The Walk from the Barn

As the last light of dusk faded into total darkness I walked from the barn.  It was a slow walk.  The evening was silent and the air a comfortable warmth after a day of uncomfortable heat.  Each step was intentional and small.  As I thoughtfully looked down my step moved from over a ground-height curb delineating the driveway from the lawn.

It's been a dry summer.  We remember no rain in August although the neighboring city recorded a trace.  Also July had no rain.  Somewhere around the middle of June there was some rain but at the time the forecast was for some days with no rain and we engaged the contractor to redo the roof on the house.  That's about two and a half months with no rain, not even a drop to turn the dust on the bench to mud.

My steps fell on brown dry pieces of remenants of grass that grew faster than I could mow it a couple months earlier.  Typically during Oregon summers there's no need to mow lawns unless one waters it.  Without thinking one foot rose and moved in front of the other.  The ankle rolled as the ball of the foot pivoted before rising to move forward.  The heel landed waiting for the rest of the foot to touch the ground before the other would take its turn to move forward.  The silence of the evening allowed one to hear the crunch of the grass.

Deep in the soil critters too small to see did what they were created to do to make the isolated system of this earth continue over the million of years.  Far over my head, pretty much just in front of me the moon shone short of being full.  Far beyond the moon, really far beyond the moon and even the sun, there are stars and beyond them more stars.  As vast as space may be, the world under my feet is small, really small, far beyond our imagination.

What a marvelous system we live in, one where we as humans have the resources and skills to creatively maintain a indefinitely but improving existence of the earth's offerings.  Yet as small as the critters are beneath my feet are, so small are we in the bigger scheme of things we call outer space.  Just as the critters can't imagine our existence we can't fully understand or imagine the existence of other beings in this vast space of orbs of light we call stars and bits of dust we call planets.

Thank God for this beautiful walk in the cool of the evening and for not having to understand the complexity of life around us.