Two Portraits
The picture that Winnie posted for me of the girl looking out over the hills reminds me so much of a picture that I saw once when my husband and I were taking a little holiday in a favorite town or our's, south of here. This was before we had found our homestead and we were still renting. And so we were roaming about the town when we walked through a restaurant that had a local artist’s paintings on display. There was one painting that so struck my heart. A girl was standing on her homestead, the farm, the meadow, the creek and the woods swept towards the horizon behind her. But in front of her loomed the skyline of a city. She held a long rifle in her arms and pointed it across the cornfield and towards the steadily approaching monster of commerce.
Winnie’s picture reminds me of this painting because they both have the same hills, and the same girl with the same soul looking out over them.
I live outside of town where farmhouses, fields and woods dot the land just like in the pictures. The city and it's crowded population are in front of me, just yet out of view down the road. Behind me you can go away from the city, take country roads down into the hills and away.
I like to go where I need to in town by skirting around the edges of the metro. It is there, skimming around the edges of the material world that I see more and more farm/wood land just plain disappearing.
The beautiful little creeks that used to be so lovely are ploughed over and forced into drainage ditches. There is no place left for a tree to cast its full shadow down the hill of a green field. Don’t they know that our eyes need this? Mine do, I just don’t understand, how much farther will they build? Will they ever stop? Will it keep on going until every field and woods is subdivision?
Today I drove through where there are rolling fields of an especially knobby kind. I have always loved driving there and thinking how magical those little hills are. Now I see that they are destroying this place for more subdivision. As I was driving through I saw three deer silhouetted against the sunset. They posed in hesitation between two new subdivisions. It so struck my heart how their home had been stolen.
Animals have a code in their hearts that connects them to the land that they were born on, when people move in, the deer stay and they try to travel the old pathways that the genes of their forefathers taught them to travel. They do not understand when we build a highway over their trails and expect them to go someplace else.I felt like the Native American still watching the greed of the new comers. I felt like the Lemurian who hated Atlantis.
The earth is a spiritual being, will we wake up and be aware of this?
The earth has to honored again. We act as if the earth should honor us; well it is the other way around.
I feel like the girl in the picture that Winnie created standing in awe of the god given beauty. I also feel like the girl in the painting that Winnie’s picture reminds me of, the girl with the rifle standing ready. Because the city threatens to come towards my little piece of hollowed ground and I would like to pick up my rifle and chase it away.
But I reckon when the day comes that the material world starts to swallow up this little spot of mine that I will just have to pack up my bags and leave and find some, more country, place to dwell. God I pray that this so called progress will come to a halt before there is no country quiet place left to go to. For where would my soul gather then?
posted by Trendle Ellwood @ 9:42 PM
4 comments
The 
4 Comments:
Yes, you know what that removed comment said! I decided no one wanted to hear it again. I share your sorrow, my friend, I don't know where it will end.
It seems to be a world wide trend Trendle. I can remember years ago, when I was the Mayor of Fitzroy I attended a meeting that tabled a report about the danger of Melbourne expanding. At the time the recommendations pressed dual occupancy on existing properties and pointed out the problems of providing the infastructure to cope with the needs in new suburbs. Clearly nothing happened and the paper disappeared because Melbourne is expanding at a frightening rate, gobbling up rural zones. Then there is the sea change syndrome where people are flocking to rural and seaside places and changing the dynamics of towns. All too frightening!
I share your feelings Trendle, and experience it monthly when I stay a couple weeks , first in the city and than a blessed return to my mountain corner. I find the city is a vacuum also for my pocket book where in the mountains I do not have the need to shop. Yes..Country is definitely the place the soul can open.
Hello Trendle,
I have a house in a very crowded area in New Jersey--just twenty minutes from New York City. I stay here for many reasons but do you want to know the main reason? It's a huge magnolia tree which is just getting ready to bloom. Its furry winter casings have been shed and pink buds are at last becoming visible. A few days of sunshine and it will burst into bloom.
Earth Day is almost here. I've taken to "clicking to donate" to many environmental causes on the internet and signing petitions against harmful and greedy policies. Less than a drop in the bucket, but something. I know your hurt and I share it. We feel we'll soon be the only un-endangered species left in a paved over non-landscape but in the meantime we all need to have our say and continue to try to influence others for the good of the earth and for future generations. Keep writing!
And keep taking photographs!
Every time someone sees your beautiful pictures it is a statement for nature. Each one is as lovely as a prayer. Send them everywhere, to friends to people you don't know, to contests, to newspapers, to magazines.
Blessings to you and to the fields and streams and flowers you love.
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