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6 October ~2008
When I get up in the morning I often go down and sit and the bottom of the backyard stairs. My dogs come out and gather around me. I stroke Ben and Maggie's fur, and tell them what good mountain dogs they are. I hold Mollie in my lap,and rub her puppy shoulders. She licks and bites my hand.
I go out and look for ripe tomatoes, and look on the color of the zinnias and marigolds and agastache that have done so well in my garden this year. One day a hummingbird visited it, the first one that I can remember.
On the Greenbelt us three take different paths but eventually end up at the meadow by the frog pond, next to the grove of Eleven Cottonwoods. I throw a stick in the lake for Ben, and tell Maggie to look for frogs in the pond. They get excited when in midsummer all the leopard frogs jump in with a squeak.
Some weeks I go dancing five nights a week, (swing at the Mercury and the Turnverein, contra at Cfootmad, twostepping at the Rose). Other weeks I only go a couple of times, prefering instead to stay close to the my backyard trees and garden, or go backpacking in to the high mountains.
I lead 30 nature walks a year for Barr Lake and Eldorado State Parks and Lookout Mountain Nature Center. I find a story each month to tell to the third graders at West Ridge Elmentary from September through May.
All in all I am happy with my life. I naturally keep to myself, being comfortable with solitude, with going alone into wilderness with my dogs. That renews me for the social contacts I do have - the dancing, the storytelling, the nature programs.
When we are born, our hands are closed in a fist. When we leave this world all that we have is our empty open palm, the memory of what we have loved and how many times we felt our heart rise with the pleasure of being alive.
Yes, I am happy, accepting of the losses and the suffering, so deeply grateful for the joy and the love, for my dogs, for the beauty of wilderness. I am lucky to be able to share it as much as I do, in my nature walks, in my stories.
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