Improbable beauty

The slog up lumberyard hill every morning is a tough one. I suspect that most people would be aghast at the scene at the crest of the hill. To the east side of the road is a lumberyard with piles of cedar chips, planks, a junkyard dog, scattered truck parts and aluminum buildings. Across the road is a gravelly area..in fact a former NIKE missle launch site....now filled with piles of gravel and stone. Some of the piles have been there for months, so daisies and mullein have taken root and flourished. (a promise that nuclear winter won't be so disastrous?!) Monstrous machines lurk on the property; they are used for crushing the gravel that appears and disappears at irregular intervals.

Impossible as it seems, I love this place. It is this blasted area that spurs me every morning to head outdoors. For here I see bouquets of wildflowers: knapweed, daisies, thistles, Queen Anne's lace, and blackeyed Susans crowd around huge stone slabs.

Small miracles happen here: an indigo bunting dropped close to my feet, gave me time for a good look, then with a wink and a 'spik' flew to a branch above. Similarly, a scarlet tanager flew down in front of me, then fluttered upwards. Joined by another, they swirled through the branches of the oak.

That oak is a reliable host of Baltimore orioles, many warblers, and barn swallows flit around it. In the gravel beneath it, a killdeer performs his broken wing act so I keep away from the nest.

Here on this unsightly land I have watched deer with their fawns, heard fox cubs yip, startled when a fisher scuttled across the road entirely too close to me.

When I rise early enough, this place of improbable beauty stuns me with simultaneous sunrise and moonset. Once I saw a deep yellow moon smack dab on the horizon to the west, while a flaming ball of sun rose in the east. This morning the faint moon was far away and the sun was struggling, but nonetheless the sight of them both at the same time stopped me in my tracks.

I look for beauty in unlikely places and never fail to find it. Have you found unexpected treasures where you least expected?