a rattler. The property was full of pigmy rattlers and BIG rattlers who loved to live in the huge holes dug deeply by the equally huge turtles--what we called Gopher turtles. I never did learn their true name as everyone just called them Gopher turtles just as everyone called that powdery fine white sand "sugar sand".

After a very short time we moved from our home in the city to the one room cabin. Heaven. No partitions except for the bathroom which was really part of the one room with a wakk built across the side of the cabin for privacy. Half of that walled off section was a bathroom with shower stall and sink and commode, in which one had to be careful at night not to sit on a slimy feeling little green tree frog who also used the seat to perch upon above this strange pond he had found. When the cabin was pitch dark and one sat on a wet slimy a scream was always emitted--loudly. The other half of that partitioned off place was the closet, in which frogs were never found. But scorpions loved the boots and shoes and once even my husbands pants which is another funny story. Later.

But, I digress. Someday I'll write more on those woods and that cabin and some of the great things and sad things there. But it was trees that so inspired me of which I wanted to talk this morning.

In spring time in the early morning I would awaken and see the sun in the window. We did not put up curtains, nor did we have blinds. We were so isolated and the cabin in the middle of the 10 acres of nothing but trees and guarded by 4 Dobermans we were perfectly free to run around in the all together if we so chose. When I awoke each morning my heart just filled with joy of life. I would lay there and talk to the God I loved so and look up to the blue, blue sky through a green vision.

Greens are so green in Florida it always amazed me that if I looked off into the distance I would see green to the point that everything took on a green hue and finally it was like a veil of green. And that's when I would thank God for green, still my favorite color today from tiny green frogs of multiple hues to the evergreen 200 year old Live Oak tree that lives in my present front yard in South Carolina. God says in the Bible, in Revelation, that there is a green rainbow around his throne. Truly it does. An Emerald Rainbow he declares and I know just what he means because of my Emerald green forest and my cabin in the woods.

My husband took a downed tree (lightning was bad there for taking down trees) and nailed it high up across two pines and attached a porch swing for me there, not facing the cabin, but facing the trees. Beautiful. Total, utter beauty.

I had always journaled my thoughts, and had been a freelance writer for many years, but had rather "retired" from writing to just "live", but I still journaled. My journals were always letters to God back then. So I would sit in my swing and sing hymns I loved to the top of my lungs and become so in love with God's creation I would begin to journal --good things, sad things, happy things, bad things. God heard everyone of them and he always laughed with me, cried with me, rejoiced with me and sang with me. I knew this to the bottom of my always bare toes.

Once when I was most distressed with my husband, which was often, I refused to stay in the cabin. Now when you live in a one room cabin there is nowhere to go except the cabin. One part was set up as a kitchen, and beside it the dining area and in front of that the living room with couch and chair and an in the wall a TV I'll write about sometime and in the middle of the cabin was our big, black Ben Franklin wood stove which was used to heat the cabin. And beside the living room on the front of the cabin was our double bed, night stands, facing the TV if we care to turn it on. And all around on every side, front and back of the 24 x 24 foot cabin were windows. It was like living in the forest. Trees actually touched the cabin right outside the bedroom, huge, tall pines. Not the sickly pines we often think of, but huge, tall to the sky pines.
Again, I digress. I was upset with my husband and so I went outside and sat in my swing and cried and had a wonderful pity party, imagining myself dressed in silky, billowing blue lying across a snow white bed so high my body was sinking down into the soft fluffiness almost like clouds and as I lay there weeping, one arm outstretched dramatically and the other palm up limply across my forehead, and one leg casually tucked up behind the other and my chin thrown out and up and my head aside, I just knew I looked so elegant and beautiful, and I imagined my husband coming out to find me dying...weak little huffy coughs as only a dying beauty can emit, with my last breath gasping, "See what you did to me? Goodbye. I hope you are very lonely without me..."

Oh, I was so enjoying that pity party until God began to laugh-loudly! I could hear him and as I opened my dying eyes the most beautiful, huge butterfly I have ever seen came wafting like the Lunesta moth we now see on TV, gently, fragile wings waving gracefully, it's beautiful colors seeming to evaporate into the green glow of the forest and back again in front of my eyes. I sat up and actually fell from my swing in my scramble to see it closely and I lay there on the ground looking up at blue sky, golden butterfly, and green, green, green tree tops everywhere, and my tears turned to rejoicing as I knew this was God sending his gift to cheer me up so I would laugh with him. And I did. I laughed at the butterfly, I laughed at me and I laughed at God and ran into the cabin and gave my startled husband a big passionate kiss and even thought he didn't know why we were laughing he joined in the laughing too and I ran to the fridge and poured some of the fresh lemonade I had made earlier and we snuggled in our double bed and watched the trees and drank our lemonade. And life was good, and I felt good and I knew my husband was really my prince charming at this moment, and I knew God is always good and the best part of it all was I stopped crying long enough to join God in laughing at myself and realizing as ever,
Happiness is to know...

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