I was walking the dogs around Staring Lake when, from somewhere overhead, I heard a sound I’d never heard before: a clear, sweet, almost melodic, chattering laughter. I stared upward, waiting, until two Bald Eagles soared out from between the trees. Still engaged in their light gossip, they took a turn above me, their tails splayed, their heads bright, both flashing in the sun. Showing off? Or considering the risks involved in taking my 35 pound Aussie back to their aerie? Maybe they were put off by the awed but defensive human female and/or the 85 pound Malamute mix standing between the female and the puppy. Maybe they had no interest in me or mine.
Follow if you will…
I have a bent for running debasing tapes in my head as I walk. I know I’m not unique in this instance. Like many, I often find my skull, with eyes on the ground and chin to the tarmac, hung between hunched muscles. Words with no good purpose distract me from any pleasure so that, by the time I reach home, I’m less than when I began. “Where are those endorphins I was promised?” I demand to know. “I’m an angler fish without my bioluminescent lure,” I cry, utterly caught up in my impossibly obscure hyperbole.
But then…
I began to understand the benefits of meditation while listening to a podcast by author Matt Rees under the pseudonym of The Man of Twists and Turns. I return often.
Five deeply considered breaths and I am back in the present: Where the dogs are happy, the sun sparkles on the lake, and where eagles fly so low I can hear their wings touch the wind and, without much imagination, feel their talons near my cheek.