I am still “coasting” from my week at Bluebell Springs.  It had been such a long time since I had the opportunity to put myself into a virtual wilderness setting that I almost forgot what a joy it is to observe close up the work that God’s creatures are carrying on every minute of every day while we putter around in our cars from work to home to the store  to restaurants and to whatever else we do.  While I am back in the office, a part of me is still celebrating the wonder of creation in that special place.

I was especially taken by the birds this time.  Two families of geese with goslings born two weeks apart were fattening up on the lawn and on the special treats Jim tosses out each evening—so he and Bev can watch the fascinating interactions among the geese, the ravens, the Steller’s jays, the cowbirds, the red-winged blackbirds, and the sparrows as they compete for food.  A family of mallards has also taken up residence in their refuge too—drawing the attention of a mink that has been drooling over the ducklings.  Eagles patrol the shoreline as well, but none came in for a meal of tender bird flesh while I was there. Fortunately the goslings are all big enough to be almost beyond the capacity of raptors to handle—besides being diligently guarded by very protective parents.  Jim and Bev feel they could almost write a book now on goose parenting, by which they have been profoundly impressed.

The swallows, however, drew my attention the most.  Two species have found a home at Bluebell Springs: the violet-green swallow and the barn swallow.  They do not know where the violet-greens are nesting, but there is no doubt where the barn swallows are nesting: all over their buildings.  Jim has to keep washing off the mud daubs near their windows since they learned the hard way how easily bird lice will migrate to humans as soon as the birds have fledged.  He has given them the upper reaches, however, so that a number of families now claim Bluebell Springs as home.  And “claim” is the right word.  You do not claim them as your birds; they claim you as their humans.  One evening my brother and I were looking out of two adjacent windows at a barn swallow perched on the roof hardly four feet from our faces.  And it was looking back and forth at each of us with trusting eyes that seemed to say, “Aren’t we all having a great time?”  When Jim went out with his John Deere or I took my car down the beach road we were both accompanied by the swallows feeling as though we were direct descendants of St. Francis.  Ostensibly they were hunting bugs, but it was fairly apparent that they were playing with us, and enjoying it immensely.

In the morning and evening, the blacktail deer joined the birds in celebration of life at Bluebell Springs.  And at the close of dusk, the swallows perched and allowed the bats to take over the night shift of clearing insects out of the air and from the surface of the pond.  Winged life that clearly did not find this place a refuge was insect life!  This fact was highlighted one evening when a foolhardy dragonfly came in to “harvest” bugs with the birds.  It was too big for the swallows, but the red-winged blackbirds knew a tasty treat when they saw it.  Two of them went up like fighter interceptors and then fluttered in the air like ungainly hummingbirds trying to pick it out of the sky.  To the dragonfly’s great relief, it had the speed and agility to manage an escape and a rapid retreat into the firs, hemlocks, and cedars of the surrounding forest.

My experience at Bluebell Springs was a feast for the eyes—and the soul.

See you outdoors!

Dean

The following were a few of the rewards of my recent visit to the Bluebell Springs estate of my brother Jim and sister-in-law Bev on Orcas Island in Washington’s San Juan Islands:

Bluebell Springs "picture" window

Glimpses of the Infinite.

Reminders of our lost Paradise.

Cheering of the body and the soul.

Calmness stealing through the mind.

Whether poking around on the beach at low tide, walking on the mossy carpet of old growth forest in adjacent Moran State Park, listening to the music of Bluebell Springs creek, or sitting in the great room overlooking the Georgia Strait watching the extended waning of the light on the longest days of the year, the beauty was overwhelming.

[click on photos to see larger images]

My time there compels me to agree with Emerson:

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting—a wayside sacrament.  Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.

I believe it’s significant that in the Genesis creation account the first fact mentioned about the trees of the garden was that they were “pleasing to the eye” (Gen. 2:9). For this reason I’m convinced that the beauty we see and sense in the natural world is one of the most important evidences of God’s divine nature.

Nineteenth century American statesman George Bancroft expressed it like this: “Beauty is but the sensible image of the Infinite. Like truth and justice it lives within us; like virtue and the moral law it is a companion of the soul.”

