The phrase, “a view that doesn’t change,” was in a book I was reading recently, and I jotted down those words to think about later because I wasn’t sure if I agreed. The spring view out my upstairs office window is a line of jonquils bordering the woods. Is it such an unchanging view?
Some forward-thinking gardener planted jonquils all along three borders of my big yard. I murmur “thank you” to that unknown person when spring returns each of the 40 years I’ve lived here. Of course, I watch the green stems poke through the soil in December, and each year I think they’ll be stunned by the cold, yet they survive and thrive and bloom. But my line of jonquils isn’t the same. The flowers are different than the ones that bloomed last year. In places they have spread, and there are gaps that may not have been there last year. So, it’s a different view.
Recently on an Oklahoma turnpike and a few days later as I drove down a Missouri Interstate, I saw jonquils growing in a few places along the side of the four-lane highways. These flowers were not by a house, nor bordering a yard. These were alone in clumps, like in a long-ago flower bed. Now I know that jonquils are grown from bulbs, and someone’s labor of digging holes and planting those bulbs resulted in these sunny beauties. And like the unknown gardener who planted my jonquils, some unknown person planted these, not along a major highway, but near their homesteads, which are no longer there.
What did the landscape look like before those highways were plotted and paved? Eminent domain had to be employed to wrestle homesteads from folks, for surely the houses were destroyed and the only remnant left was not a stone chimney or a concrete foundation, but a patch of jonquils.
Somewhere a woman (yes, I’m being sexist here) planted flowers to grace her home. More than likely, she no longer walks this earth, but I said “thank you” for giving up her safe haven for public use. And for beautifying it. I don’t want her sacrifice to be forgotten. These jonquils are her legacy to remind us she was here.
The landscape has changed. And it always changes. I don’t know of a single view that doesn’t change. Certainly these eyes that view it change with time, and perspective changes with experiences.
