More on Blue…and a Family Portrait

On Earth Day I was thinking about blue.  Still am.  And wanted to also share two comments to that post–comments that help me understand this pull to the blue side….

From Mo in Australia:  The longing for blue by Rebecca Solnit in A Field Guide to Getting Lost—

“The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water. Water is colorless, shallow water appears to be the color of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light, the purer the water the deeper the blue. The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance. This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue.”

And from Grace, somewhere in New Mexico:  “Here, the first people call the Rio Grande the Blue Mother.”  I love that expression…the Blue Mother.  And because I name each bowl, I’m borrowing this… Blue Mother.

It’s overcast today.  Wet from earlier rains.  We were digging around outside, moving Santolina that was growing where a wall is coming down.  Supervised.

Blue Blessings on Earth Day

Somewhere along the way blue became for me the color of purity. Not white–but blue. Blue water.  Blue sky.  And on Sunday I thought about this, listening to two people talk about a recent blue adventure–blue ocean water. So blue they could not believe their eyes. And truly, as I listened,I found it almost hard to imagine as well. But I’m trying. Trying to imagine this–imagining clean, healthy sparkling blueness…and blueness not just for the streams, rivers and oceans of the earth…but for the skies as well. I know this might sound simply like “pie in the sky” drivel-talk, but it’s important…this. This imagining of blue. Not just today, Earth Day, but always in all ways.

My sister is a cryptoquote whiz. And today in record time she completed this one.  A native American proverb.

And below today’s, the solution from yesterday, a quote by John Muir. No surprises here. Just two reminders of how it might become.  And so I will continue to imagine as well. The return of blue.