morning beauty

This hasn't been the best week. Enjoying a period of workplace equilibrium, I should have understood the pendulum would continue its swing, and it did. Details would bore you, but I'm feeling pretty low about the development. Intellectually superior, but truly frustrated.
There are times when I wish I was a drama queen. I know people who can poop out a temper tantrum without being that mad even, just because they know it will make others uncomfortable. I am not this person. I can't watch Jerry Springer, because the drama makes me so uncomfortable. The problem with this is that when I express anger, particularly to people used to dealing with drama queens, it doesn't seem angry enough.
That's not the point of this post. The point is that I wanted to marinate in my anger this weekend. Instead, I walked. A lot. And my dog loved it. And this morning, as I rounded a bend in the road, I saw a flash of golden red and a sweep of wings taking flight. It was the neighborhood red-tailed hawk, adult rufous which is my favorite. Hawks like open expanses, and when you see their wings unfurl, you have to agree that they seem suited to large fields where the drafts support them. But this one was almost crouching in a stand of hardwoods and pine trees, in the tree's mid story. When he took off, he floated under the lowest branches, then banked heavily to pop to the top of all the trees and out of sight.
He was definitely bigger than the Eastern Towhee I saw recently. And yet in the same stand of trees. I am beginning to feel like they wait for me, like they stand watch. If I'm an early riser, I see a bluebird. If I'm running behind, like this morning, I have a moment of raptor rapture.
Was it sufficient grace for the day? I will let you know. But it helped, as did the bramble of ripening blackberries and the entertainment of Mollie stalking squirrels (good girl!) and the discovery of new squash after I thought all my plants had been massacred by chipmunks.
I think that's what birding does for me. If I give it some time and step away from my everyday life events, it shows me glimpses of nature I wouldn't have had otherwise. And that fills up the reservoirs of grace. It's not enough to fill up the heart indefinitely, but it is enough for today.
And today is all you can plan for. It's blessing enough for anyone.

--Laura