Still Working on It

Good Morning -

Yes - another desert image. It's interesting because the majority of imagery I keep finding of the desert in magazines seems to center on golf courses.

While I think it would liven the game up considerably to have the holes be through the scrubby desert, most often golf courses here means clean manicured greens with little dots of desert like plants along the way.

While that might make for a safer round of golf, it makes for a less realistic view of life in the desert.

In my quest for acceptance and peace with my current Now, I've called in the help of snake, who is all about creativity and cycles and fertility and shedding of old skin. Snake lives well in the desert, and I could use some creativity and skin shedding, so snake can be my guide.

I had forgotten until I went to look for snake's meaning just now, that I also need Swan, who is about grace.

Whenever I go on vacation, I like to get up early - especially if I'm in a place like the mountains where I might see a bit of wild life before the world gets going with its day. Often I'm the only one up, so this also makes for some great quiet coffee time.

This past weekend was no exception, except that the "wild life" I saw on my last morning wasn't quite what I had anticipated.

I had gotten the coffee started and then headed to the bathroom. Still sleepy, I was a little glazed and dazed until I heard squeaking and looked down to see the fattest, littlest mouse I've ever seen - and, unfortunately, I've seen a lot. It's getting cold up in the mountains, so it made sense to me that a mouse would be moving inside.

It ducked and ran behind the water heater, so I finished up, grabbed my coffee and headed outside to the front porch. I still found myself thinking of mouse, though, so went to my friend's animal message book to see what mouse had to say.

Turns out, mouse is all about scrutiny, so I took that idea back out to the porch with me to sit and think about.

I couldn't settle down, though, and while inside getting a refill, I decided that I'd hold the book, close my eyes, flip the pages and see what animal popped out for me. I flipped a few times and then opened to see an image of swan staring back at me. I read the story to learn that swans are all about grace and going with the flow into the future.

While I was reading, I could hear the mouse squeaking again. I looked into the bathroom from the living room, but didn't see it. It kept squeaking, though, and then I heard a loud "thump". I turned my head to see it sitting squarely in the middle of the bathroom rug. I don't know where it had leaped from, but it must have been far to make that thump upon landing.

I acknowledged the mouse and thanked it for its efforts in getting noticed. Clearly, I need an element of scrutiny as I flow into the future.

That all sounds great to me. I love the idea of floating along with swan to wherever my flow takes me and using mouse's scrutiny to adjust direction as needed.

Sounds good. Let's do it.

Here's to that. Here's to going with the flow. Here's to adjusting with scrutiny. Here's to mountain mornings full of (wild) life.