TBD on Ning
A morning, a memory, and a maven
From the window of my car, I watched the cloud cover dissipate throughout the night. The dusting of snow on the hood was all that had materialized from a promised one to three inches. My body temperature had finally equalized in a fashion from the surrounding air, and I had slept for a couple of hours. Dawn was breaking. I would not sleep again.
I suddenly needed to see the foothills. I struck out on highway 36, thinking I would go to Lyons and return. I'd spent enough time here being unable to see the sunrise on the mountains due to papers, students, and meetings. I wasn't going to miss this opportunity. A brilliantly clear morning enveloped me as I drove North, out of Boulder.
The foothills were dressed in chocolate roan robes with borders of solid snow accented with ruddy tufts of Indian grass. Turning down Hygiene road, backlit black Angus cattle looked like chess pieces advancing slowly across a snow-covered field. Virtually all of them as black as ravens, exhausting clouds of water vapor in the crisp crackling air. Two white-faced individuals looked almost out of place, bringing up the rear of the group. Far behind them, waddling like a fat, jowly banker, was the reason for the variation; a Hereford bull.
I drove slowly past paddocks of blanketed horses and a kestrel hunting from a power line. I had no destination in mind. I just need to move away from the foothills in order to see behind them. Once I turned around, I would have the view I sought. I sneaked a preview in my rear view mirror. Yep, it was going to be good. I had gone another half mile when I realized traffic would soon pick up on this little string of asphalt across the snow. It was time to turn around if I aimed to savor the view. Pulling into a field access, I waited for a monster SUV to roar by, and then backed onto the road facing the direction I had come. I let the car shift to second gear and took my foot off the accelerator. The car glided forward at a leisurely pace.
The brilliantly white mountains loomed like distant worlds behind the roan foothills. I'd seen them many times before, sometimes clad in snow, sometimes baked by the summer sun, but never like this. Jewels need a setting, a context, to be featured properly. A flawless diamond, covered with gravel dust amid hundreds of tons of rock, is unnoticeable. People will likely walk past it, or indeed, trod on it. Not so, once the dust is removed and the gem sits alone on a square of black velvet. Such was the view before me. So achingly beautiful, so magnificent was this sight, that I almost felt unworthy. How many people would wake up this morning, put their heads down and drive to work thinking only of their own personal minutia? For how many will this day only mean one more reason to consider ending their lives? Would this experience I'm having here make a difference to them?
How often are we so enmeshed in our own misery that we are rendered blind to the beauty and the wonders that surround us every day? During graduate school, one of my "therapists" was an ancient cottonwood tree. I have recognized and acknowledged the presence of spirit within this tree and have opened myself to learn what it has to teach me. The tree has been a good teacher. It stood solid and upright, reaching for the sky. It grew as full as the tree surgeons allowed it to and had taken the shape of a human. The tree taught me about dance technique (rooted to the ground, spiraling to the sky, the importance of core strength), life (time heals many, but not all, wounds, we must persist in the face of withering winds and burdensome snow, maintain a thick skin where you contact the public, but be flexible enough to dance with the weather) and love (nurture those that seek solace in your arms, shade those who labor in intense heat, abide).
Many, many people had passed by this master of wisdom without a second thought. Some had done this for years, desperately searching for answers that were readily available from this "object" on their way to work or class. Had I, instead, viewed the tree as a mere object to walk around on the way home, all of these lessons would have been lost to me. I would walk past it, oblivious to the wealth of wisdom so close at hand. Whether trees (standing people), rocks (sitting people), birds (winged people), insects (crawling people) or humans, the lessons are there, waiting for us to acknowledge them. Living in a world of spirit is both a sobering and enriching experience.
Tracks appear from beneath a conifer tree and descend a steep snow covered ravine before vanishing in the brush. A coyote perhaps? Ravens add to the high contrast landscape as they glide along the rugged skyline, standing out against the blue sky as much as against the snow. Their calls echo in the cold air, now competing with the increasing traffic as the front range wakes up and starts another day in paradise. At least for those aware enough to realize it.
I suddenly needed to see the foothills. I struck out on highway 36, thinking I would go to Lyons and return. I'd spent enough time here being unable to see the sunrise on the mountains due to papers, students, and meetings. I wasn't going to miss this opportunity. A brilliantly clear morning enveloped me as I drove North, out of Boulder.
The foothills were dressed in chocolate roan robes with borders of solid snow accented with ruddy tufts of Indian grass. Turning down Hygiene road, backlit black Angus cattle looked like chess pieces advancing slowly across a snow-covered field. Virtually all of them as black as ravens, exhausting clouds of water vapor in the crisp crackling air. Two white-faced individuals looked almost out of place, bringing up the rear of the group. Far behind them, waddling like a fat, jowly banker, was the reason for the variation; a Hereford bull.
