That Old Habit

Sometimes it’s a challenge not to wake up weeping. Today I appreciate the merciful fog and embrace of hills, those familiar hills “like lions lying down”—comforting lions, kind ones. I can almost see them breathing.

I have taken refuge, but I don’t take it for granted. I walk among these hills and merge with this landscape and quietly wait for the turning. But people are angry, and people are weary to their bones. And many hearts are breaking. We’re living in a failed state, and inhumanity is rampant. And if we don’t get out from under with the power of our votes and get busy rebuilding, then all is lost.

Still, I can’t quite relinquish the old habit of hope. I don’t think hope is a luxury. I think it is a duty. Sometimes it feels hollow and elusive, but it implies action and remedies and room for possibility. There’s an alchemy to it. It can be converted into the change for which we hunger.

Meanwhile, walks are my meditation. The picture above was taken yesterday in the course of a backcountry hike. Those muted tones belie the banquet of bright wildflowers: Indian pink and Indian paintbrush, grape soda lupine, goldfields, owl’s clover, pearly everlasting. It’s a wildly imaginative and detailed picture when you pause and zoom in. And as this world absorbs you, that other world recedes.

Suddenly there was a light spritz of rain, barely more than a mist, dampening shoes and wetting foreheads, a tiny baptism. I turned my face skyward and accepted. I am new again now.

And I have a grandson. He’s coming home from the hospital today. I have never not cared what happens, but I care now more than ever.