Gratitude for all things big and small

In which we take the long road towards a long climb and a new perspective on the future

I wanted to start this post now because I (we!) are in that suspended moment of uncertainty.

Tomorrow night at this time, the world will have changed. The penny will have dropped. Atlas will have shrugged.

Well, not really anything that dramatic, but an event of significance in our small lives will have already taken place.

It’s a weird place, this threshold. Kind of like being up on the mountain hill at an altitude of 230 meters, looking back to where that broad path begins at the doorstep of a proud but bedraggled white house with a green metal roof. Everything is so small. And here you are.

From down there, everything up here is indistinguishable, a haze of green hues. And now, here you are. A part of that blur.

For the moment, by which I mean right now as I type this, I am in the blur. The blur of being neither here at the doorstep nor there on the ridge of the mountain hill that is newly ours.

I have travelled here with my mother, an unlikely but perfect companion at this stage of my life. We walked the broad trail up, over streams and through lingering snow, marveling at the tracks and the scat, at the branching paths, at the tree branches and their needles and leaves. We drank from the creeks and stopped to listen to rustling of birds in the bush.

We discovered a stone wall covered in lichen, the perfect perch from which to contemplate the pastoral fields below.

We considered which were the ideal spots for cabins, and what might lie beyond, just over the next rise, behind the next turn. We found a few remnants — crushed beer cans, plastic debris of various kinds, and wondered when was the last time someone had been through there. Who had been through? How had the path been maintained? Who — or what — might we encounter?

And isn’t this the eternal question?

Tomorrow, what will we find? What will be revealed? How will the picture of our family’s future pivot?

We are breathless, as we make our way up the steep sections of the incline — but not so much that we can’t talk, can’t joke about our circumstances. We turn around, and marvel. There is the house, that small bright spot. Look how far we’ve come!

We notice the change in vegetation, how towards the top, the trees become short birch rather than tall evergreen, how the path has seen less use and the “median” between the tire tracks has grown tall, how the thin trees have crept in. We edge closer to deciding to turn around, to turn back down. Have we made it to the crest? Where does the path start to head down the other side?

The sun is still high enough in the sky. We haven’t run out of daylight just yet, but let’s not push our luck. Perhaps now is the time to head back. And we do.

The path is still just as long, but our steps have a lighter, less curious, gait. We laugh when we mistake our up-going tracks for those of animals. We try to spot the points where only 30 minutes ago we spotted this or that, or stepped off the path to discover the stone wall. There’s that white scat. And Pooh’s thinking log. And the perfect spot for a cabin. We’re already back at the drinking spring and the beaver dam and now let’s pick up this piece of litter, we can bring this back with us. And we’re almost there, in the home stretch.

Yes, we’re in the home stretch, and the possibilities are endless.

I’m so, so blessed.

(Tomorrow, we will learn what the next chapter will bring.)