“We can never have enough of nature.”*

by chuckofish

My cousin Steve recently sent me a box of treasures–old newspaper clippings and photographs of our maternal grandparents. Among them were some pictures of their house and yard, which I remember fondly. They had a fish pond.

This made me think of the fish pond we had in the backyard of our house growing up. The yard had been professionally landscaped back in the 1920s or 30s, but by the 1960s when we moved in, it had seen better days. My mother discovered the pond, which had been filled in, and excavated it, bringing it back to life. It even had a working waterfall, but the unfiltered water killed the fish, so we never turned it on. I could not find a picture of the pond in my archive–only this artsy one of my reflection in it which graced my senior yearbook page. (Ye gods!)

My mother loved to sit in the sunroom and look out at the backyard and the fish pond. Sometimes a neighbor’s cat would come by and sit by the edge of the pond gazing down at the fish. If he got too close, she would bang on the window.

“Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller’s wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished.”

–Henry David Thoreau, Walden

You may have noted that daughter #2 has a fish pond in the backyard of her house.

Three generations of fish ponds! Interesting.

Look out the window. Have a contemplative day. Don’t feel guilty about it.

*Henry David Thoreau, Walden