Just Sitting In The Sunlight

Lucky Garvin
Lucky Garvin

I recall stepping outside of myself one day last year and watching me laze in the warm afternoon winter sun. Some of this appreciation came from the “Big Snow of 2014” which was so deep that it gathered belly-high to a full-grown deer; as well as the fact the grey overcast had finally loosed its grip, and the sunlight had at last reclaimed the skies.

I watched my dogs run joyously, mindlessly caught up in the moment. For them, there is no past, no future, only the joy of the now.

Do I envy them? In a way I guess I do… to be completely, joyously lost in the present. For them only this moment exists, then will come the next moment, then the next. How I envy them this ability to get away! It was once said that a wise man has many mentors. I wonder if he meant just the two-legged kind, or did he entertain the idea that our teachers might have four legs, or feathers?

Surely adults are drawn by other necessities: looking to the past to learn, or the future to plan; yet, the capacity to momentarily suspend the demands of the past or what’s coming down the road must result in joy, writ large.

I watch, and still they run, for the pure thrill of it. The oldest one – he prefers not to romp – has found a shaft of brilliance, and is luxuriating in its warmth. A younger Dobie stands still in knee-deep drifts gulping the air to better taste it. He smells something. Suddenly, the huge shadow of a vulture flies across him and he barks in rage at something dead or dying well beyond the forest’s edge, the subject of the vulture’s interest. He soon breaks off his surveillance and begins again to play.

Suddenly, he stops and fixes his gaze on his favorite playmate; and she back at him. She adopts a slight crouch, her neck at full extension. It is a stare-down. He begins a silent stalking, walking slowly, paws high drawn so as to make no noise.

Now he seems to expect she will neither see nor hear him as he – a black-colored dog – stalks her over a snow-white lawn. To think he is sneaking up on a prey that is staring straight at him is quite beyond me. Suddenly, at some invisible signal, hidden from me, but clear to them both, they simultaneously ‘attack’ each other in the joyous calisthenics of a mock-fight. Then, just as abruptly, they break off to sniff up a more interesting place.

So I sit here, an old man drowsing in the sunshine with some of my dearest friends, knowing if I stay until twilight I will be offered the solace of far-flung stars cast against night’s blackness, courtesy of Himself.

But I have other, human things to do, and I should not want to be guilty of the delinquency of failing to attend to pressing matters in the two-legged world. So I gather my Dobies and lead them inside the house, a part of me wondering if I should not tarry longer, and be ever more the wiser and happier for it.

– Lucky Garvin

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