The Ultimate Wild Goose Chase - by Mom

Donald and I went up to The Lodge at Locust Fork to retreat and enjoy a night in the wild. It was a beautiful 24 hours! Four great blue herons flew into the trees right at dusk, looking like ancient pterosaurs. We sat out back in the total dark and listened to the night sounds and watched the moon and stars. I think we heard a Whipporwill even though I know they shouldn't be this far south. We awoke to an amazing bird chorus and a sunrise as gorgeous as the sunset the night before. I was thinking today that "The Property", as we called it so long, is the ultimate wild goose. It has been a place to hang our dreams for quite a few years. It has yielded returns more spiritual than physical, even though much physical labor has gone into it. Mostly we relaxed and enjoyed our retreat but this morning we went down to the river and there was work to do, as always. Dad cut a tree off the path and used the DR to cut the path. I used the nippers for awhile and tried to get some of the privet cut that blocks that beautiful back path where all the wildflowers bloom. The privet is going to hurt the wildflowers eventually. But I couldn't even get enough cut to get all the way through. Constant pruning, cutting, just to survive. It's a place that will never be domesticated, and surely we knew that - didn't we? I was thinking about what I had written earlier about our ancestors and their hard-scrabble existence - did we inherit genes that allow us to draw sustenance out of a place this raw and harsh? Along with it were we given some gift that lets us see the wonder and beauty all among the privet and kudzu? In a recent book I read, on theological stuff, the author quoted some lines from a Bruce Cockburn song, something like "here I am after all these years, bowing before this beauty, understanding nothing". That about says it all.
But also I sat and watched the river flow this morning and these lines came to me:

As Hulseys,
The River takes us down.
We flow through space and time
To be reborn
Into another world.
Some of us must come back.

In sensing the glory that lies behind it and ahead,
We glean intimations of divine immortality.
Forced to return
To the unnatural, the unspiritual world,
Fragments of what the River teaches us
Cling to our hearts and sustain joy.
So we hang our dreams and invest our faith
In that eternal flow.