Reflection on Summer

I am here. In the sun. Under clouds.

Sometimes I help with the hay. I step into the warmth of the valley and taste its abundance—berries and vegetables still warm from the sun. A world that gives and gives.

The fields are full, overflowing with aubergines, cauliflower, beans, peas, cucumbers, kohlrabi, chard, and zucchini. People are harvesting, laughing, working under the open sky. The trees are heavy with apricots, mirabelles, and plums, hands reaching up to meet them. Big, crisp heads of lettuce lie in proud rows at the market stalls. Everything is growing. Everything is becoming. There is nothing I lack.

The animals are on the pastures, grazing on fresh grass and herbs. All of them are well. The cheese cellar fills slowly and steadily, smelling of alpine clover and thyme, a quiet, living presence in the farm.

After the summer pasture, the fullness here is overwhelming in the best way. I can feel myself reflected in it, as if I have returned to a rhythm I had almost forgotten

.

The days are long and heavy with work. The weather shifts constantly, sun, rain, thunder. Some nights are wide and silent, on others I find no sleep at all, the mountain seeming to tremble as if huge trolls roamed its depths. I find peace in the presence of my cattle, when they graze and lie about in the grass, and in the vastness of the view.

I have come into bloom quietly.

I eat, I rest, I walk among growing things.

I am here, in the sun, in the pulse of it all, in between.