It is dawn and the morning promises another beautiful day. The pale blue washes the sky above the softest gold, the few clouds are lit from beneath by the same gold. I absolutely love this time of day. I sit, drink my coffee and, I suppose it is a form of meditation, I am just quiet, watching this moment of promise. Today I had a strange thought, as I listened to the few early birds, and watched the edge of the woods on the far side of the pasture, change from very dark to a shadowed green. I have just finished reading a wonderful and powerful, historical book about the Comanches, called, "Quanah Parker, Empire of the Summer Moon". At times graphically difficult to read, because of their cruel customs, it chronicles the rise and demise of the Comanche nation as the white settlers pushed into the Great Plains. What flashed into my mind this morning as I watched the edge of the wood was that 150 years ago, I might have been sitting quietly, sipping coffee watching the dawn and hoping no Indians showed up to kill me! All I worry about is the deer flies and how slow my internet connection is at times. I watch the tree line hoping to see a fox or deer and my counterpart wife/ mother of the 1850's may have woken and watched her husband or son leave to work in fields or whatever and then never see them again. It was a brutally hard life on the frontier ( not that this is the frontier, just the image of the field and woods) but I can only image the thoughts that would go through "her" mind as the same kind of morning dawned on a similar beautiful May morning. The book was fascinating and I recommend it to anyone who loves a glimpse into another lifetime.
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