Good Morning

Bears Ears XXII

With the top off of the tent, the dawn comes up in luscious/delicious hews. It contrasts lovely with the green cottonwood leaves, which now hang still.

I’ve heard these leaves several times during the night. Any gentle breeze will dislodge their songs. These tenacious beings possess various strategies for fertility. Now, it’s not so much the fluffy white fairies that launch and float amongst us, accumulating, settling like snow, which will last years and be blanketed with fallen leaves. But in this night, fall tiny masses of what sounds like raindrops. Awoken by their sound, I look outside of our net nest looking for clouds. Puzzled, I find stars, no emerging downpour, no problems to deal with alarmed in the middle of the night.

My partner’s presence places a warm feeling in my heart, so I roll over to gaze upon sleeping DF. She is not so much a peaceful sleeping beauty tonight, but blissfully conked out. Camping and hiking keeps us busy and our recovery time is dear.

My eyes open once again, when darkened skies have lifted. Past her, the generally white rock to the western slope, that we like to climb, has taken on the orange glow of the morning sun.

“Time to get up and get going, gotta mountain to climb before it gets hot,” I tell myself. Then thinking again, easily convincing myself, “I’ll leave DF to her bliss.” And lazily drifting into further resolution, “I’ll just BE here in this place…until “they” return.

“They,” three crows arrive each morning. Exclaiming with their repertoire of caw, clack and other loud, vulgar untoward comedic sounds, they swoop like a flapping rooster on wild hallucinogenic Datura seeds. Back and forth from one tree to the other, or circling around us and above, chasing each other, as if in battle, we are tormented, or harassed, just because.

They alight next door on the three and a half walls of the ruins. Cackling, as if possessed by the souls that built the stone shelters centuries before this day. They may be the trickster Keeyotay’s cousin, or bruho, but they ARE an insistent, consistent and regular alarm clock. DF is awake as we laugh in the face of powerlessness.

We both begin morning stretches on the mat of our bedding, looking inward, naturally directed, driven by instincts whose wisdom derives from body. A taunt muscle tightens and then relaxes. A leg is pulled to pain and then let go. A twitch and a twist, we find ourselves embroiled by the choreography of an inner source. It’s all good, a beginning to a day’s pleasures and a bodily exam.

I have breathed the cool night air and sheltered under a cozy light array of bed covers. Already the day is warming. I kick a leg out from under the blanket, foot to high thigh, to the elbow, which has the bedding tucked securely under it. The gentile air washes over the exposed bare skin and this morning’s weather report declares, “perfect.”

Hands clasp behind my head, I stretch again and feel a smile. I stare at nothing in particular and then follow the gnarly branches of the cottonwood tree to green foliage and the rich contrasting turquoise. In a deep breath, I realize profoundly, how fortunate all of this is. It is time to leave behind the covers and venture naked for the universe to share love.

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