Put your feet down where your soul wants to go

Despite the fact that I managed to put my binoculars, the good ones, 8x42, in the car so that after work, after the gym, I’d go there and just be there and see what I can see. It was that hope really, of connecting with the wetlands that lifted my spirits enough and got be out of the house to the job.

When push came to shove, when the day was over, I was actually mighty fine considering the long day and a gaff at a meeting. My mood was lifted. The fog was gone from the wetlands on the way out this morning toward work. I guess that was a sign.

So here I am then, home now after a really delicious meal whose component parts are all interesting and together it was a fabulous creation that was totally satisfying; satisfying to conceive of it also to tell the truth; and I didn’t go to the wetlands. What happened was this argument I had with myself. I was tired after work, after the gym and even though I remembered, which was something of a miracle, that I had my binos in the car, on the way to the gym, I also knew, on the way to either home or the wetlands, that I would regret one thing or the other. I’d regret going there and not getting home sooner to see Molly and start dinner. I would regret not going there and seeing whatever there was to see. I’m sitting here now, night’s firmly settled in at 7:20PM and I really wish I could go there.  I wouldn’t see much of anything. There’s no moon to speak of tonight. None at all from what I can tell.  I’m here at my desk, the window is open; an occasional car is going by somewhere near and the sound it makes somehow amplifies the night and the moisture hanging in the air.  I wish I had chocolate. Who doesn’t after a good meal? There’s no room for it. There is for the cool air that’s meeting my right side because the open window is just 18 or so inches from me. A dog is barking across the street. I hear cars in the distance; a child’s shrieking. 

I remembered the sounds I was met with yesterday, the honking and rattling as the Cornell people describe it of the great blue heron and the belted kingfisher.  It’s all connected. It’s all good.  I wondered why I let everything that got to me get to me – some attitudes, some disappointments, some frustrations. I wondered why when I was making the happy noises that I let loose on the way to the gym, why I let the turkeys get between me and these good things. They’re not worth it. These good things are really worth knowing all the time or as much as possible.  I wonder why but I know it happens.

Right now I have two pair of binoculars in the car. The good ones and the ones that were really good until they came along. There’s nothing to see with them now. But then again, I guess some things don’t require magnification. Just patience and putting your feet down where your soul wants to go.