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 |  My 5th house in Blogville, located at the corner of Humor and Human Interest |
"Invalid Item"  started 2005 ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** "Invalid Item" started 2006"Invalid Item" started 2008"Invalid Item" started 2012Above are links to four other blogs I've done over the years here at WDC. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** My reason for being. My one true love. My universe. Me and my bride, Melinda McClain Welcome to my fifth home here in Blogville. Over the past two years I have gone through some changes. Widowhood, stroke, depression....all life stages of life I experienced. This is my attempt to move on, to get over it, to.....live again. So now I have a new blog house here in my beloved cyber-city of Blogville and the intersection of Humor and Human Interest. Come by for a visit anytime you like, friends are always welcome. We'll sit a spell and talk. I want this new Blog home to be light and airy so the topics I write about will reflect what passes for humor for me...most of the time. I will also write about a subject near and dear to me: Animals. All sorts of animals...great and small. That is not to say I won't get serious at times, I will, but one thing I won't do (hopefully) is write about politics. As Val Kilmer said in Tombstone: "My hypocrisy only goes so far." |
| I took a walk in the woods. The woods so deep and dark, intimidating to some but a welcome refuge for me. My entire life, when things got unbearable, when I was down to the last card in the deck and felt helpless, the forest always proved to be my solace, the power source that recharged my batteries. Whenever I'm at a loss as to what to do next and I just want the merry-go-round of life to simply stop and let me off, I seek the forest and its refuge. The last walk I took in my private forest was three years ago, in December. There was no bright blanket of snow on the ground nor necklaces and earrings of ice decorating the bare skeletons of the trees. The sky was leaden and overcast and the color brown ruled the landscape. Brown....dead leaves, mud, sodden paths cutting through a damp land. It was as if the land and I shared a common mood. I ignored the somber surroundings and struck off along my now familiar path, past the small pond which lay like a large silver dollar at the edge of the woods and past the section of old fence, long abandoned, onward I walked, disappearing into the forest. Down a depression in the forest floor and up the other side to a high point I tramped, until at last, I reached the highest point in the landscape. I found my favorite stump, the place I always rest and consider the insignificance of man when compared to the beauty of nature. Settling my old bones upon the stump, I did what I always do when I visit the forest, I listened to the song of the wind. The wind blows fairly constant in this part of the country. Sometimes it comes as a gentle breeze on a hot Summer day and at other times it blows with near gale-force during a Spring storm, but it is always present. Whether it is accompanied by the rustling leaves or merely the bald, shaking, limbs of the forest giants, the wind always sings its song to anyone who will listen. For a time, I know not how long, I sat quietly and listened to the music of the Wind and, as always, I was at peace and I was strengthened by Nature's instrumental. Finally though it was time to go. I opened my eyes and arose from my seat, and continued on my way. I walked around the edges of my property line and spotted rabbits and squirrels, and a few skittish deer. I came across tracks from both the coyote and the cougar and I watched a hawk ride the air currents above my head. It came to me then, as it always does on these walks of mine, that THIS is Life. This is what is important and nothing else. We humans are a part of a great whole, we are merely cogs in the real life that is this planet and when we are done here, strutting and posturing and trying desperately to be something more, we all go back to this Earth and it spins on without us just as it was meant to do. Somehow I am always comforted by that thought that when I'm gone there will be another to take my place and when, on the day that all humans are gone, the Earth, this beautiful blue marble, will continue to spin along its course and wait to be discovered again by whoever comes next and there will always be a “Next”. So. I returned from that last walk, refreshed and accepting of whatever comes next. After all, that is the way of life isn't it. We do our best then we move on. I wish everyone had the time and the opportunity to take these walks in the forest and know the same peace and tranquility to be found there. |
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