In commenting on William Cullen Bryant’s beliefs about beauty in nature, theologian Augustus Strong observed: “The external world is beautiful, because unfallen. It shares with man the effects of sin; but whenever we retreat from the regions which man’s folly has despoiled, we may find something that reminds us of our lost Paradise.”

John Muir believed that “everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.”

The value of natural beauty to the human soul was what inspired the masterful landscape painter Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School of painting. With his paintings he wanted to put people back in touch with the Creator. He hoped his paintings would give city-dwelling admirers a yearning for the outdoors where they too could discover what he had—that “in gazing on the pure creations of the Almighty, he feels a calm religious tone steal through his mind, and when he has turned to mingle [again] with his fellow men, the chords which have been struck in that sweet communion cease not to vibrate.”

I’m convinced that beauty may be nature’s most profound apologist for God.

See you outdoors!

Dean

When family members live in widely separated parts of the country (or the world), parting is bittersweet.  You are always glad to be back home, but you do leave a part of your heart behind you.

Jim and Bev Ohlman

This is my last day with my brother, Jim, and his wife Bev.  Yet having over 400 photos on my camera memory chips, it will be easy to recall the pleasant memories of my stay at Bluebell Springs.  One of the joys of being here is the long conversations we have—which go on into the evening until the call of the pillow becomes too strong to resist.  Then I trek up to “the barn,” my home for the week, and hit the hay.  Of course the barn is really a garage (entered from the back), a workshop (that I envy), and a comfortable “efficiency apartment” (with a view you’d have to pay dearly for if it were a resort room.)

"The Barn"

As you can imagine, Jim and Bev have friends and family by the dozens come to visit: writers, musicians, pastors, professors, and others who are compelled to return once they have experienced the wonder of creation showcased by Bluebell Springs.  As a bird and deer sanctuary, a botanical garden, an arboretum, and a place of quiet rest, it will always beckon me.

See you outdoors!

Dean

Enjoy more photos of this awesome place:

Bluebell Springs pond and house

Bluebell Springs beach

Bluebell Springs creek

Magnificent madrone

The garden house

Backlit maiden hair fern

Crescent Beach shell furrow

Photos taken at the Bluebell Springs homestead of Jim and Bev Ohlman at the foot of Moran State Parks’s Mt. Constitution on Orcas Island, perhaps the most picturesque of Washington State’s San Juan Islands:

Sunset silhouette

Mt. Baker at dusk

Garden walk

Big leaf maple on horsetails

Bull kelp

40 foot kelp

Salt infused grain on beach log

Beach stones on log

See you outdoors! Dean

I’m not ashamed to admit that when I arrived at my brother and sister-in-law’s place on Orcas Island, I stood for a while and shed tears—tears over the wonder and beauty of this amazing place.  Of course, the cause of my tears was not just the wonder of God’s creation, but the wonder of His healing for my brother, Jim, from a critical illness that just about took his life some sixteen months ago.  To see him fully recovered and enjoying the little paradise they have preserved and enhanced here is a joy. ”Bluebell Springs” is the name of their place, virtually at land’s end below the island’s Moran State Park.  Here is how one flyer describes the island:

Art, activities and agriculture flourish on Orcas Island, the largest of the San Juans. The horseshoe-shaped island is a magical mix of lush forest, farm valleys, placid lakes and stunning mountains, all wrapped around a beautiful fjord.

It has been named by Readers Digest, Forbes, Island Magazine, and National Geographic as one of the top island getaways in the world.  And at Bluebell Springs, the grandeur of it all comes together.  Buzzing rufous hummingbirds, darting tree and barn swallows, crawking ravens, and grazing Columbia black-tail deer, keep you mesmerized near their home, and down on the beach where the springs finally reach the sea (the Georgia Strait), small waterfalls add their part to the symphony of lapping water and tumbling stones. In the meadows and on the forest edge, foxglove spires add their multi-colors fresh off the Creator’s pallet.

In the next few posts I will share photos from this place of wonder.  

See you outdoors!

Dean