FINDING MY CONFIDENCE IN A BURGUNDIAN ORCHARD

with Forêt Noire Cherry Cheesecake Recipe

PIED BEAUTY

(Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889)

Glory be to God for dappled things –

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.

Cherry orchards dot the rural hillsides in mid-summer, a delicious season in Burgundy. The plump fruit weighs down branches, dangling like earrings. Mellow light shifts to scarlet near 8 p.m. And the Golden Hour dances through the orchard. I park my car along the rocky path and get out. Life has been trying to tell me something lately, and being outside is the only place I can hear its whisper.

"Find your own way. Listen to your own heart. Listen to your own longing. Because what we're trying to do is live our life as if it really matters." - Jon Kabat-Zinn

A farmer kindly allows me to wander through his land with a camera and notebook in tow. My terrier scampers ahead when I remove her leash. I'm here on the hillsides of a rural wine village with this book to begin a new daily practice of journaling and photographing the details of the natural landscape. Ordinary scenes that others might not notice seem like a good place to start: a rose bush tumbling over a rotted fence, grapes ripening from green to purple on a vine, or a group of white cows gathered under a knotted oak. All these country sights give me such peace, such sanctity.