Something special happened today.
My weather anxiety has been building with the possibility of a hurricane hitting us next week. There is lingering trauma from the devastation of Tropical Storm Fiona last September. I check the U.S. National Hurricane Center and Canadian Hurricane Centre websites at least twice a day. I feel the prickling of panic start in my throat. My mind starts to whirl even faster than usual. I feel ungrounded, disconnected from my body and surroundings.
Normally I find my balance by spending as much time as possible outdoors, but we have not had a typical Nova Scotia summer this year. After intense heat waves and a lack of rain in June and early July, the last several weeks have mostly brought rain. A ridiculous amount of rain. So much rain that the occasional pleasant, sunny day like today feels like a special occasion.
Today I took the afternoon off, adding to an already planned vacation day tomorrow. I wanted to spend as much time as possible outdoors in healing nature in this wonderful weather to try to ground myself, be present in the moment.
I walked to the beach. I’m blessed to be a mere 15-minute walk from the Northumberland Strait. The route is along a secondary road with trees, wildflowers, birds, dragonflies and, today, lots of butterflies. I saw dozens of little white butterflies chasing each other in circles in the air. I saw a striking White Admiral butterfly.
And I saw so many Viceroy butterflies that I lost count. Before this afternoon, I’d only spotted maybe two or three Viceroys or their Monarch twins all summer. One large, scarred Viceroy with a tear in one wing and some of the ‘feather’ missing from another wing let me get so close I watched its proboscis dip into the tiny blooms on a stalk of meadowsweet.
That was enough to make my heart lighter. Then, when I got to the beach, I was greeted by something entirely unexpected: a sunflower growing in the sand near the bank.
The tide was coming in. I found a flat rock just the right height with an indentation made for sitting on, and let my feet gradually sink into the sand as the waves lapped against my legs. I felt the warmth of the sun-baked sandstone beneath my palms. I watched the morphing shapes of the waves and the moving geometric shadow patterns on the sand from the sunlight penetrating the water. No activity, no purpose for an hour – just being. And grounding. And healing.
Life doesn’t let us do this often enough. Societal expectations don’t let us do this often enough. We don’t let ourselves do this often enough.
I don’t know what next week will bring. But for this afternoon at least, everything was okay. No threat. No pressure. Just a gift, for which I’m grateful.