Day Before Snow

I stopped at the mail box on my way home from work to catch the sun going down. It was over-sized and red as the air was filled with the smell of smoke all day from wildfires 90 miles northwest of us. We were down-wind but grateful the fires would not reach much further before the rains turning to snow in a massive cold front were just over the hills on my right.

If my life were a movie it would be full of flash-backs. I stared only a couple of minutes as years of my life went by. The sun seemed to be taking some of my hopes and dreams with it over the horizon. I am in the fall season of my life and I feel my leaves turning like the scenery ahead. Tomorrow it will snow and turn into blizzard conditions here in northern Minnesota. I know it will melt and do it again a few times before real winter sets in but the golden leaves will be stripped in the storm. I can only watch and tune in with all my senses to see a small boy wandering the woods with a bow, a gun, camera, girlfriend, wife, daughters and a son. I stop here and there but I emerge with a gray beard and grandchildren running around me. The flash-back quits and I see the sun has set with only a red glow left. Out of nowhere a few tiny drops of rain catch my hand and I leave the darkening scene.

Yes I have a lot of years left. Maybe. Only God knows. The uncertainty of life from one day to the next is as real as beautiful sunsets and harsh blizzards. The certainty of life is that everyone (who lives very long at all) gets both the beauty and harshness of life along the way. Life is not a “deserved” commodity or a “fair” contracted event on our particular time-line.

I walked into the house, a refuge from the oncoming storm; I greeted my wife and thanked God for being my ultimate refuge throughout my life and whatever lies ahead. Once again I vowed to continue living vivaciously, loving deeply, and drinking often from the fountain of adventure. After all, there are perks to the blizzards of life.