I stood in the middle of the pasture this morning and experienced the sheer joy of being alive in a universe that is beautiful, vast, chaotic and, somehow or another, reassuring.
It was 5 a.m., and, as is my custom, I was outside doing my daily cardio-vascular exercise of splitting wood by hand and moving it from one pile to another pile with the help of a wheelbarrow. At some point during the night, a light rain had fallen, heralding the transition from oppressively hot, steamy weather to cooler, crisper weather. As I stood there, I savored the welcome chill of the new air and the sky that was electric with sunrise.
Clouds that dominated the night were breaking up as the day ignited and the mackerel sky blazed with blue, lavender, orange, pink and red fingers that stretched forth from the eastern horizon.
In the west, the ghost of a full moon danced just above the tree line as the distant frenzied gobbles of a nomad turkey flock wafted through the drying, cooling air and waved in and out of my hearing.
The masterpiece was so breathtaking that I had to stop in my exercise momentarily and sit down on a rock just to observe the living art.
Dixie, my ten-year-old German shepherd quietly walked over and sat next to me, while her counterpart, the 16-month-old Fritz, milled and snuffled about in the nearby woods, being the wonderful, inexhaustible doofus that he always is.
Staring up at the painted atmosphere, I felt small, tiny, miniscule, and with that sense of insignificance came a shuddering peace that told my soul that all was well.
Dixie looked at me and understood this.
Fritz understood nothing, and he continued just being a dog and celebrating life.
After a few minutes of this solitude, this oneness, this vast and satisfying aloneness, I reluctantly stood and stretched. Then I called my dogs to me and headed into the house to take my morning shower.
It was going to be a good day.