When the mind is at peace

Coming home from running errands about 4:00 yesterday afternoon I found our neighbourhood doe and her twin yearling fawns standing on our next-door neighbour's front lawn. They watched me pull into the driveway and park the car with calm dark eyes, and as I gathered my things together they slowly moved on across the road. 

Despite the heavy snow cover and months of cold weather they are fat and look healthy. We are only about two blocks from grazing land, and I suspect they pick up their share of the hay that ranchers are throwing out for their cattle right now. 

The fresh snow reveals that our squirrels are up and active. Their tracks are everywhere, and they are excavating the peanuts they buried last summer. 

A few nights ago I trimmed up some steaks I'd bought to put in the freezer and had a good-sized bowlful of trimmings left over. I put them out on the edge of the deck about 11:00 pm for the magpies who have a nest in one of the pines in the backyard. They'll soon be thinking about nesting. They begin making any needed repairs to their nest in early March and egg-laying soon follows. They're sharp-eyed. When we got up the next morning the trimmings were all gone. Lots of people don't like magpies, but I have a very soft spot for them after raising one from "chickhood" to adulthood. They are exceptionally intelligent and affectionate.  

We drove into Calgary this morning for a medical appointment, and along the way passed a herd of cows with young calves, from a day or two to a couple of weeks old. Many were snuggled into a generous layer of straw bedding laid on top of the snow, sleeping in the sun, but one was bouncing around and kicking his heels up, the very picture of energy and the joy of life. 

Bit by bit we're settling into our new home and new life. Nothing moves at a quick pace, there's time to think and plan and simply linger in that deep well of calm, whether it's slowly savouring our morning coffee, making the bed, watching the flames in the fireplace on cold nights or just listening to the silence. 

When the mind is at peace

The world too is at peace.

Nothing real, nothing absent.

Not holding on to reality,

Not getting stuck in the void,

You are neither holy or wise, just

An ordinary fellow who has completed his work.

   ~Layman P'ang

To an Aged Bear

by N. Scott Momaday 

Hold hard this infirmity.
It defines you. You are old.
Now fix yourself in summer,
In thickets of ripe berries,
And venture toward the ridge
Where you were born. Await there
The setting sun. Be alive
To that old conflagration
One more time. Mortality
Is your shadow and your shade.
Translate yourself to spirit;
Be present on your journey.
Keep to the trees and waters.
Be the singing of the soil.

©️ N Scott Momaday

Navarre Scott Momaday was born February 27, 1934 in Lawton, Oklahoma, U.S., Native American author of many works centred on his Kiowa heritage. 

Momaday grew up on an Oklahoma farm and on Southwestern reservations where his parents were teachers. He attended the University of New Mexico (A.B., 1958) and Stanford University  M.A.1960; Ph.D., 1963) His first novel House Made of Dawn (1968), remains his best-known work. It narrates, from several different points of view, the dilemma of a young man returning home to his Kiowa pueblo after a stint in the U.S. Army. The book won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. 

Momaday’s limited-edition collection of Kiowa folktales entitled The Journey of Tai-me (1967) was enlarged with passages of Kiowa history and his own interpretations of that history as The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969), illustrated by his father, Alfred Momaday. Native American traditions and a deep concern over human ability to live in harmony with nature permeate Momaday’s poetry which he collected in Angle of Geese and Other Poems (1974), The Gourd Dancer (1976), and Again the Far Morning: New and Selected Poems (2011). 

The Names: A Memoir (1976) tells of his early life and of his respect for his Kiowa ancestors. In 1989 he published his second novel, The Ancient Child, which weaves traditional tales and history with a modern urban Kiowa artist’s search for his roots. In the Presence of the Sun: Stories and Poems, 1961–1991 appeared in 1992, Circle of Wonder: A Native American Christmas Story in 1994, and The Man Made of Words: Essays, Stories, Passages in 1997. In 1999 Momaday published In the Bear’s House, a collection of paintings, poems, and short stories that examines spirituality among modern Kiowa. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2007.