A Quiet Dawn

It's been so wicked cloudy in the last few weeks that, when there is a sunrise, I go for it. I want to see that light spread across the sky and land, across the houses and barns and the backs of black cattle. I want to see it light up the ponds, make sky-holes of them. I keep checking the sky as 7 AM approaches. If there are breaks in the clouds, I know I may have a show to enjoy.

I remember going to Sanibel Island and Siesta Key in Florida and being completely charmed by the fact that sunrise and sunset are community events. People deliberately take time out of their day to go witness what, for them and for me, are miraculous, if daily, events. They lug lawnchairs to the beach and sit and watch.

Rarely content to sit, I like moving around under a beginning sky. The turn of the seasons, and the prospect of a long, mostly dreary cloud-socked MOV** winter,  pushes me to savor what I'm given. Don't get me wrong: clouds are among my favorite things. But I like to see light play on them, so a few breaks in the cover are what I'm after.

**Mid-Ohio-Valley
 Very funny story...Facebook discussion revealed many are wondering what an MOV winter is. Harma pointed out that the Google is no help; tells you it stands for MOV (metal oxide varistor, a type of movie file). The other thing Urban Dictionary will tell you MOV is an abbreviation for mother***** aaaaaaaaaccck! These winters get me down but not that much! Anyway, sorry to be obtuse. Or even obliquely profane, which I try not to be, at least here in my shiny blog living room. I briefly considered defining the acronym as I wrote this post, then thought, ahh, people can Google that if they don't know what MOV means...well...back to our originally scheduled programming.

Some sunrises are a slow bleed of color into a pure blue sky. Those are fine, too. Rare, and fine.

I hurried to see the sun peek over the hills. These heifers are always curious about me, as young things are.

The sun lights the side of a barn, and teases a pond out of a dark hollow. The pond gazes up at the sky. That's all it can see.

 

A Rose of Sharon bush has thrown its seeds and become a wild hedge of them, in particolors of pink, red and white. I just finished shearing my beautiful Satin series "Bluebird" before the 1.2 million seed pods it has set are able to dry out, burst open, and shake their progeny all over my flower beds. The things you don't think about when you're smitten with a Rose of Sharon at the nursery! I've learned through hard experience to do this. If I don't, I get to pull 1.2 million woody seedlings the next fall.

Phoebe came back from a run asking about these flowers she'd seen back in August. She's the reason I headed out the ridge in this unaccustomed direction. I don't know why I get so set in my ways, and only run the paths I'm accustomed to. But I'm glad I followed her lead, this time and so many others. 

 

 

 A new mother comes to the fence to tell me her calf is off-limits. She lowers her head and tosses it in an unmistakable threat. It's awfully late for a wee calf. He'd better eat up, put some weight and hair on before the winds turn biting cold.

 

Another look at this lovely scene, the one that got me hooked. This time, there's no drama in the sky, just the slow bleed of color that I love as well. A few starlings on the wire, singing their wandering song of fall.

Further on, I hear something like a lion roaring, and I realize it's an Angus bull, calling to his herd. 

Some young heifers have been moved across the road, to fresh pastures, and probably to be out of his...sphere of influence, and he doesn't like it one bit. Turn your sound up, and see if his low moans  transport you to the veldt.

            

I turn for home with the sun high in the September sky.
 By the time I'm done watching the cattle and headed back, the barn with the star on it looks like this:



I chug along, headed to the drawing table to get to work.

In the field along my road, I see a sign of the times. All its leaves have fallen, and the milkweed is letting go.

Back at It

A collapsed field sparrow nest from 2017 along the driveway. Japanese honeysuckle, already leafing out. Spring is coming, I think. The daffodils are in suspended animation, leaning into the biting wind.

I raised the blind yesterday on two inches of fresh snow. No matter how many times this happens, I am still surprised. Oh! Snow!

