squirrel. But no, she was carrying one of her own kittens. She brought it into the garage and then trotted back into the woods where she had dropped her young. She carried the other one back a few moments later, and we set up a nest for her and looked all around the fields and woods to see if there were any more. Coco is but a kitten herself, yet she brought her kits in to shelter where she has been nurturing them for several days.
We were changed by this sight, too, and taken out of ourselves into the world of nature.
Many years ago, I made a vow to myself. I changed my hours to accommodate that silent promise. I have never regretted the commitment: Never miss a sunrise. Never miss a sunset. These are the most beautiful times of day, the quietest. The break of day gives me a feeling like no other, fills me with energy and hope. When the sun sets, I feel a part of all the cycles of seasons and days, of years and centuries. I have been a participant in life, not just a bystander.
I wish I could have seen these hills when they first saw sun. But it doesn’t matter, really. Each morning is like the first morning. When I see the dawn break, the words to that remarkable song by Harry Chapin run through my mind. The sun makes not a sound, yet it strikes deep chords in me and it starts that tune running through my mind.
Praise for the morning, the words say. And this morning, like the first morning.
Even if you watch for a thousand years.
Many years ago, I made a vow to myself. I changed my hours to accommodate
that silent promise. I have never regretted the commitment:
Never miss a sunrise. Never miss a sunset.
The Coming of Spring
Some days here, you can sense the coming of spring to these Ozarks hills. There is the urgency of the morning tapping at your mind with the insistence of crickets. There is the dawn itself, with its ruddy cheeks, its promise of a long day’s sun. This special dawn is more confident, healthier, stronger, livelier than it was during the long winter.
The morning, on these sweet Ozarks days, shrugs its shoulders like a young child. You can feel the warm smile of the day on your face when you open the door. April rushes up to you on a girl’s silver skates and sprays you with a splash of icy breeze delicate as a silken shawl. A deep breath tastes of cedar and redbuds and dogwood blossoms. The lake breeze is fresh, bright as sleek trout moving in shallow creek waters.
A once-dry creek bed fills with snow melt, breaks through a deep hollow, wends its way along the thawed ground seeking life and the mingling with the big lake that was once a mighty river. The bluffs, still frigid with ice and secrets, catch the warming sun, reluctantly shed their long ermine beards, become shawls of dripping waterfalls. You can hear the water’s ancient song long into the night.
Spring in the Ozarks is fickle, relentless, full of surprises. It brings out the raccoons, the opossums, the brown robber birds. Gray squirrels skitter down the oak trees with flaring paramecium tails and chittery voices. The air soars across the newborn land, full of promises and pleasant whispers.
This is the way Spring is for me here. This is the way it moves in and heads for summer. This is the way it sings its green songs, weaves its gold sun threads during its time of birthing. It is awesome in its quietness, splendid in its muscling youth. You can’t help but feel the continuity of the universe, the perfect rhythms beneath the seeming chaos, the symmetry of life itself.
A man doesn’t need much more than this.
Spring in the Ozarks is fickle, relentless, full of surprises.
A deep breath tastes of cedar and redbuds and dogwood blossoms
The Butterflies
One day I saw a butterfly float through the woods on golden wings. Free of the cocoon and winter, he fluttered across the lane in a scurry, threading an invisible flight path in the warm spring sun, like a dancer having nothing to do, showing off his new wings.
Two weeks before, I saw his brother, too early for spring, perched on a broken branch clustered with cedar sprigs that had fallen to the snow.
Thinking it alive and resting from its flight, I stooped down to look at the creature more closely. It didn’t move. My hand reached out to touch its wing and I saw its feet were fastened to the branch. It had been frozen there, its wings spread wide. Perfectly preserved, it looked as though it had been waiting for the cold to pass.
I brought the butterfly home, still locked to its foothold on the browned cedar branch, and set it on one of the bookcases.
The quick and the dead, the one a flight, skimming on the warm zephyrs of Cedar Creek, the early butterfly caught in the chill, as though pinned to the earth midway in its course by a lepidopterist. I take no meaning from these things, but only marvel that some beings fly and some are stiffened by the late, hanging-on winter.
The butterflies must have a time clock inside them that tells them it is time to break free of the branches and head for open spaces. Nature sometimes plays the fickle lady and taunts her delicate charges with the whispering lips of death.
This is what happened with the frozen butterfly. He was no less the flying dancer, but he looked up at blue skies over the lake and felt the warmth of a cloudless day too soon. Eager fellow, anxious to strut and show off his bright yellow wings, he became that year’s Icarus of the forest, a victim of unperfected cryogenics.
The butterfly will never come alive again, never dance on the air, never fly above the gelid perch where he last drew breath.
The one who waited, the one I saw dazzle his way above the still snowy earth, might make his way into summer. I hope he does. He has my heart in his wings. He flitted away like an old movie, into infinity, his body growing smaller and smaller until he finally winked out of sight.
There is really no vocabulary to explain such things. It’s just that we all have a quirk about life and sometimes life has a quirk about us. The butterfly that flew away is just as gone as the one that I placed on my bookcase. I see them both equally in the tapestry of life. Both are vivid in my mind, both are real. Both are gone.
Butterflies now give me a very strange feeling. Life is so ephemeral, for them and for us.
I wish I could explain how I feel about them. I wish they could explain about me.
Butterflies now give me a very strange feeling.
Life is so ephemeral, for them and for us.
Farm in Morning
He stood on the steps of morning. Stood on the bare lean brink of it and looked at the wet green field beyond the fence that kept the cows away from the house. The field was dulled by morning dew because the sun had not yet risen above the horizon, and its green was soft, like fur, and quiet like a thick pale-green quilt atop a featherbed. It was so quiet he could hear his heart beat, and his stomach fluttered at that moment as it always did early when the smell
