For the Bees! / And a River Ran Through It

It was going to be a hot day, into the high 80s F, but tomorrow would be even hotter, way up into the 90s. So my husband and I decided it was time to get out and do a few things. We ended up accomplishing far more than we expected, which is a good thing, I suppose!

He wanted to go out for breakfast, and jog, and we decided to pop by the mall to pick up a freebie for me. We checked out the work they did along Spring Creek by the rusty bridge. And we ended up at Way Fruit Farm, buying peaches and gummy worms (I know, I know - I lead a dissipated life!) and one of the biggest green peppers you've ever seen, before calling it a day, and heading home.

There are tall stands of yellow flowers at Benner Township Veterans Community Park (formerly known as Buffalo Run Park, along route 550), easily 12 to 15 feet high, and the bees ADORE them. They are called cup plants. While my husband jogged, I walked around and took pictures of flowers, reflections on the nearby creek, and extremely happy BEES!

Oh, and as soon as I got there, a huge blue heron lifted in front of me. Fwoop! Fwoop! Fwoop! No pictures, sorry, but it was awesome! When I got home and downloaded my shots, I squee'ed out loud and long when I saw the face on the tiny little fuzzy bee in the bottom left of this shot. Just LOOK at that sweet little face. SO ADORABLE! I could just love him and squeeze him and call him George! Gah! The bee-cuteness, it slays me!

Almost every picture I took had bees in it. Bees in the center of the bloom. Bees hiding behind flower petals. The odd fuzzy bee-part sticking out. The shiny and the fuzzy, united on bumblers both large and small. (That middle bee, by the way, is one of the hugest bumblers I've ever seen! Maybe . . . a queen?)

We drove along Spring Creek and stopped at Rock Road, by the rusty bridge where I have popped in so often to take pictures, in between this and that. Here is what it used to look like. I won't show you what it looks like now. The work is completed. The area looks weird, and barren, and (okay, here's a value judgment) upsetting.

I imagine it will look more pleasing visually once some stuff grows in more. What they did was done in an effort to improve water quality and trout habitat. I hope it does that; I really do. I am sorry to admit that I hate the way it looks now. I miss that wooden structure behind the water that made such wonderful reflections, and I miss the spillway that was hypnotic to watch. 

These are selfish things to say, I know, but you have no idea how many times stopping in this spot and grabbing a tiny bit of outdoor time and beauty helped SAVE ME. Yes, save me. Save Me. SAVE ME!

I didn't say much about it to my husband at the time, but I looked at everything with quiet distress, and thought to myself how absolutely unfair it is that sometimes the things they do to make things better sort of suck at a personal level, for so many reasons. We talked about it later; I admitted to a quiet sense of devastation. Why do things have to change?

But then I stood on the rusty bridge, and I looked down in the other direction, toward the cliffs, and I saw a fisherman emerge into view. He turned around, and with an easy grace, cast his line into the stream. The cliffs soared above him, the tree leaves gave him shade, and he looked picture-perfect as "a fisherman on the stream of life" (see photo in extras).

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in," I thought, a la Thoreau. But I also thought about that quote from a favorite book and movie, by Norman Maclean, about how eventually all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. 

And I thought about how water is a force for change, and how it can't help it at all. It just does what it must; it answers its own urgent need to run, run, run, down to the sea, to be free, to get there, to GO NOW. It runs over things, and softens their edges, makes every stone smooth again.

My day, which was rich and full in unexpected ways, ended with August Pie ice cream, topped with an amazing sliced peach that was everything a peach should be. It was sweet but also complex and tart in spots, and I ate it with gusto. I savored every bite. And then it was gone. Isn't that life?

I have two songs for my two photos and I have a bonus song, just for the  heck of it. For my beautiful bees above, I've got the Bee Gees. (Ha ha!) Here's one I adore, and this is quite an old version of it, sung by Barry, Maurice, and Robin: Words, from the Ed Sullivan Show in March 1968. My song for the shot in the extras, of the fisherman on Spring Creek, with the view in one direction exactly as it ever has been, and the view in the other direction profoundly changed and quietly devastating, is Andy Gibb, with Flowing Rivers. Oh, how I mooned over Andy when this song came out in September 1977! I was 12, going on 13, and I was desperately in love with Andy Gibb (among other teen idols!). So all four Gibbs are represented in this posting. My bonus song is for the view that used to be, but is no more, and how it saved me so many times, in ways I can't even explain. Here's Queen, with Save Me.