I walked in the earth’s lush green which just last year had been wild fire’s abundant kindling. The trees that had offered shade from the heat and blowing dust now swam in the fullness of the lake’s return. A Blue Grosbeak played peak-a-boo behind tender green leaves that had been curled and brown.  The cupped empty rock hands were now filled with running water. New growth basked in the sun. Those who measure such things say though not over, the drought has gone from extremely severe to simply abnormally dry. One level about gone. One level above over. I tried to take it all in. I’ve only been in Colorado four years, so I do not “remember when…” I only know the many miles and hours I had walked these paths and never saw such green. I never heard the river. I knew only the dry dust filled air. This…. This was different. The fertile green so alive yet still a mesa and desert type environment.

And so I walked. I walked between beginnings and endings. I pondered the gratitude and wholeness it gifted. I pondered that even should time and age remove the ability to walk, my fingers would remember and walk these paths. Should my fingers or even my mind forget, my skin would remember the wind’s caress. And when my skin can no longer remember, the earthly meditation will be over. As I do after my meditation, my spirit will rise and bow in gratitude to the altar of my body and once again….walk home.

Perhaps we are always walking between beginnings and endings. Like two bookends they guide our path. To trust their sturdiness and walk between. Clinging to neither with fearless groundlessness we walk in the gap of now. We walk knowing the only memory that lasts is this moment. Fertile lush or hardened drought, we walk between and re-member now.