My favorite part

In the wee small hours of morning, when children are still sleeping off a night full of movies, whispers and candy-fueled giggles and the menfolk are off to milk cows and do morning chores, I find myself alone in the early morning quiet. 

I have always taken this opportunity to go out in a kayak all alone, to listen to the quiet echo of sounds not usually noticed.  The gentle swish of a paddle pushing through water.  The distant call of a bird across the lake.  The glug of a frog, somewhere in the mist.  The flip of a fish.  A few distant voices from a fishing boat, clear across the water.  

And to see things slowly.  Things I don't normally see.  The sleepy waterlily waking up and stretching toward the sun.  A bustling dragonfly, already buzzing about his day.  The magical mirror of stone-still water.  The haze, that ebbs and flows.   The million different shades of things I usually see as just plain green.  The piebald head of an eagle, perched high and silent.  The blue heron that so serenely and picturesquely stood under a tree on the edge of the water; that is, just until the moment I was close enough to take a picture...and then he flew away.

I take notice, is what I do.  I don't often grant myself the privilege of slowing down enough to take notice.

I sat in the middle of the lake, feeling the sway of the boat as the fog rolled in around me and enveloped me in a wall of white.  There was no point in taking photos after that.  But what the fog had hoped to thwart- I welcomed... because I had come prepared with a book.  For an hour, I couldn't see past the tip of my kayak, reading about Rudyard Kipling's childhood, in an eerie cloak of invisibility.  

Eventually, I hear a splash and giggles, telling me that children are awake and back in the water and then the men's voices, returning with blazing hot coffee, and I am beckoned away from India and back into reality.  The fog is so thick I can't see anything in any direction... so I point the tip of the kayak toward the voices and hope for the best.

And then, poof, almost as if by magic, the fog lifted and there I was, ready to start the day.  Fresher.  More thankful.  More rested.  More observant. More filled.

And I think, once again, what it must have been like for Matt and his brothers to be raised with this remarkable gift right at the end of their driveway.

And then I remember that it was in the noticing, not the location, that I was filled.

Perhaps where I stand each moment, there is as much beauty and magic and serenity- if only I had eyes to see.

This hurried world needs to slow down and start noticing things.

I need to slow down and start noticing again.

"It must be a great disappointment to God is we are not dazzled at least ten times a day. "     -Mary Oliver 

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting."  - Ralph Waldo Emerson