Author: Neil Hanson

The vastness of the prairie sky at night creates the window into The Infinite with which few people feel comfortable. The stillness required to allow that Infinite to creep into your soul is something with which even fewer people feel comfortable. While we profess to want closeness and connection with G-d, we eschew the very things that could facilitate what we say we want. It seems to me that this is a result of our modern world. I want to believe that when cultures are more comfortable with the magic in the world around them, that they feel more at ease with the Vastness and the Stillness.

This morning, I watched Venus dance with the Moon. It is a monthly dance, occurring in the early morning or early evening hours when Venus happens to be out, and the cycle of the Moon happens to put him somewhere close to Venus. It is a timeless dance – Venus and the Moon.

This morning, Venus and the Moon brushed close to one-another as they took their spin on the celestial dance-floor. I watched them as I sat in a tree-stand before dawn, and watched as the morning light washed the darkness from the night sky. For a while, they were framed perfectly in the cradle of the Cottonwoods above me – smiling at each other as they enjoyed the moment that passed between them…

The Spirit of the South Wind was feisty and strong yesterday on the Prairie. Was there some pent-up anger that she held for the Spirit of the North I wonder, as she accosted him all afternoon with a relentless fury rolling across the flat top of Kansas?

The lush green of this year’s new grass held tightly to the ancient prairie soil, as the faded red and brown remnants of last year’s grass above it was bent and assaulted all day by the fury of the south. The depth and density of the new green pushing up from below takes me by surprise each year, no matter how many springs I watch it happen. While still clothed in the rusty and earthy colored dress that she wears each winter, the prairie is beginning to accessorize herself with the rich spring wardrobe that pushes aside her beautiful winter dress each year at this time.

There were few small birds out above the prairie grass – negotiating movement to the south in the relentless tide of wind was too much work. The Harriers were out though, floating across the sea of wind with mastery, slowly picking their way low across the prairie toward the south in search of unsuspecting prey, or racing toward the north as-if riding a monster wave of wind on a surfboard, only to turn and make another meticulous path across the tops of the grass.

Like the tumbleweeds that fly across the prairie ahead of the wind, our thoughts and emotions are just manifestations of that invisible force that rules the prairie I suppose. There is a power that moves us that is beyond our ability to see. Try and stand too firmly, and the prairie wind will break us. Learn to bend with the wind, and we will survive. Learn to use the wind as the ocean of our paradise, and like the Harrier, we will prosper.

Few things in the universe can be as vast as a clear night sky flowing without end, spilling over the distant horizons of the western Kansas prairie. The depth of the universe, and your insignificance within it, become starkly clear in the endless sea of stars – stars so thick that they almost feel oppressive. Intellectually, we all know that the universe is a pretty big thing, and that our place within it is pretty small, but resting in the cool autumn prairie evening gives you a window into that universe that you just can’t find anywhere else.

At least I haven’t found anyplace else where that window opens itself. As often as I have been on the prairie and felt that window, it still takes my breath away each time that it happens. It feels as though my soul is reaching and digging for some new set of senses – something bigger than sight and sound and smell and touch – with which to connect through this vast window that opens up out there where the sky is big.

Tonight is going to be that sort of a night – a night that The Universe pours itself into my soul through the window of a vast Kansas sky. It isn’t yet dark, but I can feel the window opening around me. The still November air is unseasonably warm at around 50 degrees. Sitting in an open field, resting my back against an ancient wooden fencepost, I find myself listening again for the Voice of The Infinite spoken in the language of the prairie evening as she begins to whisper.

On my lap, my old dog Colin rests his head, sleeping soundly. It has been an afternoon spent in heaven for him, trotting across the prairie looking for birds to point and fetch. We ended up with 3 quail out of 2 coveys, and they will make both breakfast in the morning, and dinner later tonight if I feel like fixing it. His age is showing, as he sleeps deeply after the workout. But then, I suppose that my age shows just as clearly, though in ways that I am not ready to see yet.

Earlier this afternoon, when Colin and I finished our hunting, we stopped by the camper to put the birds in the cooler, and leave the shotgun behind. We walked out to this spot with a nice view of the sunset, and sat quietly as the day began that quiet transformation – watching the day recede while night approaches through evening.

