It was a very good day today. Most of my days are very good. For the younger crowd, you might have called your psychiatrist to make certain your Prozac prescription was renewed for the next 250 years, but for me, it was ideal.
Number one, it was drama-free. I love days that are drama-free. Don’t get me wrong; I do understand the ups and downs that life can purvey, but I worked very hard for very many years to live a life that involved very little drama. My younger days had more drama than Les Miserables on steroids, so you can imagine how grateful I am for the serenity.
My beloved wife Lee and I drank our delicious smoothies (which she concocts every morning) and enjoyed it while reading several newspapers online and getting a little work done. Someone once asked me how many newspapers and periodicals I read and I really don’t know the answer so I just gave it an educated guess, “About twice as many as Sarah Palin”.
A little before mid-afternoon, the weather was turning mild; about 65 degrees without a cloud in the sky. That is the perfect time to hike the Hot Springs Mountain Loop. Lee and I were both excited because a lot of the wildflowers that had been elusive or gone all year, were and are back. So are a lot of the birds and butterflies. This might not sound like much, but remember, we had a whole year of severe droughts and forest fires followed by a brutal blizzard which destroyed about 75% of our beloved forest. It felt like a death in the family. All the wildlife was gone for a month. Not a bird. Not an insect. Not a wildflower.
Then suddenly we saw a few warblers here, a cardinal there, a few butterflies riding the wind and occasionally landing on the lone wildflower. Today, still very bare in many parts, little bits of green are returning and pink and red buds and berries are peeking their way out of the end of tree branches. For a better view of this drop by Lee’s HikeOurPlanet.com. To see a comparison of what it was like, say 2 years ago, simply go into her archives. It truly looked like a Peruvian rain forest. It has a long way to go before it is back to that, but we’re patient, and we still love it, and all it offers. Lee heard a deer today. Sadly one ran downtown two Sundays ago and into a store window. Chances are it was searching for food. It did not survive.
At the top of Hot Springs Mountain two large robins greeted us up close for a photo-shoot. Lee was too busy shooting and trying to name some rare wildflowers so I took “The Magic Box”, Lee’s old camera that I inherited, and made sure the robins got equal time.
We’ve got bears, panthers, mountain lions, snakes, wolves, foxes, and just about every animal you could imagine. They are surprising in that they are shy. They do not look at humans as their prey. Bears are about the most unpredictable and we carry extremely loud alarms which they do not like, causes their ears pain and they move along.
Today, we heard a wild turkey toward the end of the hike. We could tell where it was, but it was very shy and not in the mood for human companionship.
We came home and turned on the tv and ate a lot of whatever was left in the fridge.
If you look up, you see “the typical day of a semi-retired 58 year old”. What makes me laugh is that it just seems like yesterday I couldn’t wait for my subscription of Rolling Stone to arrive, see which bands were the hottest, when they were coming to the nearest venue (which used to be The Warehouse in New Orleans), a place many of us have incredible memories, and even more incredible non-memories. Well, you know they say if you don’t remember the 60s or 70s you were probably there. And though I’m no longer a party person, yes I did inhale. Don’t worry…I have zero political ambitions.
But today, I had a drama-free life. I came up with a few gift ideas for my shops which I’ll make tomorrow, and then at about 6pm CST starts Shabbat. Ironically, I was born Jewish, Lee is studying to be, and she knows 100 times more about how it is celebrated than I do. But I’m a good student, and I know I like challah so I imagine I’ll be quite the mensch….a drama-less mensch at that.
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Rick London is a writer, songwriter, designer and cartoonist. He founded Londons Times Cartoons (LTCartoons.com) in 1997 which became Google’s #1 ranked Offbeat Cartoons & Funny Gifts in 2005 and have remained at that ranking for the past 7 years with nearly 8 million visitors. He also designs more serious gifts and collectibles at such shops like his RickLondonDesigns.com which carry famous quote gifts. He is married to popular nature/wildlife photographer Lee Hiller-London who runs the nature blog HikeOurPlanet.com.
Rick London Syndication 