by Deb Longley

Created on: April 18, 2008

The last red-orange shaft of sunlight caught a tiny yellow flower that happened to be pointed in just the right direction to give the observer, who turned out to be me, the impression that it was glowing from within. That is just the way it looked. All the other yellow flowers were closing, but that little one wanted to watch the sun set, just like me, and that is how it was that it showed me the last bit of color to be seen on that day in that spot at the edge of the lake where we were camping.

My family could be heard for a surprising distance into the woods. I hoped I would not run out of woods and into the lake before all noise but forest noise and the sound of my own feet disappeared. But after a while I did not hear them and soon after that I was at the lake's edge. And very soon after that I was looking at the glowing yellow flower.

As I looked at the flower I noticed there were many smaller red flowers that looked like tiny unopened rosebuds all around it and everywhere on the ground. They were no bigger than the tip of my after-dinner toothpick. I imagined that they would make a perfect centerpiece bouquet for a fairy table. Certainly they would be gathered for that purpose by my son Maximo if it were he stooped over looking at them instead of me.

And then, as if Nature herself was trying to make a point, I saw the even smaller white flowers in between the red ones and very close to the ground. I decided they must be the fairy baby's breath that went with the fairy rosebuds in the tiny centerpiece bouquet.

So I went out to watch the sunset and instead, quite accidentally, found a tiny world at the bottom of the forest floor.

The point that Nature was trying to make, I think, is that it didn't stop there. The sun pointed out the yellow flower which showed me the fairy rosebuds which I never would have noticed under my big fat hiking shoes, which allowed me to see the fairy baby's breath which I realized were towering giants to the tiny insects and microbes in the soil.

Could the earth even be more alive?

Finally I looked up and the light was nearly gone. Raindrops began to fall as they had been on and off all week. I saw them on the lake before I felt them. I turned back into the forest and it wasn't long before I heard clanking pots and various children fighting over a wet hammock and a 10 month-old little girl chanting "Mamamamamamamamama!" I was back in the super-giant world of trees and human beings. My human beings. Just as pretty as the little roses, only bigger. And I wondered who might have been looking at us and marveling at the beauty of our little world as the sun went down.

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