Whew! It seems I will never finish this late-start Year in Review!

I shall be short-winded about this because there’s an entire chapter devoted to this place in the book I am currently writing. Yes. I am. If you can’t reach me on a Friday morning, it’s because I’m writing. Yay!

The first time I visited this place I call “Home of the Wounded Healer” back in 2010, it was all turquoise water and bare dirt. It was an eerily beautiful scar bulldozed into the face of the earth to get fill dirt for the expansion of nearby Highway 165 to four lanes.

It’s spring fed and, I have heard, happened suddenly when the bulldozers hit an underground spring that flows out of limestone–which is why the water is turquoise. I enjoy fantasizing that a rusty bulldozer rests at the bottom, claimed by Mother Nature as penance for an act of violence.

As you can see, lovely reclamation work is underway. For a few years, I visited frequently, documenting the return of vegetation, then the return of dragonflies and butterflies. I have stopped less often in recent years, but on this most recent visit, a great egret stalked the water’s edge. I’m guessing that means some locals have “stocked” this young lake with fish caught elsewhere.

To understand why I call this place “Home of the Wounded Healer,” you might want to read Henri Nouwen’s book,* or wait for my book, working title “Creation Considered: Creature Encounters of the 5th Kind.” Suffice it to say here that it is a place that restores my soul and my hope in the resilience of our planet home.

*The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society, 1972.