Musing

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.