There are whitetail deer now in the prairie and alfalfa around me. They have moved out of their daytime shelters, and have begun to feed. I watched a group of them standing still at the edge of the field – that place where the shelter of a group of trees meets the prairie. They watched there for a while – assuring themselves that there was not danger in the meadow beyond – then one doe stepped out into the field, took several steps, and started to feed. The rest of the group stayed in the cover of the trees and watched, to see if anything took interest in the lone doe feeding in the field. Once convinced that danger was not near, they all moved out into the field, and began to make their way across the prairie grass toward the stand of sweet alfalfa that they love so much.

Such is the way of that daily transformation of day into night. Things happen slowly, and around the edges, one step at a time. If you aren’t paying attention, you can miss those dainty steps that are occurring in that movement from the shelter of daylight into the meadow of the night. If you aren’t paying attention, you look around, and realize that it is almost dark.

One minute you see an open field, then the next it seems that the deer have appeared out of no-place. One minute it is light and comfortable, then next it is nearly dark, and you feel fearful and uneasy at the transformation that occurred while you were not paying attention.

 

Sitting in front of my office window is an old Jade plant. He waits patiently for the long winter to end, so that I will put him out in the sun for the summer. He has waited patiently since October, when he had to come it.

On the other side of the Jade plant, through the glass of the big window, on a Colorado May Day, a sea of giant sopping snowflakes works feverishly to try to blanket the high prairie with a wet spring snow.

The odds are low, but it could happen. Every few years the Winter Warlocks of the Mountains storm down to meet the Winter Witches of the High Prairie, and they leave behind a devastating landscape of snowy white destruction in May. But the ground is quite warm following several days of bright and warm high prairie spring days, and the sunlight tries heroically to break through the clouds now and then, so my money is down on the Fair Lady of Springtime to be victorious on this May Day.

Today, it is easy to visualize and feel the “spirits” of the seasons that so many people have named throughout time. The never-ceasing rhythm and undulation of the spirits as they move across a land – sharing the land as their “playground”. The cruel and relentless spirit of Winter fighting one last time to reclaim a land that has begun to explode in the beauty that lives among the swishing skirts of a fair and beautiful spirit of Spring.

Upon the landscape of this walk through life I feel the spirits of the seasons as they wrestle with one-another along my path. A springtime of joy that works hard to wrestle the path from the icy grip of a winter of depression perhaps, or a warm summer of contentment that is not ready to yield to an autumn of recollection.

My Jade plant waits patiently. He knows that his time in the sun will come again – I am certain that he feels that coming time in the deepest core of his branches. The cycle never fails – the trick is to stay in the rhythm and the harmony of the cycle that never ends.

Both Lent and Passover have ended. What seeped into my soul this year as these wonderful seasons passed beside me?

Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness, fasting and wrestling – perhaps wandering. The Israelites spent 40 years in the wilderness, wandering and seeking G-d. Cultures and religions everywhere have strong traditions of fasting and “wilderness time” as part of the transformation process.

It would seem this “wilderness time” is a critical element in any transformation – certainly in transformations that we hope will take us closer to Eden.

But time in the desert is not easy. Are we willing to deny ourselves the immediate needs that our desires demand in order to allow the path through the wilderness to unfold?

When we are in the desert, it is easy to look for ways to surround ourselves with things that feel like the moisture that we seek, even though the place that we are ending up may – in fact – be the swamp. The swamp might feel like a good place at first, but we will rot there if it is only a hiding place from the desert that we are meant to cross.

When the wilderness and the desert are presented to us on our path, then shouldn’t we embrace that phase of our journey rather than hiding from it? What we might need is a little time in the desert by ourselves, to embrace the gifts of the desert and learn what the desert has to speak to us. If we hide from the desert in the swamp, then when the rain does come, we can’t discern the miracle of rain from the swamp that we have immersed ourselves in.

It is only through our time in the desert that we can gain the gift that lets us see the miracle of the rain when it comes. Miracles are happening around us all the time, but few can see them. It may be that time in the desert is tightly linked to the ability to see the miracles that we are surrounded with.