Back in my ranching and mule-skinner days, I was out working and riding on many chill, gray, wet days. I'd come in at night and sit in a corner behind the old fashioned wood-burning stove until my jeans almost smoked yet still feel my bones were frozen and leaking cold out through my body. No, I do not do winter well! And yes, I know my dreams and plans of Alaska, especially being up there in the late winter when the big races are run, is pretty crazy but I think I could cope with the enthusiasm and the will driving me. But that's another story.
We have had less of the nice fall weather than often here this year. It went from the late summer rainy period right into the transition type storms and a number of gray days and then this past week the first real hard frost with temps down in the upper twenties here at my house. We sit on a ridge where it is not as cold as lower in the basin and a bit protected by the hills looming near to the east but even in "the promised land" as my brother calls it, we have winter. I want to hibernate but of course humans do not do that. Was I a bear in one incarnation? ~ Latina shrug--who knows.
But the last two days the sun has been out bright and warm. I sit out in it as much as I can because that precious charge of solar energy is how I keep going through these shorter days and colder times. I was inspired to write a couple of verses which I will share at the end of this post. And here are two photos of the contrast between the gray times and the bright blue fall I love. It was about the same time of day --mid morning--in both, too!
To close I have to say I do not "worship" the sun in the sense my pagan ancestors did but I can surely understand why they might have made old Sol a deity or the avatar of one. When you feel that heat and energy and your eyes dazzle with the light, you sense the presence of something very powerful, something without which life as we know it would not be possible at all. So in that sense, I may be called a sun-worshiper I suppose.
Sun Fired, Sun Inspired
I
There’s still a lot of sunshine.
As I soak in healing rays
I sometimes doze or wander down
The path of my many days.
Good or bad but often strange,
What I’ve done and where I’ve been.
What would I try to modify
If I could go back again?
The sunlight cannot absolve
The wrongs or the pain I’ve known
Yet I feel them start melting away
As I sit here now alone.
I’ve always been a bit alone
Though good horses, dogs and friends
Have shared parts of my road with me
Until such partnership ends.
I miss them all; they are a part
Of the one I have become.
A little lives on in my heart
Of each and every one.
There is still a lot of sunshine
In the autumn of my time,
The warmth and light give life to me
And call from my soul this rhyme.
II
Sitting in the sunshine
Gives me life and light.
It has fueled all my days
And helped me through each night.
I still love part of darkness,
A chance to see the stars
But it’s sun that keeps me going
And tears away the bars
Of my regret and sorrow for
Mistakes that I have made
And shows to me a beacon
So I go down unafraid
Too that dark end-time shadow
Where for awhile we bide
Until a new sun greets us,
There on the other side.
Both poems GMW Nov 2014
and (c) as all material here is.
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