The Green Conspiracy

A place to recline in the bough-dappled light

The canopy leafs out and we are suddenly reminded of June’s benevolent conspiracy, its invitation to hide amid the green. The bare, brutal skies of November are on the other side of the year and we can take solace in a little concealment, a good green refuge. The world softens in these weeks as the stark silhouettes of winter blue ease into the froth of leaves unfurling. You grow weary in those grey days from so much exposure amid the stripped limbs and nude skies, but there is a sort of mercy now in the hills and hollows, now in the green.

There is a starkness to November you feel when its wicked winds rip through the high places, tearing away leaf and cloud alike, leaving nothing between you and the void of space. It feels as though you are more vulnerable then, more scrutinized by the world and all its wounded ways, judged harshly for the faults that are not wholly your own. It is hard to describe, but you know the feeling; the trees are bare, the sky contains but distant stars apathetic to your condition, and it seems you are weighed and measured in a way that is not fully fair. Winter arrives whether you are ready or not and there is little leniency given for the ill prepared bare in the cold light.

Not so in the early days of June. Here you can walk along the old stone walls amid the just-born calves, the fully-leafed maples and birches creating a protective tunnel for you. There in the green places, shielded from the uncaring harsh-light of space and sin and the wounded world, you are able to slow and notice creation again. The salamander, the moss, the fiddlehead fern. Those ferns, not fully unfurled, resemble something nearly arcane in these late spring days: a shepherd’s crook, a crozier, a staff. Sheltered away from the demands and neon noise of the modern world, strolling or even sitting amid those ferns more appropriate for a fairy tale than real life, you may even allow yourself to contemplate the not-wholly-real. A day dream, a fantasy, even magic. You remember, however faintly, the sort of imagination you possessed as a child before adulthood narrowed, blended, and reshaped everything toward the greasy grey ease of utility and speed. The green world quiets everything just enough so that part of you, the part that still dreams and wonders, can knuckle up back from the wet loam into the light for a little while.

Such is the conspiracy of June, the offering here at the start of summer: a promise of respite. A place to recline in the bough-dappled light, a green refuge away from the din and the drone and the grind. A moment to allow your mind to wander. Yes, there is work still to be done (always work!) but June does remind us that life cannot subsist upon labor alone. You require beauty and silence too. You yearn for shade and birdsong and the green and gold of bough-dappled light. You require places where the soul is not pressed constantly beneath the weight of headlines and schedules and fluorescent light.

Rest beneath long limbs.

Watch the wind rock the canopy.

Listen to the peepers rising from the wet fields at dusk.

The world, for all its wounds, still contains good green sanctuaries. Your refuge remains.