BY CAROLYN WEST
Whidbey Life Magazine Guest Contributor
June 25, 2014

1. The winter wind storms. Especially when I’m completely alone, lights flickering. The huge trees speak their own sounds, thrashing and bending and swooshing. I stood in my open door for hours, listening to them singing and dancing in the deep dark perimeter.

2. The Frog Marsh outside my bathroom window, how I love it! Little saplings grow in it and it’s ringed with ferns. One day, a tiny orange-breasted hummingbird suddenly appeared in the window, like a lost woodland fairy, then vanished.

3. Forty Canada Geese swimming in a perfect “V” formation across the lake, while a Great Blue Heron stood completely motionless on the opposite shore.

4. Mom and Dad Mallard in their own special little slimy pond area. Never more than three inches apart, they touched each other constantly. Was there ever a happier couple?

5. I went outside on the front porch late one winter night and realized for the first time just how many stars I was going to be able to see in the summer. I wanted to sleep out under the stars. I said “I love living here” out loud to no one.

6. One day, watching expectantly but seeing nothing at all, I said to myself that this is really just a boring, stupid lake. I turned back and, there in front of me, was a huge Bald Eagle, sunning and preening his feathers. I wept.

7. The rising of the full worm moon, bursting from behind the cedars like an otherworldly sun, silver-gold and impossibly large. It shimmered its reflection into the lake and the lake made ripples on it.

Carolyn West has lived in the Pacific Northwest for 20 years and is currently writing a book on gold.

 All photos courtesy of the author

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