October 16, 2010

Its just a mud puddle. Not very big. Not very deep. It was formed, and is ever forming, by the pockets made by the hooves of the horses and the water that overflows their drinking bucket. It is a landscape in itself. A small world that except for its scale, is not much different from the larger earth. It is a land of lakes with shores and beyond that there are ranges of pushed up earth that make up small mountain ranges, with grasses that make up the wildernesses of forest.

Ok,,,I am crazy, but that’s what I see. But you know yourself that at times, you’ve stopped long enough to study something and realized that you saw that thing in a much different way…or took the time to really listen to the sounds that you hear, and heard sounds that were always there but you never heard…

There are so many things that we selectively pay no attention to – and not just to nature, but we do the same to others.

But this is about a puddle and not that stuff. (That is another post for some other time.)

Lately, in the dusky afternoon, I have stopped long enough and leaned against the fence, drawn to look at this puddle.

Along the shores, honeybees from the hives visit to drink the water. They land on the mountains and crawl down to the water to drink before lifting off for home. At times there are four or five quietly sipping.

And then every so often a chicken, which must be the Godzilla of this world, steps through and dips her beak to drink, or pulls a worm from the mud. She leaves three toed tracks in the puddle bed that trail behind her.

The wind stirs the placid pools into waves. Even in a puddle, there is no resting water.

And its all so quiet

The dying sun drops its paling reflection in the water before it falls behind the trees. I watch its colours dull and at last disappear. With that I push my weight from the fence and shift it back onto my feet and head in to the house…so much of this day is over.

While on my way back to the house, I remember that yesterday a monarch butterfly landed next to the puddle on the mud shore and probed for a drink of water. When it was finished drinking, it flew off to the south, continuing its fall migration to Mexico. And the thought came to me - I wonder how many puddles does a Monarch visit on its way to Mexico?

I think that there's a lot more at stake with a puddle than I ever thought there was before.

God has reasons…