Stole This From a Friend's BackYard Because I Didn't Have My Camera To Capture the Same Scene (Now, with a Dusting of Snow)

Devon is this little burg existing between Stratford and Milford. There's an Audubon Center, houses, a couple of shops, a gas station, but mostly homes that align the Housatonic River as it meets the Long Island Sound. It is most definitely a lung of the area, as the watershed fills up at high tide and goes out at low tide. It is also an estuary for birds, fish, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians. Ever time I visit my friend, I'm mesmerized by the sight from the backyard. Yes, at low tide, it can smell like mud and salty after-math, but most of the time it's simply lush with life. 

Yesterday, as I stopped to visit, the sky was blue, the sun was setting, and a flock of geese flew over the open space. The coloring was amazing and I wanted to snap a photo but didn't have my camera (hence a stolen photo to be a simulacra of what I was witness to). 

Anyone who paints would love this space because like Weir Farm in Wilton or ANYWHERE New Mexico, the light is constantly changing and the landscape has different magic depending on the time of day, shadows, and clouds. A painter could capture it every day and although the same markers would be there, the coloring would be different. It's a great way to focus on life and that is why they live there.

Of course, they've been through a rough patch, too...a father passed, then a family dog. I stopped by to give them a couple of gifts and to catch up meaning, purpose, possibility, and sanity. It's another oasis that makes this part of the world extra-special, especially when you arrive at sunset (I've yet to see it at sunrise).

And it's calming. There is so much chaos in everything right now, so I need this calming and I wish I could look out at a similar landscape all the time...perhaps that is a retirement goal...to find a space similar to this to finish out the years left. 

But for now...so much work, and for these reasons a need for friends who have found ways to center their way of knowing in such location. I imagine if they ever left the space, they'd always long for the ways a look out the window was always magical.

We deserve more spaces that could almost be a painting if the right artist was nearby. I suppose nobody does a better job than Maude, however.