Enjoying the day

The season is turning. Slowly, ever so slowly, the frost is working its way out of the ground. A skunk woke up the other night and though we didn't see her, you could smell her all over the campus. Normally skunks don't like their smell any more than we do, so the odor probably means she ran into a coyote or a dog as she was waking up from a long winter's nap.

Most of the winter, deer were scarce around here. I'd see their tracks but rarely glimpse them. Yesterday morning a half mile east of here a doe and four fawns (rapidly coming up on their one-year birthdays) sauntered across the road in front of me. This morning at first light, the same group (probably?) wandered through the meadow below my cabin on their way back to bed. I suspect this is the doe and twin fawns I have seen here quite a lot, along with another pair of fawns that likely got orphaned along the way. At any rate, they're out and about more during daylight hours, and it's fun to see them.

I was looking out at the lake in our youth building this morning and saw the bright flash of a cardinal in the trees. I know they're here, but they rarely come to my feeders.

So things are changing around here -- the patterns of the wild things and the humans alike. It's fun to have a front row seat.

I've been deep in conversation for most of the last day or so with my daughter Mathea. We compare notes on how the seasons change internally as well as externally. We've been playing with metaphors and comparing notes on music and making plans for upcoming adventures. It's great fun, and sometimes piercingly painful and others, incredibly joyful. The way relationships should be, I guess.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I don't have any particular pondering to grind through today. Instead, I'm deeply grateful for the good things in life, whether they are comfortable all the time or not. Life is an incredible gift full of diverse joys and sorrows, and it's a good thing to live it to the fullest extent possible.

So we just got back from sliding around the trails on the 4-wheeler. And we had one burning question when we started out: With two of us on board, and the St. Patrick's Day sunshine beating down on the hillside and the snowmelt keeping the mud as slick as possible, will we be able to get up that one hill way back in the woods?

Answer? Yes -- but it was quite a ride.