After a blizzard one needs to breathe. If there had been candles to light, as I entered the sanctuary of Maxwell Wildlife Sanctuary, I surely would have lit more than one. Indeed, my heart did. Bald eagles, hawks, ravens, a herd of deer, snow on the mountains, Meadow Larks singing, and the winged flights of ducks and geese. I don’t think they thought they would be disturbed today. I passed through their Sunday sunning and rest ever so gently. I whispered ‘thank you’ as I passed. It may be a sanctuary for me, but it is there home. Grace.

But what held my eyes, drew my breath, and made me laugh out loud were the clumps of ice dancing above the lake. Like fairy capes, scarfs, and hats they hung on nature’s own coat rack above the glass mirror lake. It looked like thousands of fairies had cast away their winter clothing and perhaps were swimming deep beneath the lake’s glass mirror. Perhaps they were all around me…. I did look.  Perhaps it was a festival and these were the tents.

Ice or fairies, sauntering deer sunning, geese and ducks in flight, an Eagle and hawks looking with such vision and stillness, and the song of the Meadow Lark. Whimsy, magic, grace, sanctuary or nature, matters not. As I watched all move, fly, and melt my whispered ‘thank you’ was followed with a bowed head and prayer….’Sweet Life, may I walk gently upon this earth. May my gentleness let me see gentleness.’