Musing

The resident fox is out and about frequently which continually toys with the Kelpies who have been wanting to follow his trail for months now but have been impeded by snow and fencelines. But the other morning we stepped across the fence line on a snow bank, got ourselves to a hill top and explored from there. Me, just eager to reconnect with prairie land and the Kelpies just eager to follow fox trails.

Oh, the prairie land… with the snow receding I get the smallest glimpse of grass, a reminder of the condition the prairie was in when it went dormant. It is thin and dry but I am grateful for it regardless of condition. It amazes me that even dead and dormant prairie grass can give me a boost.

As winter breaks, the days open up and the light changes as the warmth in the sun becomes known. March is a trickster month. The suns warmth and the drips of melting snow speak of beginnings and starting anew, and yet beginning any thing new is still just out of reach due to frozen underground and freezing nights.

Still the spirits lift with each layer of clothing shed. Geese have returned and jogging and bike riding are doable activities once again much to the Kelpies delight. So is working sheep with stock dogs, just for the heck of it. The Kelpies are joining me once again for the evening flock checks and I’ve been stealing ten or fifteen minutes to work them on sheep, where ever we find ourselves. The past few years have been all consuming ones with the building our home, building that we did ourselves. This is the first spring in four years that feels like it comes with a little more wiggle room, and that we can look to other plans again.

A rural slice of prairie, the home, the dogs, the flock; comfortable familiarity with just these things and little else. These are the very things that made our path a little easier to navigate this past year and bring us into spring with some amount of optimism. This is the way of life and the things that are normal to me and to so many other rural folk, and these are the very things that keep life plugging along as usual while all around the world seems to turn inside out.

In the height of winter my walks often take place on the one road into and out of our property because of the ease and the freedom of travel the road provides. I’m comfortable with winter but heading into February is right about when I begin to feel an eagerness for walks across the prairie, for softer earth and the tickle of grass, for the rough coolness of my favorite sitting stone, even a bug or two would be welcome.

I recently mentioned the unusually warm weather and I fear Mother N might have been listening. The current weather is of the kind expected for January, leading into February. this morning on the way out to feed the flock the air was full of haze, as though every creature simultaneously took a deep breath and slowly exhaled their warm air into the pane of winters cold. Suspended is a word that comes to mind. There was light from the sun but no shine. Blurry sun dogs were evident.

I wish I could say I have put the cold weather time to good use but I’m so unsettled at the moment and have no definitive excuse to give for the fragmentation. Each time I sit down, I’m up again, onto whatever task can be done sooner than the one I’m working on. It’s the fragmented feeling of a lot going on. The prairie is where I sit when I’m frazzled, but at the moment the landscape is a little bitter and even the walks are a little rushed, although no less invigorating given the brisk cold.

I too need to take that big inhale, let myself be suspended there a moment, and then find my pace again because the winter will not wait for me, it will shift again soon.

One of the gifts of living a relatively solitary life amidst acres and acres of Mother Nature is recognizing that nothing is measured in a linear fashion. Not time, not space, not life, not the end of an old year or the start of a new. Instead every aspect is circular in nature. Even the every day exchanges are circular in nature.

Land and animal and everything in between are always unfolding and evolving according to the exchanges of give and take that each individual does. No one species or individual cops out of these exchanges, and the fallout of the give and take creates exchanges for other individuals and thus every species can evolve and unfold in a manner that is conducive to the whole.

By being of circular nature every species is connected in coexistence; all creatively designed to give and take, to live and die, to evolve and unfold – and by virtue of that circular nature – to encompass all that is within.

It’s all too easy to forget that life isn’t just getting from point a to point b. It’s all too easy to forget that my choices are in flux and revolution with natures choices and decisions. It’s easy to forget that I am of a circular nature and I am also within the circle, being encompassed by the nature that is around me.

I live and measure in a linear fashion as much as the next guy, – marking time, setting dates, counting age, working a project from beginning to end, point a to point b. But the knowledge of life being circular is what I want to recall and what I want to be brave enough to go forward with.