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I woke up today around 12:30 in the afternoon, having went to bed at a late hour the night before - YouTube at two in the morning has always been my weakness. After making waffles for lunch and taking a long drawn out shower, I was left to my own devises when my family left for the county fair. Having been to the fair thirteen times in the past seventeen years of my life, I chose the option of staying home. Fairs may have novelty, but something deep inside of me told me today was a good day to stay home.
I was beginning to think my instincts weren't that credable, when a familiar feeling of boredom settled over me. Somehow, even reading and writing could not devoid myself of this kind of boredom. So instead I slid on my shoes, grabbed a small bag with a notebook, pen, the seventh Harry Potter book, and my camera, and headed outside.
I am not a naturally outdoorsy person. I find the buzzing of horseflies and bites of mosquitoes to be the greatest annoyance. But for some reason, today nothing bothered me. The sun was hot, but I did not feel warmth. The horseflies buzzed, but I was not thoroughly annoyed by it. Mosquitoes chewed at my exposed skin, but I could not feel it. For the first time, I realized how much of my home front I did not know about. And I was taking in the acres of our property with a newfound sense of wonder and an itching to see what was out there.
I explored the vastness of the small woods beyond our home, pausing here and there to snap pictures, finding an exposed clearing to sit down and write, trying to figure out how I had never known such beauty existed right in my own backyard. I traveled like a wilderness explorer searching for a rare species, with the sounds of the outdoor world and twigs snapping beneath my feet. And at last, when I felt as though I could go no farther without getting too far, I stopped to rest under a magnificent tree, a simple tree that, until today, I had not known existed. I sat under the tree for a while, absorbed in nothing but my own thoughts and the beauty of simplicity.
That's one of the problems with our lives today. We get so wound up in what is extraordinary, and outstanding, that we forget some of the most outstanding and extraordinary things are the simplest of ideas, the simplest of sights. As I sat under that tree, listening to the birds as they called to one another, hearing the gentle wind rock the branches of the trees, I realized that. I realized the extraordinary beauty of something so simple. I became aware of what was always there, as though waiting for someone to take it in.
That's novelty.
I reluctantly left the shady tree and made my way back to the house, and was suddenly reminded of a poem I had read once in English, that seemed to summarize every feeling I had while exploring my own property: "Nature's first green is gold/her hardest hue to hold," which reminded me of the simplicity of nature, and how it really was magnificent, a simple green being pure gold, "So dawn goes down to day/nothing gold can stay," as a telltale sign that, however much I had wanted to stay out in the wilderness, just as gold cannot stay, neither could I. But I experienced Nature's gold, before I was forced to go. Because Robert Frost was telling great truths when he said "Nothing gold can stay."
So the moral of the story? Experience what you thought was ordinary, the things you see everyday. Because it cannot stay for long, just as you cannot either. "Nothing gold can stay."
~the writer on the wall~
