A familiar place, unfamiliarly

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

In the winter I can see the field clearly. The old stone wall which separates the football-size rectangle from the narrow road is only knee-high and the bushes and trees and grasses, thick and lush in summer, are scraggy and thin in the cold.

Nothing blocks the view then. The world is barren. The field is barren. A fret of black branches against a gray sky, or the sun rouging the horizon, or a flurry of snow are the only things that catch the eye.

But come spring, color creeps across the land - first tan, then taupe, then gold. The days grow long and the grass grows tall and the field comes alive. The man who plows it appears and drives an old green tractor into the corner. After this, in the afternoons when I pedal past, I look for the machine and the patch it has cleared that morning.

I notice that the man who works the field wears red. I can't tell if it's a shirt or a jacket. But I can tell he has worked the land before. There is confidence in his motions, in the way he pulls things from the ground, in the way he hoes and rakes and kneads life from the soil. I see him every day. But as spring becomes summer, as the grassy field explodes into a patchwork of flowers and vegetables, I see less of him and less of his efforts.

He's still in the field and so is the tractor. But both have become gradually hidden. For the field is a secret now. Along the wall which borders it are grasses as tall and thick as palms, trees in full bloom, clusters of leggy wildflowers, overgrown bushes, riots of weeds.

I stop my bike and approach the growth. Even the smells conspire to hide the field. They are untamed - the odor of bark and brush and earth - not parsley or corn. The field is in front of me, I know. The man must be there, too. I glimpse a patch of red and stretch to hear people sounds: walking, coughing, the creaking of knees. But a breeze blowing and the leaves rippling are the only sounds I hear.

I cannot see the neat rows of vegetables, or the stakes that hold the tomatos, or even the old tractor from where I stand. I cannot smell or hear or feel their presence. And yet I know they are there in front of me.

But if I didn't know?

I would ride past, unaware that behind the wall, life burgeoned. I would ride past unaware that a man's love and labor had cultivated that life.

Obstructions have many guises. Summer's dusky greens cover last year's leaves. Like garland, they fill in the bare spots. They stun. They beautify.

But they also obfuscate.

I try to peer through this year's growth but summer's excess continues to obstruct my vision. I have to change position, stretch, move to a different spot to see what a few months ago I could view without effort.

This is what it must be like to lose your faith or your way: a familiar road becomes suddenly strange, a place of comfort suddenly alien.

This is what life is like: It hides secrets you have to stretch to see. It conceals pleasure behind walls.

In a few weeks the wildflowers will shrivel, the weeds will shrink, the leaves will dry up and fall to the ground and I will have an unobstructed view of the field once again.

But by then the flowers and vegetables will be turned to seed, the tractor returned to the barn, the farmer gone.

I need to see it now. So I climb through brush and over the wall onto property that isn't mine, onto property that is sacred. For the field has changed. Months ago, it was barren and needy. All it did was take - from the sun, from the soil, from the farmer who served it.

Now it gives back. Now it is effulgent. Water has been turned into wine.

The field is a hidden joy. Life is full of hidden joys. But to see them we need to stop and look.