Each winter when the deep cold sets in, I begin to think about the animals outside. More than once opening the front door I have startled deer that creep close to the stone exterior of the house during the night for warmth. Since our recent snow fall I have found all sorts of new animal tracks in the snow blanketing the decks. Some I recognize; others I am wondering about. For the life of me, they look like bobcat.
Winter is the time of waiting. Come January a relative quiet descends. We still go about our lives but the urgency of the seasons has receded. In their wake they leave a new year with its fresh slate quietly waiting to be filled by our plans. Looking out across the snow on the deck and paths, I thought of how our lives this time of year resemble the fresh snow. No tracks yet-- or so we think until in the quiet we take time to look more closely and notice they are tracks in the snow, laid down by unknowns perhaps and leading off into directions we might not have considered. It is an important moment. We get a chance to wonder about what we want to do instead of ambling out into our lives in the same way we always have or like the deer, become startled by them. We get not only fresh snow but the opportunity to make fresh tracks.
Remember the way you are all possibilities
you can see and how you live best
as an appreciator of horizons
Admit that once you have got up
from your chair and opened the door,
once you have walked out into the clean air
toward that edge and taken the path up high
beyond the ordinary, you have become
from your chair and opened the door,
once you have walked out into the clean air
toward that edge and taken the path up high
beyond the ordinary, you have become
the privileged and the pilgrim,
the one who will tell the story
David Whyte, 'Mameen' from River Flow
the one who will tell the story
and the one, coming back
from the mountain,
who helped to make it.
from the mountain,
who helped to make it.
David Whyte, 'Mameen' from River Flow
1 comment:
Thanks for the poem
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