Finding Home

Magic in the Pasture

Before I “saw the light” and moved to Habersham County, I used to sit in my condominium in metro Atlanta and dream of one day living in a restored old farmhouse where the land held a combination of pasture and woods and maybe even an old barn.  Now, the place I call home holds exactly that combination of pleasures.  In fact, when I saw the newspaper listing that advertised this house, it seemed as if it screamed out “Sheri, this is your home!”

The twenty months that I’ve lived in this place have offered a lot of new discoveries of many things of beauty, most of which can only be found in the kind of landscape by which I am now surrounded.  I guess it’s possible that tiny frogs the size of my thumbnail lived in Marietta somewhere, but I never saw them.  And I never before witnessed Eastern Phoebes and the way they sit on branches and wag their tails before they fly out to snag a bug in the backyard.  Nor had I ever watched multiple pairs of Indigo Buntings at a birdfeeder with their iridescent blue feathers sparkling in the sunshine.

As a child, I used to love the song “Moonshadow” by Cat Stevens, but I never knew that the moonlight could actually create the kinds of shadows that we experience all the time in the sunshine.  I think that’s because I never had a pasture before.

When you live where buildings are all crowded together and there’s a lot of light pollution from pulsating city life there’s just not enough space to allow that beautiful mother moon to paint the landscape with her light brush.  But on clear nights when I walk the dog out into that field – even when there’s maybe only a half moon – everything around me glows and I can see my very own moonshadow as I stroll along. 

Of course, the starlight is brighter in a pasture too.  When the visible sky space is wider and clearer, the stars hang like garlands of diamonds as they twinkle their greetings sent many light years ago.

But there’s another kind of light in the pasture that is probably the most magical of all, and it’s only seen on summer nights.  That’s when the fireflies pop like bubbles from a champagne glass everywhere I look.  Oh, I’m used to lightening bugs.  I spent many an evening in my youth catching them in jars and never tired of that mysterious luminescence.  But once again the expanse of the pasture just means I can see a whole lot more of them at one time than I’d ever seen before.

I find this to be proof, once again, of God’s flamboyant grace and over-the-top joy in what is beautiful.  Sometimes I’ll just stand there and watch the flow of sparkles as they explode in solos and in symphonies for the eyes.  And it makes me laugh and smile.

One of our county commissioners recently commented that there was not a pasture in a certain area that would not eventually become a subdivision.  Though I understand that people moving in need homes – just like I did – and that people with land like to turn a profit, it makes me shudder to think that without proper planning for what needs protecting we’ll blink our eyes and the day will come when everything that’s precious about this place will be paved over. 

If there are no more pastures, how will our children see their own moonshadows?  Where will they get the chance to see a hundred fireflies blinking in one place?  Holy light is not just found in church – we can find it right here in the pasture.