Words Left Along

I’m sure with little effort and a quick Google I could find their name, but where’s the fun in that? When I walk my dogs in the morning, I choose a route that skirts the side of some neighboring farmland. Usually, it’s long cotton rows that fill the field; this time, they decided to go with rye.

There’s a beauty in seeing the timelapse of a field growing. Perfect, rippling rows of reddish-orange clay mounds drag across the land like a Zen garden of an industrialist’s design. Though barren may come to mind for those who only see this land as it is now, the rows—for those who give them more than a passing glance—are part of the medium onto which nature casts its beauty.

Over time, the earthly browns of the damp clay dirt are washed out by the thousands and millions of shooting green sprouts. Waving and weaving through each other, the rye stands strong above the knee. Adorned above its stalk, its head—a beady grouping of its fruit reminiscent of a rattlesnake’s tail—stands tall amongst its brothers, fighting for the best place in the sun.

Like man’s own cheat to hold the title of “tallest building,” thin, pine-needle-like spires stretch and taper out from each of the grains. When it’s time, nature tests its children with a torrent of wind. Reminiscent of the sound of sizzling bacon, or perhaps the sound of an hourglass’s falling sand, the rye bends and flexes, producing a single-instrument orchestral performance of ambience.

Mixed with this, the birds—who could be readily identified, as alluded to earlier—chirp and cheep in a tongue all their own. The chirping hiss, the waving chop of this lake of grain, the bright red spots on the shoulders of glossy black birds—this is but a small piece within nature’s portfolio.

Though its origins were artificial, its completeness and progression are a consequence of conditions being correct. Is there a lesson to this? Some wisdom I might find in the moment or in what nature has created? Perhaps. But perhaps the greatest wisdom one can find in moments like these is not uttered or constructed, but merely taken in as silence for a moment—the wisdom of not understanding, but rather witnessing.