cities and mountains

I am used to falling asleep to crickets chirping, an occasional horse whinny and the silent sway of pasture grasses.  Tonight it’s traffic, police sirens and the noise of downtown Seattle.  The dark curtains of the hotel room on Sixth Avenue do their best to block the light; I prefer my curtinless windows of home that show the stars.  I love where I live and am very grateful for the goodness of the land my family calls home.  Such an interesting idea home, what emotions it invokes and pictures and dreams it brings to the mind.  I hear some screaming outside and wonder why would you call this wretch of a place home, the same thought the screaming person would have to the stinky horse pasture that surrounds the place I long for.

I look to the beautiful mountains that surround and dominate the skyscrapers that rest at the heart of the city. Why would you ride an elevator when your legs or better yet your horse could draw you to the tops of the peaks?  The winter has been mild but long and the mountains seem to call my name.  They are a voice of a lost lover who whispers for me to come back to those arms that cradle and vanquish the fears and worries of life.  They offer all I need, water, food, shelter and freedom.  The building out my window tonight is a prison wall to tall to escape.  Perhaps the person dancing in the window across the street fills the same way to the wild as I do to his or her city.

The voices outside my door in the hall are loud full of laughter and thoughtlessness. Far away dead Indian Creek whispers over the rocks as a fly rod tickles the air.  From the far meadow the elk breaks the evening silence with a call of authority.  While the quaking aspen play a song for the spruce pine.  Doors slam open and shut now with some running teenage voices squalling with that annoying sound they make when your kid voice is arguing with your adult voice.  Nothing like the crackle of the fire as the North Star gives way to the light show of the spinning planets of eternal time.  Interesting what we each view as fun.

Each of us is living an amazing life trying to figure it all out and to live it.  For some the time is long and well spent, for others long and wasted.  For some it is short and full for others short and empty. It sometimes is full of question and in a grand moment full of answers.  Around here it is lived very fast, at home it’s lived a lot slower.  In the end it is just lived spent and over.   I am just grateful that for me it is spent in a saddle occasionally in the mountains and always with the Lord and my family close by.  I am glad the guy across the street can live it dancing in his window.  I am also glad he has clothes and I have curtains in my hotel room.  In the end though I hope we all can just be grateful we have life.  No matter if it’s in the city, country, or somewhere in-between. No matter if it’s long or short or in the middle.  This is what we have.  I recently heard a wise man say “come what may and love it”.  I love my dear friend Kirk Young, now come what may.