The skies here stay overcast this time of year, sometimes for 10-12 days in a row. It’s a test. We’re a week in now with only partial sun due next Sunday and Monday, then full clouds return. Just this morning, it struck me this hunger is for color. It’s a visceral longing, deep and growling. I pull a memory of summer gardens from my mind and bathe in it, and it refreshes and restores me. Turning from the dream, I find myself gazing at the scene outside my window, saying to myself, “Still, there is this.”
Between snows, the winter floor lays bare, a tapestry of fallen leaves, pressed against the earth, protecting her, dissolving into her, nourishing her with their return. They’re soft and giving beneath my boots, their musky feminine fragrance enveloping me as I walk, tasting like that wondrous moment exactly between death and birth.
The only tale the woods can tell is the moment’s truth. There’s no pretense here. No fabrication. No memory or longing. Just the sheer isness of forest and snow: Sunlight on tree bark, the punctuation of animal tracks and long shadows, the call of a crow accentuating the silence. All of it breathing the shimmering Yes.
The week seems to have flown past, but I had a chance to relax over a cup of coffee this morning with my 80-some year old neighbor, Bob. He’s a colorful old codger who has worked as a farmer, mill electrician, and long-haul trucker. He’s a ham radio enthusiast and often tells me about flying his plane to Alaska one year to see if he could find a cousin’s grave..
He recently had a pacemaker installed and it’s taken him a few days to get his bearings. But today he was feeling great and was full of tales about his truck driving capabilities.
He told me about the time he asked Tom, the owner of a bridge painting company, why this big piece of equipment was sitting in the yard. “It’s too big to fit into the garage,” Tom told him. “Nobody can get it in.”
Bob looked at it and at the garage door, and back at the equipment. “Sure it can fit,” Bob said. “I’ll back it in there for you.” Tom said they had measured the thing. At its widest point, it was only two inches smaller than the door.
To everybody’s amazement, Bob hooked it up to his pick-up and backed it in, slick as a whistle. He grinned ear to ear as he told me the story, proud as he could be.
“Well,” I said, “You know what Henry Ford said, don’t you? ‘If you believe you can—or if you believe you can’t—you’re probably right.’”
Bob took that in and laughed, slapping his knees. “I never heard that one before! That’s pretty good.”
Have you ever accomplished something you weren’t quite sure you could do, but thought maybe you could if you tried? If you have, you understand Bob’s big grin. It’s a great feeling to have your faith in yourself validated, to stretch beyond what you know you can do into the untried and then succeed.
We all too often let fear of the unfamiliar get in our way. We worry about how we’ll look to others if we try something new and it doesn’t work out. But every effort is a learning experience; you gain knowledge about what works and what doesn’t. You expand your horizons. You build new skills; you learn how to work around limitations. Always, you can feel good about yourself for overcoming your doubt and hesitation, for trying something new.
And in most cases, if you really flub up, at least you have a good story to tell and, often, a chance to laugh at the mess you made of things.
We don’t often think of our daily challenges as requiring courage, but courage is exactly what you’re using when you dare to try something new. And as with any strength, you build it by using it. You gain confidence in yourself. You find yourself saying, “Sure I can!” or “I don’t know, but I’ll give it a try.” You start acting like “The Little Engine that Could,” chanting “I think I can; I think I can,” and making it all the way to the top of the big hill.
Thinking you can is the key. As old Henry Ford said, whether you believe that you can, or can’t, you’re probably right. The next time you’re facing a challenge, give it a try.
Wishing you a week brimming with confidence and success.
All at once, a breather, a moment of respite from the cold. Temperatures that in summer would have chilled me feel so balmy to me now that I go hatless and leave my mittens behind. It won’t last. February snow is no surprise. But today the sun is shining and I remember the taste of spring, its sounds and fragrances. The creek wears a layer of water over its ice. And on its banks, even the trees are dancing.
Before they even slip into their golden-yoked shells, before their bodies even begin to form bones and beaks and brains, the spirits of birds dream of flying. That is why they come here. They come pushed by dreams of sky rushing through feathers, of gliding through air, of darting among the branches of trees. They dream of swooping and falling and climbing again on strong wings, of racing with clouds and drifting on breezes. It will take effort, this dream. But they hold to it until it turns true and they find themselves soaring and free.
The days have been dark with heavy skies. Today, for most of the day, it rained. But as I crossed the bridge from one side of the river to the other, I noticed that, beyond the fog, the clouds were parting, a new light shining through. And how alive the world seemed, as if it were filled with newborn joy.
For as long as the lake could remember the air had been cold. Day or night, whether it danced as a breeze or blew with the force of a gale, cold was its unrelenting story. And the lake believed it and knew itself to be ice, stretching from shore to shore, strong enough to hold the weight of a deer or of a man. Then, one January day, the rays of the sun, warm as spring, fell on its surface, gleaming with truth. At first, the ice resisted. “I am ice,” it said. But the light of the sun kept burning with love, insisting, “You are more. You are ice, but you are more.” And the lake began melting and rippling with joy, and at last it knew that it was liquid and free.
You think of her with her dazzle on, the shimmering heaps of powdery snow flashing in the sunlight, sparkling beneath a full moon, the etched branches and frosted boughs, the glittering ice. Nothing can compare. But most days, she shuffles through the hours unadorned, and unless you have the wisdom to peer past the surface, you might mistake her for some plain Jane, too ordinary to warrant your attention. Only those who truly look can truly see her beauty– or deserve to.
For one more day, the snow held, more falling during the night and into the morning until every branch and twig was clothed in its powdery light.
The sight was almost too much to bear, and you could walk in it only slowly, mindful and silent lest you disturb something holy, even while your spirit leapt and shouted with joy.
