Morning in the Fields

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I was doing some blog housekeeping, and came across a handful of posts that never made it up or were quite finished. This is a passage from one of my favorite novels by Virgina Woolf, The Waves, that reminded me of misty mornings in the field behind my farmhouse. I still get a little pang of homesickness from time to time for mornings on my Elmira homestead, and this really captured my favorite things about those early morning homestead hours as the day is just beginning. I thought about it and realized that many of those well-loved qualities, I have right here in my mornings on this farm, and some new ones I used to wistfully wish for. I was glad I took a moment to contemplate and appreciate it. Gratitude is one of the best cures I've found for an aching heart. No matter what the situation, there is always so much to look around and feel grateful for. Currently, chickens, misty sunrises, dew on the plants in the garden, the smell of bread baking in the oven, herbs hung up to dry, and abundant ripe fruit are up there on my list. This passage reminded me to notice even more of these things, and how much a part of us they become.

"Now the wind lifts the blind," said Susan. "Jars, bowls, matting and the shabby arm-chair with the hole in it are now become distinct. The usual faded ribbons sprinkle the wall-paper. The bird-chorus is over, only one bird sings close to the bedroom window. I will pull on my stockings and go quietly past the bedroom doors, and down through the kitchen, out through the garden and past the greenhouse into the field. It is still early morning. The mist is on the marshes. The day is stark and stiff as a linen shroud. But it will soften; it will warm. At this hour, this still early hour, I think I am the field, I am the barn, I am the trees; mine are the flocks of birds, and this young hare who leaps, at the last moment when I almost step on him. Mine is the heron that stretches its vast wings lazily; and the cow that creaks as it pushes one foot before another, munching, and the wild, swooping swallow; and the faint red in the sky, and the green when the red fades; the silence and the bell; the call of the man fetching cart-horses from the fields-all are mine...
       ...Let me now fling myself on the flat ground under a pale sky where the clouds pace slowly. The cart grows gradually larger as it comes along the road. The sheep gather in the middle of the field. The birds gather in the middle of the road-they need not fly yet. The wood smoke rises. The starkness of the dawn is going out of it. Now the day stirs. Colour returns. The day waves yellow with all its crops. The earth hangs heavy beneath me...
      ...Now I am hungry. I will call my setter. I think of crusts and bread and butter and white plates in a sunny room. I will go back across the fields. I will walk along this grass path with strong, even strides, now swerving to avoid the puddle, now leaping lightly to a clump. Beads of wet form on my rough skirt; my shoes become supple and dark. The stiffness has gone from the day; it is shaded with grey, green and umber. The birds no longer settle on the high road.
         I return like a cat or a fox returning, whose fur is grey with grime, whose pads are hardened by the coarse earth. I push through the cabbages, making their leaves squeak and their drops spill. I sit waiting for my fathers footsteps as he shuffles down the passage, pinching some herb between his fingers. I pour out cup after cup while the unopened flowers hold themselves erect on the table among the pots of jam, the loaves and the butter. We are silent.
        I go then to the cupboard, and take the damp bags of rich sultanas; I lift the heavy flour on the clean scrubbed kitchen table. I knead; I stretch; I pull, plunging my hands into the warm strands of the dough. I let the cold water stream fanwise through my fingers. The fire roars; the flies buzz in a circle. All my currants and rices, the silver bags and the blue bags, are locked again in the cupboard. The meat is stood in the oven; the bread rises in a soft dome under the clean towel. I walk in the afternoon down to the river. All the world is breeding. The flies are going from grass to grass. The flowers are thick with pollen. The swans ride the stream in order. The clouds warm now, sun spotted, sweep over the hills, leaving gold in the water, and gold on the necks of the swans. Pushing one foot before the other, the cows munch their way across the field. I feel through the grass for the white-domed mushroom; and break its stalk and pick the purple orchid that grows beside it and lay the orchid by the mushroom with the earth at its root, and so home to make the kettle boil for my father among the just reddened roses on the tea-table."

~Virginia Woolf