Month: August 2023

You say the hill’s too steep to climb

I misheard the lyrics to a Pink Floyd song and was inspired.

The song is intended to inspire, so mission accomplished, but not quite as directly as I was inspired.

The song is “Fearless,” from the band’s album Meddle, and the lyrics are about doing what seems to be impossible. 

You say the hill’s too steep to climb, chiding
You say you’d like to see me try climbing
You pick the place and I’ll choose the time
And I’ll climb the hill in my own way …

Eventually the song morphs into the sound of a soccer crowd singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” It’s an uplifting recording, in its own way.

But that’s not quite the way I heard it.

For the first decade or so, before I saw the lyrics written down, I thought they sang:

YOU SAY THE HILL’S TOO STEEP TO CLIMB? CLIMB IT!

It’s that simple. You’ve got a hill to climb? It seems daunting? I’ll bet it does. Now that’s out of the way, go ahead and start climbing. 

That’s probably not very different from what writers David Gilmour and Roger Waters intended, but it struck me even more powerfully than they intended because I misheard it.

I climbed that hill in my own way.

The scamper

It was one of those days when the urge to create crackled like electricity in the air. Every nerve in his body that wasn’t snap-crackle-popping with age was shouting silently, “I HAVE TO MAKE SOMETHING!”

He searched his mind for an untold story. He reached toward the top shelf to drag down an inspirational metaphor. He toured his heart for a lost puppy dog fable.

The sun cast a brilliant light and the world shone green as can be — green, the color of life and peace and, well, joy if you must know.

The eager dog rested her chin on his left arm impatiently, seemingly saying, “How can you sit here like an enormous lump when there is so much adventure in the air? This is a day for run and play and jump and bound and exhaust the thesaurus! Come, let’s let the sun bathe us while we scamper — it’s such a scamperous morning!”

Indeed, the sun shone and the wind rose and the dog scampered, and it was all one melodious symphony of light and sound and feeling all day long and into the night, for it was summer and the sun refused to sink in the west until every last scamper had been scampered, and the dog curled into a chair, happy to have had nothing to do that day except to be a dog with a full heart and a place to run and play.

He sank into his own chair and read the words he had been scribbling. They were enough for him to be content, and so he sipped his coffee and started preparing to prepare the words and tell the world, “I made this.”

But then he realized with a tingle that the tingle was still there, and he wasn’t finished making things today. A grin snuck over his face and he paused his preparations, because he knew the making wasn’t done, and instead of saying, “I made this,” he raised a finger and said, “Hold that thought.” 

Compass plants reach for the sky

Probably my favorite wildflowers here at Three Willows are the compass plants, so named because supposedly their leaves always point north.

For two years I thought the compass plant was a bit of a bust. It had big interesting leaves, but that just made it kind of a fun little bush. I guess it takes some time for compass plants to mature to the point where they flower, and that third year made up for the boring beginning.

For the first few weeks, the then-lone compass plant showed its floppy leaves, same as always, but then one day a stem shot up about eight feet in the air, and a few days after that a half-dozen blossoms burst out. Talk about your ugly duckling transforming into a swan!

The flowers drop seeds as those long stems droop at the end of the summer, and after a few years we have compass plants all over the wildflower gardens. Between the compass plants and the cup plants — who deserve their own story one of these days — the field is a glorious display of green and gold, which is a lovely and appropriate sight not far from the shore of the bay of Green Bay.