Last Sunday when I trudged up the hill the grass and leaves crunched under my feet in the early morning frost. Not that early these days. My summer days of jumping out of bed at five and six AM and climbing the hill to greet the sun are gone until next May. My trips up this hill have become less frequent due to The Larac Arts Festival and set up for their Holiday shop. I have also had a bought of illness; a virus and later the discovery that I have Lyme disease. This past year the fields and woods were loaded with the deer ticks!
As I stood there watching the sun spread across the mountains and valleys, I could feel my worries drop away. In this vast space I feel free, home. A flock of geese had been resting in the adjacent cornfield and now that I am here they stir and then take flight. I watched with fascination as their flight patterns stretched out, spread wide and changed continously as they swirled and headed south west. It reminded me of the moving patterns that herd animals make as they enter a field. See my cast away to the fields blog post last summer and in September.
Today when I walked up the hill, the sun became hidden by a mackerel sky. Even the distant mountains lost the sun. It was twenty degrees and not getting warmer very quickly. I did my warmups and then completed the Tai Chi form, but did not linger to enjoy the view today. I headed home and stacked more wood on the porch. The afternoon should give me a better tme to finish dyeing some batik.