A moment of warmth

Missouri is water, soft blue and green, burbling smooth across white stone. Missouri is blufftop and oak grove and crunchy leaves in low angle light. Missouri is an empty mountain field of feathery golden grass, and discarded clothes a bed for long lazy sun washed daydreams.

Missouri was a handful of days of silence, of motion free in gentle air, of body leading soul leading body...

A week ago I rose at 3am and hit the road south in bitterly cold weather. My goal was to feel ground under my feet, and to have the feel of damp air filling my lungs. I only had four nights free, and I was willing to cross the country just to walk in shirt sleeves.

The world as I drove was ink sketch exact in the frozen air, and the few lights in the empty land were precise pinpoints. I felt an odd tension, all the little unresolved issues in my life knotting inside, joining with the undeniable danger of the untravelled and icy roads I was on. Suddenly, a slash of light painted itself across the sky, and through my windshield I watched a falling star flare, then leave a slowly fading trail of light. It was astounding, and I realized I was grinning ear to ear and suddenly anticipating my upcoming days of roaming.

Later, many, many miles later, at a moment where the sky was showing just the slightest tinge of pink at the edges, another shooting star cut a path across the sky, and this time I burst into delighted laughter.

I found my sought for warmth in southern Missouri, and spent the next several days exploring caves and streams and mountains, all in soft warm air. On the final evening before heading back north, I was lying on a king size bed in a motel room, thinking about calling it an early night, and suddenly I couldn't stand the notion of not having one last moment before heading into the terrible cold of Minnesota, and I hurriedly dressed, got in my car, and set off on a winding country road.

The sun touched the horizon and I stopped, then walked a little ways to the edge of a valley. Molten copper light flowed along the land from the melting sun. A little breeze kicked up, a contrasting chill to the ambient warmth, and I zipped my jacket up, watching traces of cloud turn bronze, and as the last wedge of the sun slipped below the horizon, the clouds turned lemon against the purple sky, then slowly, slowly darkened.

I started to leave, but there was a sense of something that held me in place. Venus emerged as the sky darkened, and I looked around the sky to see if any stars were popping. Across the valley I noticed a brightening along the edges of a tree bristled slope. A sliver of orange light appeared, a tiny round slice cut by the slant of the mountain. The sliver grew as it climbed, and when it reached the peak, a vast full moon shown in glorious splendor, and in that unexpected moment I felt a sense of joyous peace, of connection to a world full of wonder.

I will hold that moment in the months ahead, use it to warm myself in the frozen days till another full moon brings warmth again...