GRACKLES

Years ago, every once in a while I would stumble into a feeling I called "on the verge."  It usually happened when I saw a beautiful sunset or sat in the silence of the redwood trees, or let myself connect with the beauty of Nature. It had happened once when I had spent a few days at Zion National Park.  I'd been disappointed at how crowded the park was and on the morning I was driving out, I happened to be stopped by a road crew so that traffic heading in my direction could pass.  I happened to be the first car in the line and the flagman, who happened to be a woman, was standing very near my window. As we waited, I asked her if there were back roads in the park where tourists didn't go.  She said she and her husband went camping off a road up ahead, she told me where and when it was my turn, I thanked her and drove on.

     I found the turnoff easily.  The moment I turned right, the car and I started to climb. Parts of Zion reach over 8500 feet elevation.  I don't how how high I was but I was definitely going higher.  The sky was bright blue, the sunlight sharp, the aspens had already turned and were very bright yellow.  I was amazed when the trees gave way to an alpine meadow and there was a farm just beyond it.  One farm, all the way up here.  

     Eventually the pavement ran out and I continued on a dirt road, still going up.  The air was so clear and all the colors, the hundred different shades of green, the glinting granite of rocks in the distance, the brown dirt -- everything was clean and hard edged, beautiful.  I didn't see another car or person.  It was just what I wanted.

     Then the dirt road petered out, ended.  I got out of the car and started walking straight ahead, through some bushes and heavy growth.  I don't know what instinct told me to walk in that direction, but suddenly the undergrowth ended and I found myself on the top of a cliff with a very deep steep sided canyon below.  It was breathtaking.  There were miles of mountains falling away whichever way I looked, the wind was the only sound except for the cries of three or four huge blackbirds flying circles in the canyon. ( I looked them up in my bird book when I got home and I think they were grackles.)  I felt myself flying on the backs of those birds, circling lazily on currents of air. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths. That all that wildness and grandeur existed whether I or anyone was here to see it, was somehow comforting. When I opened my eyes, I felt again that sense if being on the verge. On the verge of what? I couldn't say but it was a big feeling, the biggest I'd felt, set off by the beauty of the world around me.

     I've thought of that feeling many times over the years.  I understand it now.  It was the yearning deep inside me to connect with the world, to be right-sized in it, to give myself over to the great mystery at the center of the world.  I saw myself laughing, wanting to pull long beautiful ribbons out of my chest and throw them in the air so the sun could shine on them. Joy. I didn't know it then but I was on the verge of joy. Years would go by before I was no longer on the verge, but opened fully, ready to walk through the door into Spirit.