Wolf, Wyoming

Wind on open grassland is like the ocean: a steady march of waves against the shore with incoming tide. Here the waves are green and gold and ceaseless--no coastline to mark the end, just prairie wider than your vision, even as you scan the broad horizon looking for the terminus with your sweeping gaze.

The sound too is like the ocean: wind through tall grass, through stiff spruce at the edge of the meadow, is water crashing against sand. Only the paper flutter of Aspen leaves anchors you to the Earth, to solid, knowable ground. Aspen leaves and the chitter and whistle and melody of birdsong.

Here, by the house, the trees hold up the sky. Step out from under them, walk down the red gravel road, and the weight of it all--the interminable expanse of sky--presses down on you. It is impossible to take it all in. Impossible to be still as your mind measures and scans and rescans. As you try to find the edges of what cannot be contained or defined.

Writing it down is my only meager tool to make sense of the magic of this life. Words, like prayers, called up and offered in the hope that some understanding will come. They come of their own accord, words whose source seems somewhere outside my own thoughts, originating in some unseeable spirit, allowing me, momentarily, to grasp this ephemeral experience of being human and alive.Words, like prayers--a meditation. I am the gold finch pulling seeds from the feeder in the roar of tumultuous wind, riding golden waves of sweet grass and sage. So much that cannot be contained. We are temporary vessels transporting infinite energy.