I'm standing in a meadow, in a field of new sumac plants and their deep red leaves and berries.
The sumac growth here was a surprise. I don't recall it being here last year and I know this meadow well. There is milkweed in this meadow, lots of it. Wild grasses, bent and folded close to the earth in oblong pressed shapes where deer bed down for the night. There are snakes here, and bunnies, chipmunks, field mice and all manner of other creatures. Foxes stop by, too. One of my lens caps is out here somewhere as well; I dropped it very near this spot around this time last year.
I could maybe say I'm partly responsible for the milkweed growth in this meadow. My dad used to take us, my brother and me, into this meadow every fall to pick apples from the ancient trees (which didn't produce any apples this year, finally too old I guess?) and to free the milkweed seeds from their pods, sending them floating across the air to be pressed into the earth elsewhere. But how this fresh field of sumac has erupted here, I don't know.
We used to call it "poison sumac," but this isn't the same plant (related, yes). This plant won't make you itch, and its berries are used for all sorts of things, like dyes, spices and flavorings.
But this post is supposed to be about me, right? Finding myself, finding some comfortable ground in self portraiting, discovery and whatnot. Not sumac or meadows or my lost lens cap.
I know this portrait was challenging (the light made it tough to see what was in focus). I know things are changing. I know I love this meadow and the millions of things, big and small, that I can discover here. I know I'm perpetually behind on so many things. I don't know what will be a surprise in this meadow next year. I don't know what will happen tomorrow. I know that I'm trying to get comfortable in an ever-shifting sea of change and flux, and that I am holding onto the things I know as long as possible, until I have to let them slip out of my grasp. I know I'm going to be okay with that.
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