They say you never forget your first love. That first kiss, like an impressionable moment that exists in time immemorial. I’d have to say, I definitely agree. We tend to remember those tender moments & awestruck feelings of emotion, that captured our hearts & deepened our souls. This is how I felt about Paradise. That first time I discovered our quaint little town. What was it that stole our hearts & planted our feet into solid ground? We finally could gratefully say, “we are home”! Was it the tall Digger Pines with the sharp pointed cones, or the scrubby green Oakes? How they nestled the noisy blue jays & fed those busy bodied squirrels! Maybe it was those grand black Oakes, where Rocky Raccoon & his bandito brothers played. Chasing up & down the trees, we spotted their beady bright eyes, hiding behind the thick crackled bark. Bambi would visit with her spotted friend Thumper and eat all those new blossomed roses, that sprung us into the new season of Spring. Daffodils, lilies, lilacs and more, graced their beauty over the hillside & lined the creeks & river bed shores. We danced through the night sipping wine under the light of the Summer moon; listening to the sound of a cooing dove or the hooting of a wise ole’ owl. Who could not fall in love with those hot endless days, as we swam in the sun warmed lake? We walked down the jagged path by the waters that flowed through the old miners flume. It was like heaven…. the newness, the discovery of a hidden treasure that held our hearts & kept us whole. But just like first love, it changes. Unfolding, reshaping & recreating into something less glorious, that seems more like a chore. Aw… at last we’ve come to the crossroads. We dare to push ourselves in the challenge to dig deep to our core & gather the strength to be more than a conqueror, a warrior at best! Our quest lies ahead to finish this race, where we shall replant, remake & recreate. Our journey is long, our destiny hard, a fight to remember what we once had begun. When we ran we worked, we strived to hold on to what we had captured, though perhaps it was not what we captured, but what captured us. It simply was this; our hearts had been smitten like that moment in time, with a kiss we had risen. We thought we’d found it, but now we finally know; what happened was not that we found it, but it had found us. 1st love!
Photography by: Cindy Lee Hoover “The Lotus Pond”
