redpinemountain.com

From the Bottom; Halfway Up

I admit it. Little by little, I’ve been sinking into a mood characterized by worry. Then three things happened simultaneously that sent my bleak mood into a depression. My computer crashed, Mountain Man left for another work trip to the Ozarks and I was alone on Red Pine Mountain. The weather was gray and the wind blew incessantly. Not really cold yet not warm, every day mirrored my negative thoughts.

Instead of being productive, I retreated to the couch, watched reruns of old sitcoms and stuffed myself with my favorite comfort food from my youth, Drake’s Ring Dings. At night, I slept in our foam bed which has never recovered its shape after its deep freeze this winter. K-Whip and I tossed and turned trying to find one flat patch in which to rest. And each morning, I awoke more tired than the day before. Without my computer and my blog, I started to sink into a mire of depression so profound I wondered if there was a way out. So many problems on so many fronts and no solutions appeared to my beleaguered mind.

Mountain Man returned. We resumed our discussions of what to do with our lives in our aging years. There is no easy answer.

Warm, unseasonable weather has arrived in the Northeast Kingdom. My computer is repaired and Heather has my blog up and running. Everything is fixed except me.

But there are still chores to be done and today, Mountain Man and I decided to move Khrysta’s winter pasture and return her to the mountain she so dearly loves.

Off we go. I am puffing as we climb thanks to my recent Ring Ding binge. Mountain Man sees a snake. “The first of the season,” he says. It skitters into the underbrush before I can get a photo. I drop all the stakes and wait to see if it will reappear. It doesn’t. Oh, well. That’s the way it’s been lately.

We come in for lunch. I think about this new blog and I start a new cycle of worry. “What the heck am I doing with my life?”

We head out again. On his tractor, now with a new tire, Mountain Man disappears into the woods. I go visit Khrysta. She senses my moods and tries to entice me to play. She smiles for me, runs and bucks and kicks up her heels with the joy of being free to run on so many acres once again. I sit and watch her. I’m not easily impressed these days. Khrysta tries another tactic. “Mud, Mom, see it?” Right there, in a huge pile of mud, she drops and rolls and the rolls some more. Hmm, I get the hint.

I lie down in the field. I’m still for a few minutes and I allow my senses to come alive. The smell of the earth surrounds me, fresh and loamy from the recent snow melt, and the sky above me is an azure blue. Pine permeates the air, clean and sweet with pitch. Khrysta nickers to me softly. I know what she’s saying, trying to tell me in her way. I stop, listen and let go. I start to climb out of the hole where it has been so dark and lonely. No, I’m not all the way there but halfway out and climbing.

“Joy is not the absence of suffering. It is the presence of God.” Robert Schuller