So, after a challenging week, Sunday was a happy place kind of day. Todd and I got up at dawn and headed out to Hendry’s Beach for breakfast at the Boathouse. We got there just after it opened and were treated to a table with the perfect view. And what a view it was! Pelicans skimming low over the water. A family -toddler, child, mom and pop- all in matching tuxedo t-shirts, dogs digging, the sand flying up behind them, a toddler clapping and reeling like a drunken sailor in and out of the water, a baby, face-planting but popping up smiling and covered in sand, surfers catching the waves but more often not.

And then this guy.

Meticulously he collected long sticks and built them into a structure like a circus balancing act. On each point, he set another stick to balance, lilting gently in the wind. Everyone in the restaurant watched transfixed, groaning if one fell. Amazing. A master class in physics.

After we ate, I went down to chat with Raymond who taught me how to find the center and get the stick to balance. We talked about the impermanence of his art and how remarkable it was. After Raymond left, kids came to follow his example, big kids right down to toddlers.

Todd and I thought of other examples of impermanent art: sand castles, ice sculptures, butter carvings at the Minnesota state fair. And that’s really life in a nutshell. Isn’t it? We build and craft something of our lives. If we’re lucky we’ll leave behind something that inspires others who come after us. Everything a balancing act like Raymond’s sticks.

And it all reminded me of a favorite poet we lost this week, Wendell Berry and his Peace of Wild Things which has comforted me countless times, a legacy he has left behind for each of us. Offering comfort and balance even when he is gone.

On the way home, the predicted rain started, and we realized we had caught a perfect moment in the storm.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.