I drove slowly past paddocks of blanketed horses and a kestrel hunting from a power line. I had no destination in mind. I just need to move away from the foothills in order to see behind them. Once I turned around, I would have the view I sought. I sneaked a preview in my rear view mirror. Yep, it was going to be good. I had gone another half mile when I realized traffic would soon pick up on this little string of asphalt across the snow. It was time to turn around if I aimed to savor the view. Pulling into a field access, I waited for a monster SUV to roar by, and then backed onto the road facing the direction I had come. I let the car shift to second gear and took my foot off the accelerator. The car glided forward at a leisurely pace.
The brilliantly white mountains loomed like distant worlds behind the roan foothills. I'd seen them many times before, sometimes clad in snow, sometimes baked by the summer sun, but never like this. Jewels need a setting, a context, to be featured properly. A flawless diamond, covered with gravel dust amid hundreds of tons of rock, is unnoticeable. People will likely walk past it, or indeed, trod on it. Not so, once the dust is removed and the gem sits alone on a square of black velvet. Such was the view before me. So achingly beautiful, so magnificent was this sight, that I almost felt unworthy. How many people would wake up this morning, put their heads down and drive to work thinking only of their own personal minutia? For how many will this day only mean one more reason to consider ending their lives? Would this experience I'm having here make a difference to them?
How often are we so enmeshed in our own misery that we are rendered blind to the beauty and the wonders that surround us every day? During graduate school, one of my "therapists" was an ancient cottonwood tree. I have recognized and acknowledged the presence of spirit within this tree and have opened myself to learn what it has to teach me. The tree has been a good teacher. It stood solid and upright, reaching for the sky. It grew as full as the tree surgeons allowed it to and had taken the shape of a human. The tree taught me about dance technique (rooted to the ground, spiraling to the sky, the importance of core strength), life (time heals many, but not all, wounds, we must persist in the face of withering winds and burdensome snow, maintain a thick skin where you contact the public, but be flexible enough to dance with the weather) and love (nurture those that seek solace in your arms, shade those who labor in intense heat, abide).
Many, many people had passed by this master of wisdom without a second thought. Some had done this for years, desperately searching for answers that were readily available from this "object" on their way to work or class. Had I, instead, viewed the tree as a mere object to walk around on the way home, all of these lessons would have been lost to me. I would walk past it, oblivious to the wealth of wisdom so close at hand. Whether trees (standing people), rocks (sitting people), birds (winged people), insects (crawling people) or humans, the lessons are there, waiting for us to acknowledge them. Living in a world of spirit is both a sobering and enriching experience.
Tracks appear from beneath a conifer tree and descend a steep snow covered ravine before vanishing in the brush. A coyote perhaps? Ravens add to the high contrast landscape as they glide along the rugged skyline, standing out against the blue sky as much as against the snow. Their calls echo in the cold air, now competing with the increasing traffic as the front range wakes up and starts another day in paradise. At least for those aware enough to realize it.
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Comment
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Comment by CWO3ROBBIE on March 12, 2010 at 7:11pm
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Vernon, You write so well. I read you and I am there.
The thing that always does it for me is to watch the pelicans on Florida's East Coast. they fly in such tight formation. Sailing along on the air currents. Lines of 3 to 12, sailing along on the currents. Never needing to flap their wings. Like a group of fighter planes coming in to land. My spirit glides along with them.
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Comment by caseyjo on March 11, 2010 at 8:22pm
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Beautiful Vernon.........Today I think I finally spotted the hawks nest. I knew there was one near by because I have spotted it flying from that general direction and calling out many times this last week.....I looked toward the calling and saw the hawk take flight and from that spot a large dark mound of something. Tomorrow I will get a closer look with the binoculars...The day before yesterday I got some new pics of some pretty woodpeckers in my yard.....I was getting depressed, feeling down. I actually think spending too much time on the internet ( when the words start to all blend in and not take on much meaning anymore)...I know it's time for a change. I decided to spend more time with the (never -failing) healing of old mother nature, and wa la...I have already started feeling better......She sets me free.
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Comment by thallygal on March 11, 2010 at 7:13pm
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Love, love, love this Vernon
Years ago driving from South Lakewood to Boulder on highway 93, heading to therapy, I watched a single tree, standing all alone, small in its beauty..and each drive, each year, the tree grew....and now is a big tree...still standing in solitude...
driving to grad school...going the back way seeing the splendor of the foothills on the horizon...lovely...and yes today take every second to be aware of my surroundings....and aware of my breathing, the beauty, for who knows, one of these days...I may not be here to enjoy...so I cherish the moment...even the ones difficult to get through, for in every situation is an opportunity to grow, learn and become more aware...
thanks for the reminder.
we should get together for coffee sometime eh?
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