Remembering

2015, perhaps more than most, has been a year of highs and lows: the joy of moving back to a favorite neighborhood in a favorite town; the shocking destruction of my former pollinator garden; the beginning of a new garden (and the process of restoring an old one); a granddaughter's high school graduation; family health challenges; a reunion with dear friends on a dream trip to Bulgaria and Ireland; the deaths of other friends; and always, it seems, a shortage of time. 

Bulgaria always makes me aware of time. This part of southeastern Europe was home to the earliest European civilization, a prosperous society that seems to have enjoyed perhaps 1500 years of peace before the invasion of the people who eventually became the Greeks and Thracians. In July, I was lucky enough to visit Durankulak Lake, a major wildlife area with an island that was inhabited by humans for roughly 6000 years, from 5000 BCE or thereabouts to the end of the First Bulgarian Empire, around 1000 CE. We walked streets that were laid out some 6500 years ago

and imagined the lives lived in the houses that once stood on these foundations.

I couldn't help wondering if some long-ago urbanite had planted just such a tree to shade this dwelling from the baking Bulgarian sun.

Not that Bulgaria existed yet. The Bulgurs would not show up for another few thousand years. Archaeologists are not even sure what language these people spoke, their script being still undeciphered.

Nothing like a little deep time to calm any jitters about one's own topsy-turvy existence.

Sunrises also help.