Soar High

Deer Creek flows along, my steady, beloved Deer Creek. Today, as usual, I paused at the farthest-out point of my walk to absorb sensory details of this magical, real, natural world. Today, though, I turned around sooner than I often do. Standing on a raised part of the creek bank, looking straight ahead, I noticed dried grasses clinging to tree branches at my eye level, detritus left by the late summer's floods.

The steady, continuing flow, the detritus of endings, the chance for a new beginning inherent in every ending. "If you want to be reborn, let yourself die," says the Stephen Mitchell translation of the Tao Te Ching, chapter 22.

Two vultures hovered on the road near my lane as I approached on my way home. They only flew as far as the fence, not very fearful of me, a known one. They'd been feeding on a road-killed squirrel, its flesh raw and beautiful where the gray-furred skin had peeled back.

The vultures look fierce up close, and as glorious in flight as any eagle. Hard as it was to see the poor, mangled body on the road, yet I understood that the squirrel was becoming a bird. Soon those very birds will take flight, and soar. Soar high, fellow travelers, soar high.