Unfolding

My eyes blink open at the first sign of the new day; gray morning dawn peeking through the plants on my windowsill. The sun rises in the West and I roll out of my comfortable den, embedded with the dogs to greet it. There is space here, the space of being.

Following our morning routine, I feed the ravenous hordes and put on my trail running shoes. The three of us exit the house and head down towards the Marina, our destination, Knife River Beach.

Che and Stella are unleashed and flank my sides, never wandering too far ahead.
Grandfather is breaking through the clouds along the horizon now and the birds on the island are waking up. Seagulls dart through the sky, soaring into the great wide morning. Thirteen ducks come speeding into the bay for a water landing, sliding along the surface of the Great Lake, feet in front, wings extended. Crows in the trees greet each other signaling that a new day has arrived for all of us.

I land on a piece of milky white driftwood, squatting to observe the unfolding. The dogs are at my feet digging their ten thousandth hole; they live for this, competing, pawing the ground for a stick that keeps being pulled under into the quick sand beneath their frantic paws.

I am settling into a new life here; a life with less doing and simply, more being. The time of day, the day of the week, a list of tasks are all unimportant and far away; the remnants of an old way of living in the world.

I sleep when I am tired. I eat when I am hungry. I am content to be out in the dense forest or next to the pebble and sand covered shore line; in these places the subtleties of spring are everywhere, green shoots, leaves uncurling, flowing water. I am these places. I am uncurling, flowing. I am rooted, green. I am expanding and contracting; no longer subject to the minds predilection with externalities.

I observe the stories I tell myself in my mind and I laugh; they are fabricated by the most ingenious of imaginations, events that never happen, worry that never comes to fruition. They are not real.