Everyday Miracles
“The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day. Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours, life will seem to have none of its magnificent geography, only a length. It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.”
Diane Ackerman
A Natural History of the Senses
The small town where I grew up is not much to look at if all you see is the town. The City Council and Mayor have given it their best shot when it comes to planting trees and flowers and sprucing up the downtown, but that does not disguise the fact that the city is in decline. If you look down, that’s what you will see. But if you look up and out, your eyes will be assaulted with more beauty than you can imagine. Mountains completely surround the town. They have names like Table Rock, Hawk’s Bill, Short Off and Grandfather; in every season, they are a feast for the eyes.
There is a hill above my mother’s house that I walked to everyday just to check the mood of the mountains. I loved best early morning before the mist had lifted, when it looked as though the clouds had come down to visit the river and were reluctant to go home. On clear days, every rock, every fold, every nuance of structure was visible from my hilltop perch. On misty days, the mountains rose above the cloud line, brooding, dark and mysterious. In spring, patches of luna moth green were splashed among the deep blues of fir and spruce. In autumn…well, I could go on and on.
The point is that real miracles occur around us every day. They are especially easy to see when one is in a place of great beauty, but if you ‘have eyes to see’ they are everywhere. Right now, spring is in full riot in my neck of the woods. Daffodils push up through juniper hedges with fierce determination, forsythia blazes its golden glory in every yard and the tulip trees create magenta snow each time the wind blows. It’s hard to get anything done with so much beauty around.
I hope that today you will find one small miracle, or maybe even the ‘savage and beautiful country’ that our senses provide. It is the small, daily joys that make up a happy and satisfied lifetime.
In all things give thanks,
Jane
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