The breeze is cool. Stand in the sun if you want warmth. The sun, which glances off the ocean in the distance, which turns the eucalyptus into silhouette, which illuminates the cottontail I just saw hop across the pathway, is beginning to lower in the midafternoon sky.
I walk along the prayer path, camera in hand, ready to encounter God in nature. First I must remind myself to slow down. It is not enough to look. I must slow my pace, be still, know that he is God, know that the birds will come to those who go slowly, who stop, who wait, who breathe deeply and quietly.
One bird, a male, his brown mate hopping in the thicket below, sits, stares, refocuses, stares. He knows I am there, but he agrees to sit for a portrait, only if I don't come any closer.
The ruby-throated hummingbird knows I am there, too. He erupts out of his thicket, straight into the air, hovers and squawks with elegance, flies higher till I can no longer see him, even through my camera lens; then, mysteriously, invisibly, he returns to his thicket again, only to erupt for a repeat performance. He does this at least three times. I do not know if it is me he's trying to scare off or another intruding hummingbird. These ruby-throats all look alike to me at this distance.
The hawk pair wheels in the air, so high -- lazily, it appears from here -- but hunting is not a task for a lazy bird.
The flora here is part Southern California coastal, part Benedictine religious -- infinitely varied scrub, dotted with a nopale cactus here and and a few palms there, pines, eucalyptus and olive, flowers of purples and yellows and orange, one lone red tree leaf -- the embodiment of our lesson in perseverance -- a red-barked tree, and so many shades and variations of green and light that the eye boggles and tries to blend.
My smooth-stone bench is cool, the breeze lifts my hair, and the moon shows faintly, promising to shine tonight even after the coastal fog rolls in.
