Today is a day for the most wonderful thoughts of all. The ideas of the night time have come alive in the morning. I see blue sky in the crisp air sparkling above the bright snow. The birds fly to the feeder. The squirrels run along the fence. This nature is my guide to reality. Beneath the surface of the earth, the dark, damp cold prepares for Spring. It will melt into flowers of deep blue and red, and the sun will shine on our faces once again as we go forth in a new season.
There is a hammock on the deck covered in melted water. It’s waiting for the warm. Outside, the purple flag with the peace symbol hangs precariously by one thread from my upstairs bedroom window. It’s a call for peace in this beautiful world. It, too, flaps in the wind in the cold days. The future holds many more days like this. I will sit in the sun in my chair and the proud crabapple blossoms will expand across the yard hiding Aunt Sue’s wind chimes, but I will know they are there and they will still move in the wind, hidden in the pink blossoms.
Down in the open space, the coyotes prepare to breed. They’ll walk about looking for house pets in the evenings. They’ll cross the great boulevard in the night. The crows that went south, our five crows, will return and call out for us, and we’ll go outside and throw cat food on the driveway for them.
And in the fall, it will start again – the cycle of the seasons, a Colorado inconvenience, but necessary, I guess. If people could follow the natural rhythms of nature, then we might be able to enjoy all this. I think many do, but the lifestyles of most people keep them inside cubicles all day under fluorescent lights, pushing papers in some corporate or bureaucratic life. I’m so sorry that all the nature they get is on weekends, and then all the walking paths are crowded.
The ultimate price people pay when separated from the green earth is deadly. Go outside when you can to connect with the nature you are part of. Take off your shoes and walk on the grass. In the fall, we’ll find dead cottonwood tree branches and break them apart to see the little stars.
photo by Carolyn Reed
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