{borrowed photo}

There was an orange tree outside her kitchen window she could never bear to pick.

She would sit in the evenings after a long day of work and take in its beauty. The roundness of its fruit, the color, the smell...

Its fruit would eventually fall to the ground where the birds would eat their fill. And then the bees and wasps would eat their fill. Then the other insects would finish the fruit.

She was a careful observer in the world around her.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings is the woman who loved the orange tree outside her window.

She lived at Cross Creek, Florida when the swamps still flourished in wild beauty.

I would have loved to have lived then and been her friend. To have gone with her at midnight to look for blue crabs, and to dig up sea turtle eggs.

Every time she would sell a story she would fix something in her house at Cross Creek. One time putting in running water and a rest room. Having only had an outhouse.

I have read her life's story and it enthralls me. She was a bigger than life person. Living her life to the fullest. Living passionately.

I am struck by how a piece of land can change someones life. Really, it's not only the land, I guess it is the people who came with it.

Without them she would have had no stories.

Haven't most of us searched our whole lives for that link to another person? That invisible bond that binds kindred hearts together?

The shared love of art, music, words...nature, life.

Someone who gets us. Someone who loves to live life to the fullest as we do? Who sees the beauty in the everyday simple things. Who delights in the simple joys of life.

I remember one chapter of the book where she talks about going off to explore the everglades with a friend of hers. She wanted to see them before they were gone. They had started land development as far back as the 1940's. She took a woman friend who knew the Everglades very well and off they went. If memory serves me right they were gone for almost a week.

They camped under the stars on dry land. They slept in the boat. They found an abandoned cabin and slept in it one night.

Can you imagine doing that?

It would be scary but thrilling at the same time.

I want to live life to the fullest whatever time I have left here. What about you?

~Nita~

Tonight's song, Shimmer by Shawn Mullins

This is my favorite song. Out of all songs I have ever heard I love this one most. If you have a chance please listen to it.

1st video, 1st clip

We were born to shimmer, we were born to shine...We are born not to hate.