ALIVE

Now is the vicious time of the year when the temperature rises above 100
degrees, the green grass dries into crisp, brown blades, and the clouds, lit by electric
flashes of light, remain impotent. The creek has stopped running, its bed clogged with
fallen trees, the wreckage of early spring snowstorms. The county road swirls with dust
behind each passing car, but in the ditch are delicate bluebells as well as purple thistles,
memorials to the endurance of beauty in an arid world.
As my wife and I walk along the road seldom harassed by vehicles, we find
ourselves transported to another time, another place, a memory embedded in a world of
imagination, where sequoia in California thrust heavenward their cathedral branches as
we walked on the soft, moist carpet of needles and wondered at the light shining through
the mist far above our heads. We were young then, our oldest child an infant strapped to
my back, our future still beckoning and unknown.
Although we lived in the city we were not then, nor have ever been, civilized.
We are creatures born of Mother Earth and find our home in her embrace. How often
during the intervening years have we followed one another along a narrow, winding path
in the woods, stepping over fallen logs, sidestepping pools of water, then tripping over
obtruding rocks because we were too busy noticing the leaves on the trees, the flowers
protruding through the moss? Silence and mystery have followed us all our days as each
new turn on the path has revealed the excitement of the unexpected, the beauty of the
unknown.

Yes, now we find ourselves on an arid road, elderly citizens whose earthly
bodies must soon be scattered as ashes to the winds. Our future has become a past full of
unforgettable moments. But in our imaginations, we have never aged. We are forever
that young couple with their new born child, arrested by beauty wherever it is found.
The mystery of the unknown still beckons. We are curious about the new life that awaits
us after death. We peer through the dust and see the light shining far above. In the
meantime each new day is a gift, an opportunity once again to absorb the beauty of the
trees, the flowers; to relive the memories as stories retold to our children, our
grandchildren, our friends. Our bodies may be exhausted by the heat; nevertheless, we
are eternally alive.