I have been writing about picnics for many years and sadly all that writing has fallen on deaf ears. Sadly, picnics are quickly becoming a thing of the past. It’s not something that fits into our modern technological world. It’s a bridge to nature that we have blown up in our race to distance ourselves from the natural world.
Personally, I feel picnics are a bridge that we can re-construct to bring humankind back in touch with nature. For years I have preached that picnics can help save the world. When I say this I am looked at like a lunatic who needs to be locked away along with all the vestiges of our natural past. Picnics to save the world? No one gets it.
What was probably the best picnic I ever had occurred in the middle of winter. My newlywed lover and I hiked up to the top of a waterfall. There were no picnic tables. We had our picnic meal sitting on boulders alongside the creek that poured over the small cliff. The sound of the water landing down below was deafening. It was a small waterfall but it was loud. There was also the sound of the water gurgling over the rocks in the creek bed before the water reached the edge of the precipice.
It was very cold. I’m guessing the temperature was in single digits (Fahrenheit). Snow was falling — not lightly but moderately. We were wearing multiple layers of clothes.
We had no fancy picnic baskets. We carried out picnic lunch up the hills in cloth shopping bags. We carried a bottle of cheap champagne, which needed no chilling in the prevalent conditions. We carried two champagne flutes, two plates, two forks, a small disk of Camembert cheese, a baggie of grapes, a small Tupperware container of potato salad which I had made the previous day, two chicken sandwiches that I had prepared the previous day, and a loaf of fresh French bread which we picked up at the local deli on our way into the mountains.
Just a few feet away from a 30 foot vertical drop-off to the small pond below, we sat at the very edge of the stream as it flowed over the precipice to the pond below. Our feet were just inches away from the water.
It was incredibly cold but we uncorked the champagne and filled out glasses. We clinked our glasses as we toasted life. We got out our food and as snowflakes landed in our champagne and on our bread and cheese and on our sandwiches we ate the most delicious meal ever devoured. The stillness of the frigid air combined with the cacophony of the waterfall to create what can only be described as the “music of the spheres.”
It may very well be the best meal I’ve ever had. Every bite and every sip contained all the limitless beauty of nature, the fullest intensity of joy.
About a month later we became pregnant…..
….. pregnant with a jolly old elf.
