Just being... May 2026

This month's May weather seemed to be working hard to settle down and truly be spring.  The crabapple trees along the drive leading to Miss Edith Morton Chase's Topsmead cottage and the lilacs around the cottage were promising fragrant blossoms, but I couldn't resist comparing the inconsistent weather with the unsettled state of our nation and the world.   

I decided to stroll over to the spring fed pond to see if that would boost my spirits.  The pond had been dug in late 1937 for the enjoyment of Miss Edith and her friends, Lucy and Mary Burrall.    According to Bob Orintas, the pond was stocked in 1938 with a few trout for fishing, but the trout didn't last.  The next idea was to have a few ducks with their very own duck cottage.  The ladies did have fun feeding them for a few seasons, but in the end, they flew the proverbial coop. (Ask Bob:  Remembering Topsmead 6/24/2025)  So nothing to do at the pond to boost my spirits.

Why not try just being...?  Two double seater wooden Adirondack type chairs bordering the pond, one on each side, invited sitting.  Like Goldilocks, I tried sitting in each one.  I admired two clusters of daffodils lining one side of the pond.  Upon a closer look, I realized that the surface of the pond was a mirror reflecting its surroundings:  the wooden chairs, the daffodils and the grasses, the trees and the sky.  The surface rippled a bit but held onto the reflected images--a plein air painter's dream.

Sitting and just being gave my mind space to wander beyond thinking about pond's reflections.  I wondered about the origin of the word "reflection."  It comes from the Latin reflectere meaning to "turn away" or "bend back."  I could feel my mind bending back to the disturbing morning news of our nation's current political turmoil and the world's unrest.  Thankfully, my mind didn't stop there; it kept going, continuing to bend back slowly, back almost 250 years, back to the beginning of the democratic experiment that was to become the United States of America.

Then, my thoughts began bending forward in a kind of reverse reflection process, not stopping when they reached the present moment, but continuing towards the future.  As my cycle of reflection continued bending forward, I was arriving at a place of confidence with a growing optimism that our democratic experiment would survive.

Just being had boosted my spirits.  Where in the Topsmead landscape would you go to have your spirits boosted by just being? (Share your answer in the comments.)

Margaret Hunt
Blogmistress