Snow Covering More of the Mountain Tops

  I was told that six miles outside of town, Diamond Ridge at higher elevation,  the snow was sticking to the ground last night.  I was assured it would melt before morning.  I stepped out my front door with my feet bare this morning to shoot these photographs.  I walked out slowly to the edge of the bluff, in awe, and returned  more quickly, in pain.  My senses were alive.  I smelled the crisp air and wet trees, heard the birds chirping and then chirping more loudly at me, saw the water, sunlight and beauty of the snow on the mountains, felt the cold, damp earth on the soles of my feet and tasted the moisture.   Alive. 

Remember recently when I wrote about New York State of Mind?  I wrote that hauling my stuff, driving myself in that van and taking care of myself were not things I would want to trade.  I wrote that these things were real.  I read a paragraph last night that explained this better than I could say it at the time.; I'll get to that in a moment.

I have picked up Tom Brown, Jr's books again.  The bookshelf in the kitchen holds several that came with the cabin.  I had started with The Tracker years ago and then had been caught up in life.  I realized, while looking at that shelf, that I have everything I need right here to go deeper, to finish things I had begun, to explore.   I knew I had things to do while I was here, in this moment, in this place.  Yes, there is this exam for which to study, survival guides to read that will remind me of priorities, hikes to take, people to meet, foods to try, sensory experiences only lived by living them.  I knew right there in front of that bookshelf that I would remember who I am here.  I had that remembering supported when I opened the front of The Search and I read the following paragraph written by Tom Brown, JR :

I once asked my old Apache friend and teacher, Stalking Wolf, why he would not be cold in the winter or hot in the summrer.  His answer was, "I am both, but I am not bothered by them."
"Why?" I asked.
He looked at me for a long time, trying to decide, I feel, if I was ready to receive his answer.  Then he said, "Because they are real."
I've spent a long time trying to understand those words the only way I know how--by living them.

After a month of living in Alaska, hiking around the villages, carrying my own bags, packing in my food, humbly observing the ways of subsistence living, having enough quiet to hear my own thoughts and listening to the stories of others, I was delighted to have sitting in my home the books that I longed to read at one time and had forgotten about.   The circle, the cycle, the everything we need will appear in the moment the universe knows we need it, fills my mind.  Much is taken, much is given.  And in every moment we have exactly what we need.  In a word, faith. 

Natives have been reminding me that the eagle has to teach its baby how to be an eagle, the deer teaches her fawn how to be a deer, the lion teaches her cub how to be a lion and a human teaches its baby how to be a human.  If we are to survive, take only what we need, give back more than we take and learn to be a human, it would seem the quality of the teacher would really matter.  I see parents scolding their chilren for rages, for acting out, for being greedy, for not sharing and the simple lesson I am reminded of here:  The eagle teaches its baby how to be an eagle.  How powerful is that?