Red Sky

The rhythm of my day yesterday and today found me out with Dusty at sunset and sunrise. Both were breath-taking.

The frost was sharp this morning; the promise of a freeze was there last night. Walking westward last night, a blazing sun was setting through the stand of trees sending shards of golden light towards me. The horizon was etched in vibrant red. 

This morning the beauty was in the east. I was too early for any golden shards of light but what I had instead before me was a horizon of hot pink blending into yellow, purple, all sorts of shades across the thin line of the skyline. 

Faced with such beauty, the cold doesn’t bite so cruelly. 

God has given us a creation that is full of surprises, full of colours, textures, designs and patterns. I have been blessed to have a home in a rural area where light pollution doesn’t reach me, nor does air or noise pollution. The noises I hear as I walk early or late are the cries of the owl or the whine of the bats. 

I grew up with the noise of the busiest freeway in southern California drowning out the lazy chirp of the crickets. 

I don’t take this beauty for granted. Thank you, God.

The Cry of the Owl

The dark woods loomed on my left as I circled round. It was the usual morning walk at about 8 am, but because the clouds hung low and damp and the rain fell soft and fast, there was no dawn to notice. My eyes were trained on the uneven ground anyway, as I’d already encountered a patch of treacherous black ice and I am very unwilling to sprain an ankle.

Suddenly, from the dead, dark woods, came the wonderfully clear call of an owl close by. Again and again. I wished I knew more about birds. Was that a distress call? A good morning – or a good night – call? A cry for a mama owl, or for a baby owl? 

I don’t know. But when I called out for Dusty to keep up with me, the woods became lifeless once more. The owl, sensing danger perhaps, closed its beak. 

Life where least expected. Of course I knew there were living creatures in the woods, but as I trudged round the muddy path, the forest was a homogeneous lump of dark matter. 

How often do I trudge through life past people whom I have given up for dead? Do I even listen for their cry? Or am I so busy chattering away through my own life, that their cries are silenced?

Today, I will listen.