Cricket, back from her ocean trip a month now, has been adjusting to winter. Gray skies, flat colors, subfreezing temperatures, inversions. She has been hiding indoors, forgetting walks on the trail sustain her during the winter months. Instead, Cricket’s been focusing on comfort – staying warm and safe indoors – by the fire, on the couch, wrapped in blankets. She justifies and rationalizes that this is “self-care” and maybe it is? One evening, Cricket realizes that she is a bit edgy; that she feels the doldrum of GRAY and that her heart is one big bucket of GRAY GUNK.
Creativity stifled… Joy constricted… Rather Lifeless…
Proverbial Ground Hog Day
Cricket finally admits that she feels flat. Listless. Mechanical. That she is only going through the motions. Cricket wonders how she got in this state, unknowingly. How could she find herself in this moment of GRAY? She asks herself what is missing and slowly, she concludes, that she is missing nature tonic – that this essential elixir has been omitted for weeks now. But that becomes background noise Cricket blocks out as she goes through each 24-hour cycle of GRAY and COUCH.
Cricket is in a bit of a trance.
But tonight, tonight is different. She stands in the kitchen and looks out the window, fully expecting GRAY. Instead, bright ivory-colored clouds above the nearby red-mottled cliffs grab her attention. She walks closer to the window to study Non-GRAY. She begins to feel home, and that home is right here, right now, in her very heart. Her heart enlarging as she looks at The Wonder! Dancing clouds become brighter, a glorious white light. The evening evolves moment to moment – Cricket, waking up. She watches clouds turn gently into a bedazzling salmon color that lights up the entire western skyline. Cricket is suddenly inspired to head into the subfreezing air to gather more of the light into her heart. She is amazed by the depth and brilliance of the color and is enthralled watching as the shapes and hues transform. Cricket’s dehydrated heart, becoming satiated.
Standing on the patio, soaking it in, Cricket notices her neighbor’s truck pull into the adjacent driveway. Neighbor steps out of truck. Cricket moves across the patio to make sure neighbor sees the beauty of the moment, but neighbor beat her to it as neighbor says, Look at that moon! Neighbor pointing at the nearly full moon rising in the east. Cricket, no coat and only in socks, walks across frozen rocks to see it. Cricket and Neighbor stand in the moment and together affirm the radiance of the evening. Cricket’s heart now brims full. This micro-dose of nature and neighbor mainlined and infused; Cricket now awakened.
