When the lonliness strikes

My husband is a long haul truck driver. His job takes him away from home a lot. I have learned how to do many things on my own. One thing that is difficult to do though is deal with those moments when I miss him terribly. Usually I head for the place where I find my peace and balance. Today was no different. When the ache became almost unbearable I grabbed my camera and headed off into the woods.

I have known for a long time, but I get a renewed understanding of how healing and peaceful this place is. There are no mountains reaching skyward, no thundering waterfalls falling creating amazing sights and sounds. The wild life here is the ordinary deer, racoon, opposum, there are no bears hanging out, no moose or buffalo wandering the area. What is here, are the things that I find that touch my heart and that I find great beauty in. The fact they may not be majestic, does not make them any less wonderful.

a wildflower growing on the banks of the pond. I watched as the dragonfly played and danced all around. I watched for a while feeling the healing begin. Then I moved on along my walk. I can up on a large yellow and black garden spider also called a 'writing spider' that was aggitated about something. I had never witnessed something I had been told about until today. When these spiders feel threatened they bounce the web. This one must have been very unhappy because the spider, the web and weeds all around were dancing.

Not something I want to upset thank you very much. After watching this dance for a few moments and realizing that my presence was only aggitating this spider more I managed to get past and head off into the woods.

Dodging all of those little spider webs that are stretched across the path I noticed something passing by and landing on a nearby tree leaf.

I slowly and carefully moved around trying to get different angles of this beauty and eventually frightening it away I moved on along the path.

When I reached the power line I made the decision to go...down... the...hill. Going down the hill means going into an area where the weeds grow higher than my head and I know that spiders lurk. But I also knew that there are some wildflowers growing down there that do not grow anywhere else. I also know that hummingbirds and butterfly love this flower...so maybe, just maybe..What I found was this:

hummingbird moth

I took so many shots thinking that if I took enough I'd get at least one really good one. I fired off so many shots that the flash on my camera was getting a tad bit warm.

But, my persistence and my determination paid off. As I took photo after photo of this hummingbird moth---this beauty showed up.....

I was so excited that I could hardly believe it..it may not be the sharpest of images but I'm happy with it because this is the first I've captured in the wild.

butterfly taking advantage of the wildflower buffet

A bumble bell enjoying the same buffet

By the time I was headed home I did feel better. I had taken the walk expecting to find the very things that I did. The miracles and gifts of this special place. There may not be any grand vistas, fantastic structures created by the hand of man in this time or previous. But there are the simple gifts of sweet love..and for that I am thankful.