the story of my heart

ophelia lying in the meadow john waterhouse

look at ophelia.

blissful. given to the whole of the moment unfolding.

there she lies full filled with the meadow blown scent of summer trees and sun-warmed grass.

flowers buzzing with the scent of day-heated pollen.

birds gliding, flitting in song filled pirouettes through tree to tree to sky.

riding thermals from the little patches of bare earth to the whole sky-cloud drift overhead.

i put myself in ophelia's experiencing of this moment as i read richard jefferies.

i first came across the writing of richard jefferies when i read henry williamson's ancient sunlight series.

there was a reference to jefferies somewhere in the foreword and so i looked him up.

i found out that it was after reading jefferies' work "the story of my heart" that williamson

decided to take his writing seriously.

i can hardly blame him.

jefferies' writing is the sort of detailed ecstatic nature-writing that transports the reader

into both the natural world and the heart and mind of the writer.

in that near-total immersion you experience something that feels very familiar

and that likely dates back to childhood.

it is exquisite and detailed writing.

to paraphrase dan, it is a love -letter to the earth.

i could have chosen many sections of this man's writing to share here, but i chose this because it contains the deep and real rapture jefferies experienced in his long moment of remembering a summer of enlightenment.

be kind to yourself,

slow down.

let these words paint their way into your self.

"in summer i went out into the fields, and let my soul inspire these thoughts under the trees, standing against the trunk, or looking up through the branches at the sky. if trees could speak, hundreds of them would say that I had had these soul-emotions under them. leaning against the oak's massive trunk, and feeling the rough bark and the lichen at my back, looking southwards over the grassy fields, cowslip-yellow, at the woods on the slope, i thought my desire of deeper soul-life. or under the green firs, looking upwards, the sky was more deeply blue at their tops; then the brake fern was unrolling, the doves cooing, the thickets astir, the late ash-leaves coming forth. under the shapely rounded elms, by the hawthorn bushes and hazel, everywhere the same deep desire for the soul-nature; to have from all green things and from the sunlight the inner meaning which was not known to them, that i might be full of light as the woods of the sun's rays. just to touch the lichened bark of a tree, or the end of a spray projecting over the path as i walked, seemed to repeat the same prayer in me.

reach for the sky dee toms

the long-lived summer days dried and warmed the turf in the meadows.

i used to lie down in solitary corners at full length on my back,

so as to feel the embrace of the earth.

the grass stood high above me, and the shadows of the tree-branches danced on my face.

corner of summer field jack davis

i looked up at the sky, with half-closed eyes to bear the dazzling light. bees buzzed over me, sometimes a butterfly passed, there was a hum in the air, greenfinches sang in the hedge. gradually entering into the intense life of the summer days--a life which burned around as if every grass blade and leaf were a torch--i came to feel the longdrawn life of the earth back into the dimmest past, while the sun of the moment was warm on me. from all the ages my soul desired to take that soul-life which had flowed through them as the sunbeams had continually poured on earth. as the hot sands take up the heat, so would i take up that soul-energy.

alone in the fields

dreamy in appearance, i was breathing full of existence; i was aware of the grass blades, the flowers, the leaves on hawthorn and tree. i seemed to live more largely through them, as if each were a pore through which i drank. the grasshoppers called and leaped, the greenfinches sang, the blackbirds happily fluted, all the air hummed with life. i was plunged deep in existence, and with all that existence i prayed.

hot summer afternoon ann ruttan

through every grass blade in the thousand, thousand grasses; through the million leaves, veined and edge-cut, on bush and tree; through the song-notes and the marked feathers of the birds; through the insects' hum and the colour of the butterflies; through the soft warm air, the flecks of clouds dissolving--i used them all for prayer. with all the energy the sunbeams had poured unwearied on the earth; with all the soul-life that had flowed a long stream down to me, i prayed that i might have a soul more than equal to, far beyond my conception of, these things of the past, the present, and the fulness of all life. not only equal to these, but beyond, higher, and more powerful than i could imagine. that i might take from all their energy, grandeur, and beauty, and gather it into me. that my soul might be more than the cosmos of life."

excerpted from "story of my heart" by richard jefferies.

to read the complete text of this beautiful story go here.