Not as surprised as they are in the Boston area I'm sure. An Ohio March snowstorm is a joke compared to what the North Atlantic can hurl at the New England coast.  I feel for them. So much.

I surprised myself a second time by lacing on running shoes instead of Keen boots, and heading out for a run. You would think that, having not run since oh, August 2017, I might have trouble. The only trouble I had was working up to doing it, getting my mind ready to run. The actual doing is no big deal. I don't have to stop; I don't get terribly winded on the hills; I just chug along. I really expected to be a wreck, but I wasn't. When I think about the first time I ever ran, I stopped eight times in the first mile! Most of it is pacing myself. I didn't know then that it wasn't a sprint; it was a jog. Or maybe it's because I've been hiking most every day since I stopped running. I don't know. I'm just grateful I can still run.

 

Is this thing working? Can't tell... Typical Zick selfie. They're rare, because I usually look like a possum in them. Headband is pure alpaca--best ear warmer I've ever owned. Hair, styled and colored by Old Man Winter and Father Time. I'm kinda digging the steel coming in. I'm going with steely.

All I know is I've got to keep moving. Running gets the blood going to my brain like nothing else. My brain gets ideas when it's got enough oxygen. It gets inspiration. Best of all, it stops feeling sorry for itself.

Because I needed a lesson in gratitude this day, I brushed the snow off the Congletons' stone. I read it whenever I'm tempted to feel sorry for myself. I think of Thomas, oly 25. And I think of Ida B., born one day after Phoebe, albeit 119 years earlier, and gone by the time she was six months old. Just when she was getting really fun to hold and play with. If ever there were a great name for a baby, it's Ida B. I imagine her parents calling her that. Ida B what are you doing?

OUR LOVED ONES AWAIT US. Oh Osborn and Adaline, if you only knew how that simple line tears my heart up.  If you only knew how reading your stone and musing on your too-short lives can realign my thinking, again and again, more than a century later. For what it's worth.

 

 And there are the Long girls, who I'm assuming must have died very young, for the way they're all ganged on the same stone. Jane, Emma, Delia and Ora Lee. Such beautiful names for those babies. Oh, the tears shed over that little tablet.

 

And this one haunts me, because nobody knows who lies there. I think it's probably Civil War era. There are a bunch of these, all in one part of the cemetery toward the back. I honor you, whomever you may be.

I ran to this cemetery nearly every morning for four years at least. I always found something interesting, inspiring, sad, intriguing or wondrous here. I still do. I wish I could still meet my friend Clarence here, and hear his stories of life on an Ohio farm, of fighting in Viet Nam. Oh, the stories he tells. But he quit driving school buses years ago.

So I stop and look at what the snow did to Father overnight.

And Mother.

This post is me, telling y'all to get outside. If you can walk, hike, run, you should be getting out and doing something every single day. Mobility's a gift, and you don't truly realize that until it's taken away. Humans were not built to sit all day! We stand. Walk. Run. Stoop. Squat. Crawl. Nothing physical really happened to me to make me stop running. I just lost the heart to do it. I missed my little black inkblot. Things happened. Well, things happen to everyone.

 My challenge now, taking it up again, is not to do too much, too soon. That's how you hurt yourself. Keeping it under 3 miles to start, and I'm going to make myself take a couple rest days each week, too. Riiight. No, I will. Wiser than I used to be. The stakes are higher.

 

I'll leave you with this little barn and its artful tic-tac-toe junkpile, which never looks better than in a new snow. I think that cool dark crimson might be the perfect color for a building. It seems always to complement the sky, whether it's cerulean or Payne's gray. If the new neighbors mind my walking up their unmarked driveway to take these photos, they haven't let on. People around here just have to put up with me, my relentless pursuit of beauty, and my utter disregard for property lines. Somehow, it works. Probably because I wave and say a few kind words as I go by. Being kind is a passport you carry.

The beauty here is so sharp it sometimes sears me. It's good to start your day that way, blinded by grace.