Tintern

How wonderful a morning we are having on this day the first of March, a new chapter in our lives, and a beautiful spring like day to start it off right! (how cheesy)

At first Tintern Abbey was nothing special to me, it did not make me cry, did not make me question life, did not provide any epiphanic moments to remember, it simply was an assignment. And yes, this poem in some ways is still just that, an assignment, but I did find one part that took hold of me, and made a connection. 

"For I have learned

To Look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

The still, sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue."

The lines above reminded me of summer on my grandpa's ranch and the sounds we would hear, and the sounds that we left behind in LA, and the joke my dad would always say, "Shhh! You hear that?" and we would all be really quiet, listening closely, and then he'd yell "IT'S NOTHING!" and everyone would jump and then not laugh at my dad's uninspiring Dad Joke.

But what we heard on the ranch might have sounded like nothing to the untrained ear, as in youth such as I was back in the day. But  now I am much more wise, and have somewhat of an understanding with the fact that nature does speak to us. In my Native American Studies classes, nature is a big theme, not the connection to nature, but instead the theme for nature lies more with the understanding of it's power and the natural rotation of life and life's necessities. The changing of seasons, the calm before the storm, life after a fire, harvesting times, and animal migrations all have the power to speak to us and show us how to utilize what we are given in nature. But at last we hear and are apart of the "sad music of humanity" singing along with our industrious and consumer ways, paying little attention to the natural changing of the seasons, and focusing more on the fashion lines for the in season, or the sport of the season. And perhaps in Bozeman it is not as prominent, this lose of nature, since we are a community of outside activity lovers, and look forward to every day we can spend in nature, but in places such as LA, or New York, or Las Vegas people are spending more time consuming than living. 

Wordsworth knew the importance in stepping outside of the everyday, and focusing on the now, the moment in which he sat on the River Wye, just above Tintern Abbey, and wrote of his experiences with the natural and man made world. He was writing a poem out of change and out of simplicity and chaos. Nature is the greatest creation of all, it creates and destroys, like Eliot suggests about the river in Dry Salvages, 

"...the brown god is almost forgotten

By the dwellers in cities--ever, however, implacable,

Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder

Of what men choose to forget."

We must never forget, how daunting of a task. 

~L.