Early morning mist on the mountain
Some days we wake to a blanket of clouds, our head in the middle of the mist. Soft, safe, protected in our own little world. So far away from what you might call the “real” world. Does that make my day-to-day world unreal or somehow less real? Or just a different kind of real?
As the sun rises so does the blanket of fog lift and clear and we open our eyes to the truth. The beautiful mountain that lies before us, somehow in more apparent light than we remember it to be. Like new life exposed after a rain storm. Always fresh, always different, always somehow changing, the mountain or me.
And slowly the reality of our world becomes more plain, more real. No longer able to hide behind the secretive veil. And I consider the change, and wonder how it would feel if I could pull back the blanket of fog and remain safe and protected for just a little while longer…
But life is about change. Like water in a clear mountain pool, without change, it will be stagnant. We do not remain today as we were yesterday. This is a part of life, a part of the mountain, a part of each of us as certain as the seasons. We can hold onto the past, and so many try to do. Clinging and grasping and clawing to remain grounded in a time and place no longer.
Some things, on the other hand, are slow to change, remain relatively unaffected by our decisions, by our neighbors, by the choices of mankind.
“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”
– Nelson Mandela
And so in hopes of remaining in the cocoon of a world around me in this languid fog, I hide protected and safe in the world of yesterday. But today is a new day. And how foolish I would be to hide my head in that mist. I would rather stand tall and face the change, perhaps, in fact, try to create the inevitable change as best I can.
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
Early morning mist on the ranch.