LITTLE MOMENTS

The weather the last couple of weeks has been bleak and dreary and today it is snowing again.  On these cold wet days my mind often feels bleak and dreary too, causing little annoyances to take on more significance than they actually merit. 

Depression sometimes makes the days feel never ending as I wait for spring to show itself.  So I read and I write and I meditate because in my heart I know a 'Moment' will happen and 'this too shall pass'. 

Here is one of those 'Moments' I thought worth sharing...it happened five or six years ago during a long cold spell that I thought would never end.

BUFFALO BATTLE

It’s early and the sun is still behind the ridge but the sky is already dawn pink.  The air is clear and cold, no more than 20 degrees, with frost painted over the grass making the ground look like crushed shells sprinkled with diamond dust.  Across the fence in the field beside my house two young buffalo bulls stand eye to eye with their heads braced against each other.   Their legs are rigid and their thick heavy winter capes quiver with tension.  I can see their breath in the frigid air puffing up like smoke from a pipe.  

Suddenly the morning explodes with the clash of horns and the thud of hooves.  They kick up huge chunks of frozen dirt and sod as they hit...push...retreat… hit...push...retreat … thundering back and forth across the field.   In the cold morning air the sound of their conflict is like ice cracking on the river during a spring thaw.   Clouds of steam blow from their nostrils surrounding them in a haze of white vapor.  The battle rages until one of the bulls, froth dripping from his mouth, withdraws to the fence dividing our yard from the fury where he paces in circles spent and defeated.    

Just a year before this encounter I had stood in the same spot in the early morning frost looking up the hill watching flames light the dawn and sparks fill the air like fireflies as my neighbors house burned to the ground.  That morning I said a prayer of thanks that my neighbors weren’t hurt and another that it wasn’t my house that burned.  The morning of the buffalo battle, as I returned to the warmth of my home, I heard a  hammer pound and a board scrape as the contractor began his day rebuilding board by board something that had looked hopeless the year before.

 I remember my mother telling me when I was a little girl to be grateful I had food to eat, two legs to stand on, my eyesight, and a warm house to live in...and I am...but to me gratitude is not only about what I have.  

AT THE END OF THE DAY...gratitude is about how I live... with expectancy and belief in new beginnings.  Believing that for every tragedy, like the fire, there is a wonder just around the corner...like the buffalo battle that was witnessed that morning by no one else in the world but me.