Horsekeeping by Roxanne Bok Page A

sky. On the way, Frank gamely suggested we douse our flashlights. Blind in the black dark, we intuited the verge of the trail with the edges of our shoes. It was slow-going, and I instinctively looked downward to spy the trail.
    My eye caught something aglow.
    â€œFrank, what is that?” I asked, uselessly pointing to the verge.
    â€œWhere?”
    Feeling for his arm, I led him to a white, irregular rectangle, motionless but brightening under our gaze. Frank squatted to better identify.
    â€œWow, that’s cool. It’s a fungus that makes phosphorus. It’s quite unusual to see one so large.”
    I glowed with pride at my find.
    Of course we didn’t disturb the glowing fungus of our nature hike, but we all had a good look, and it proved the highlight of the night. For all our expert and inexpert calling, no unwise owls flew over to astonish us with their graceful beauty. Again, I would have to wait to see one of my favorite creatures. To this day I have only seen a few in the wild, swooping across the road at night, too quick for me to see their big eyes and charming head swivel. Occasionally I hear their nightly hoots in the woods behind our house though, and I reply my own toward conversation.
    All in all, Salisbury was not as exciting as I had imagined with nonstop adventure, action, stunning beauty, animals in abundance, creepy woodsmen and peasanty women. Isn’t that what we’ve been fed through wilderness epics, pioneer stories, and fairy tales, not to mention notions of romantic environments and the sublime still filtering into us through literature, paintings and the movies: raw nature, red in tooth and claw, and beautiful like the candy-colored Land of Oz? Instead, my new country
life, lived only on the weekends (part of the problem), flowed awkwardly. Flashes of brilliance only intermittently punctuated long periods of ho-hum that I strove to gussy up into my literary-romantic, Wild Kingdom wardrobe of “the country.”
    Only after years of slow understanding, when I stopped working so hard, relaxed and let it happen, did I begin to find the under-layer of wonder in the ever changing, far from perfect, often smallish miracles that make up New England country life. Individually these moments may seem paltry—like that first hummingbird that arrives at my feeder the same week each May. But over time and with patience they added up, and I sensitized to them. That ruby-throated flutterer became spectacular when I figured him possibly the very same individual from last year, counting on my reliable refreshment after an arduous migration from the Yucatan Peninsula. And this year he lingered by my ear, drinking from the hanging petunia blooms as I read and dozed in the shade of the porch. Or the Monarch butterfly that enjoyed a long rest on Jane’s knee; or the chipmunks that play hide and seek with our dog along the tunnels of the stone wall.
    Such encounters filled the freed-up space my departing dullness availed, and nature and I inched toward each other. Eventually I reached a level of fullness, an accumulation of experiences, ordinary and exceptional, such that I was often overwhelmed by all I increasingly witnessed. When I waited , this environment offered up simple and complex high notes to my more sensitive and receptive self. Never diminishing or growing tedious, every new and repeated experience elicited more satisfaction and deeper happiness. I was taught to read this particular place: the exquisite nature I sought in the beginning was there all along—mine now, not because I muscled it, but rather received it as a gift to my now humbler self.
    With my adjusted powers of awareness, Salisbury’s genteel profusion of renewable beauty often hits me with exceptional clarity. Especially in the summer I experience an almost chemical happiness when I
drive along the many familiar scenic routes, both main and back roads. These emollient days—the sun blares but