Today is a beautiful early spring day in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Temperature 62-degrees, melting the snow, which is still surrounding our cabin. I took a break this afternoon to just sit out awhile on our patio immersed in the quiet. I was able to drift off into a reverie that is impossible to describe in words, and rare to experience otherwise.
I feel so fortunate to be able to just step outside our cabin, and allow myself to go with the flow of this feeling. I have had this experience countless times in the mountains, at sea, on the seashore, and in the woods.
My earliest recollection of savoring it was when I was eight-years-old. My dad would take me squirrel hunting in the November woodlands near our home in Michigan. After trudging through the fallen leaves all morning we stopped for lunch beneath a forest of barren oak trees. Dad would drift off to sleep after telling me to watch for squirrels near a hole high up in a tree.
With my 22. rifle laying across my lap I would simply sit. And listen. Without a thought in my head, I would drift off into one of these reveries. It got so that I could hear a falling leaf touch the ground. Or hear the slight rustle of leaves and know it was either a bird or animal, maybe a tiny varmint.
How I loved those times. And here is the great denouement. As my father lay dying, just moments before he passed on, I hugged him and told him, "Dad, it won't be long before I'm over there with you." He replied, "Yeah, and when you come I'll take you squirrel hunting."
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