At the farm in Sebastopol, I slept in a stationary safari tent by the big pond. We got up before six every morning, to let out the horses and clean the stalls, eat breakfast and be out to start picking blueberries by seven-thirty.
Rising up so early, the regularity, cold fresh air of dawn. Getting dressed in the half-light and opening the tent. How different the pond right outside could look. Cold, hard, steely-blue. Rosy pink. Fairy-tale misty. Or in the afternoons, golden in the setting sun.
Just that. The knowledge and appreciation that comes from repetition, from being able to see the different sides of the same place, and keep on seeing it, every day. Not getting numb and thinking: This is the same old pond. Because it isn’t. There are shades in the monotony. And all of them are beautiful.
Seven shades of a pond.
Katja Malmborg 