Steam rises from the clover field as the dew is warmed by the sun and I listen. Not for birdsong but for loud, crashing footfalls — I listen for bear or moose. Hearing only small, non-threatening sounds, I set onto the path in the backfield.
It feels and sounds, and heck, tastes like a morning in Scotland — cool, bright, and soggy. Yesterday’s raindrops patter through the forest and birdsong praises the new day.
How often — mostly — we miss this, this welcoming of a new morning. This praise and angelic hymn of nature calling to its maker. Morning hustle negates the praise — covers it in hurry and alarms and a cereal bar out the door. Morning hustle covers the new day in distraction until it’s unrecognizable.
This, this, is real life. This is what time actually is and feels like — slowly passing, sun rising, peaking, fading to night. And this is the peak of all of it — the peak of the year and its goldenness. This is the fertile 20-somethings — when harvest is close and the light is so incredibly brilliant.
But there’s a slight shift in the breeze this morning, in the slanting of the sun’s rays, that hints at the downhill. The slow rolling into autumn.
The decline is wondrous, too.
That’s when you feel the wind in your hair. That’s when — arms outstretched like an 8-year-old on his bike — the descent is breathtaking and far less work than the uphill climb if we give praise and savor it.
You make we yearn to share these mornings up there with you. You’ve “reset” time in incredible words.