Wind in the Trees

Last night I went to bed early. Because of that, I woke up very early this morning: about 4:30 if we are being honest. I was laying on my stomach trying to go back to sleep when I gradually became aware that I could hear the wind in the trees outside. Somewhere a neighbor's wind chime jingled in random dis-resonance.  

I realized that in about a month we would be moving into an apartment and there are no trees anywhere around.  This was rather depressing but rather than dwell on it, I took a deep breath and buried myself in the soft wooshing outside my window. 

Nature is hard enough to find in the city and its hard enough for man to find his connection there. It's easy to lose oneself in the false connections of possession   and position with a healthy dose of alcohol or other drug to bookend your week of toil with an alternate consciousness. None of it can take the place of grass beneath your feet or dark chilly water slipping past your body.

The apartment is a smart choice and I feel that it is the right choice. But there is no part of me that doesn't already mourn the breathy voice of the wind, whispering her past and future In The arms de los arboles at 430 in the morning. 

Cresting the Ridge Line

You know sometimes when you crest the ridge line, with its poor soil and rocky outcroppings. You can feel the sun is hot on your skin but the breeze at that altitude is chilly through your shirt sleeves. You contemplate your layers at that moment. 

As your focus shifts from awareness of the arduous demands of the climb, your elevated heart rate and breathing rate, to the vast horizon spread before you now, like a king at the head of the table of your visible feast, you notice the soft vacuum sound of the wind through the tree limbs. You smell the warm dry sent of the shrubs. You hear a few birds or maybe the random scolding Jay. 

It is quiet, but not quiet. Solitary, yet busy.

Rolling by

Well let me just tell you about a beautiful thing I witnessed outside of my door.  It's spring in Texas and with the warm and cold undulating weather comes spring storms.  Here in Central Texas, we dont get the kind of wild weather they do up in Tornado Alley, nor do we get the kind of lightning and precipitation they get down on the Gulf or in Houston.  Even so, we get some beautiful and sometimes violent spring and fall storms. 

Tonight a storm rolled through flashing it's usual brilliant electric effervescence, but this time was the first time I had heard the continuous rumble of thunder, like a passing train.  Flash after flash of lighting in the clouds, one overlapping the other meant the rumbles never began, never middled, never ended.  The sky just rumbled and rumbled.  Finally, big spats of rain began to fall.  Faster and faster until it was a rumbling tumbling flashing downpour.

There are some who are afraid of storms but I just sat outside with my eyes and ears and a big fat grin pointed skywards. 

Gorgeous.