There's a timeless joy in the simple pleasure of picking wild flowers growing on a cool mountainside, as I discovered earlier this past week, that is an end of itself. Oh, and wild blackberries off the edges of a dense, dark bush growing further downhill on a slope. Daisies, a single buttercup and others I do not know the names of, came together in a delightful little bunch in my fist, which was at once that of a child and a lady's.. as for a few moments I did nothing but choose my flowers and scamper up and down the mountain's sloping side. My host smiled and said she did the same when she was much younger, for as long as she could. Then I happily carried them back to show my mother, and laid them for a few moments to rest upon this ancient stool, hand painted to show the rose hips that grow around.
I was visitor to a delightful house that afternoon where the sun shone warmly after a night of cold rain, more than 165 years old, that had been built by the British and my hosts family had arrived only the week before Pakistan's creation. Now very much grown up with their own children scattered across the world, the children of this house still return to the mountains every summer, foregoing the chance to stay anywhere else in the world, with a fierce love and longing, proof of a happy childhood. They have left everything as sparse, as dark and wooden as it was, and spent a decade of summers restoring the ancient furniture.
Here, they point out: is a blue bird's nest hidden inside a hole in the veranda's beams. The roses capture my attention.
Pick yourself a few wild flowers off a mountain side. Forget about bringing them back, for they will wilt faster than you imagine, and show you they were happiest growing in the midst of nature's majestic sights, where they serve as testament to God's Beauty. You can only come to play a while, before you must go back.
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