Wow! What an awesome morning to be alive.
Perhaps due to an extra hour of sleep or perhaps due to a call I couldn't resist, I was able to enjoy a run in the woods this morning. What a time! What startling beauty. The receding green has now almost completely given way to the emergent color falling everywhere. The paths of hardened dirt are softened with a carpet of color padding every step. You can see more, with less leaves at eye level and above, and the texture of all that is alive in the woods makes quite a chorus of joy to the eye. A deer bolted across the stream right in front of me. And around the next bend, one of my favorite 100-yard stretches of path was lit up this time with what seemed like the Christmas lights of nature -- a whole row of straggly and overgrown fire bushes reaching for the forest sky blazed red with the morning sunlight streaming through them just above my head. It was one of the more beautiful sights of the morning...one that nature had organized and that quite out-shines the man-made versions we'll be seeing a lot of in a month or two. I marveled as the phrase 'Repeat the Sounding Joy!' echoed from my head towards my throat.
Today is one day I'm thrilled to be alive. What a gift.
