Where the
Sun Spilled Gold
(from "Things I Wish I'd Known sooner" by Jaroldeen
Edwards)
taken from Readers' Digest - October '97
It was a bleak, rainy
day, and I had no desire to drive up the winding
mountain road to my
daughter Carolyn's house. But she had insisted that I
come see something at
the top of the mountain.
So here I was, reluctantly making the two-hour
journey through the fog that
hung like veils. By the time I saw how thick
it was near the summit, I'd
gone too far to turn back. Nothing could be
worth this, I thought as I
inched along the perilous highway.
"I'll stay
for lunch, but I'm heading back down as soon as the fog lifts,"
I announced
when I arrived.
"But I need you to drive me to the garage to pick up my
car," Carolyn said.
"Could we at least do that?"
"How far is it?" I
asked.
"About three minutes," she said. "I'll drive -- I'm used to
it."
After ten minutes on the mountain road, I looked at her anxiously.
"I
thought you said three minutes."
She grinned. "This is a
detour."
Turning down a narrow track, we parked the car and got out. We
walked
along a path that was thick with old pine needles. Huge
black-green
evergreens towered over us. Gradually the peace and silence of
the place
began to fill my mind.
Then we turned a corner -- and I stopped
and gasped in amazement.
From the top of the mountain, sloping for several
acres across folds and
valleys, were rivers of daffodils in radiant bloom.
A profusion of color
-- from the palest ivory to the deepest lemon to the
most vivid salmon --
blazed like a carpet before us. It looked as though
the sun had tipped
over and spilled gold down the mountainside.
At the
center cascaded a waterfall of purple hyacinths. Here and there
were
coral-colored tulips. And as if this bonanza were not enough,
western
bluebirds frolicked over the heads of the daffodils, their magenta
breasts
and sapphire wings like a flutter of jewels.
A riot of questions
filled my mind. Who created such beauty? Why? How?
As we approached the
home that stood in the center of the property, we saw
a sign: 'Answers to
the questions I know you are asking.'
The first answer was: 'One woman -
two hands, two feet, and very little
brain.' The second was: 'One at a
time.' The third: 'Started in 1958.'
As we drove home, I was so moved by
what we had seen that I could scarcely
speak. "She changed the world," I
finally said, "one bulb at a time. She
started almost 40 years ago,
probably just the beginning of an idea, but
she kept at it."
The wonder
of it would not let me go. "Imagine," I said, "if I'd had a
vision and
worked at it, just a little bit every day, what might I
have
accomplished?"
Carolyn looked at me sideways, smiling. "Start
tomorrow," she said.
"Better yet, start today."