Forever hope

While lying in bed this morning, I looked out the window and saw “two lovers” floating in the branches of the eucalypt tree. From being horizontal myself, and from the perspective of the dreamy, newly awakened, this “couple” put a smile on my heart, charmed me into the day and helped heal the pain I was feeling after having slept alone in the window seat/bed while my lover slept in the bedroom.

No, we did not have a fight. We went to bed together (as one is wont to do in any healthy relationship), but early in the night, the aches in my legs and lower back made me squirm so much that I left the bedroom to protect the sleep of my partner, Sally.

It’s the knees. Despite the several, almost daily acupuncture treatments from Sally, a massage in Hobart on Wednesday and continuous heat treatments, the old bones are showing signs of wear and don’t respond so quickly anymore to anything but rest.

But, gosh, there is so much to do. As soon as the ground soften ups with winter rains, there are trees to plant and track maintenance work to be done. On a daily level, fire wood has to be split and wheelbarrowed to the house from the wood shed. The Peace Fire has to be tended to and the Peace Walk has to be walked. Windgrove’s one hundred acres of land have to be looked after and this requires lots of walking and functional knees.

More to the point, even if people came to do all the chores and manage the property, there is still the important act of me “looking at the property”, observing it and listening to it in all its many temperaments and moods. This, also, requires lots of walking and functional knees.

For instance, the photo below was taken yesterday during the running of a large swell. The salt spray moving into the hills was simply, softly beautiful, but to see this I had to walk out to the “Point”, even as my legs hurt, in order to photograph it. Who wants this sort of activity to be curtailed?

Last night, during a dark moment, I cursed the frailty of my body and worried about the length of time left to be physically active on this earth. A time, possibly short, just when I have entered into the most loving and tender of relationships in my whole life.

To this morning again…. Seeing “the couple” in the tree allowed me to hold to the thought that, even confined to a window seat, there is always a way to interact with nature and behold its wondrous qualities. As the morning light danced on the branches, I waited in quiet anticipation for the moment my lover would wake and come to join me.