Mountain morning

Mornings have become a special place to inhabit. It’s not a hard thing to imagine when you know that we make our home in the mountains in a small house overlooking a lake. Waking up to sit in that view is revitalizing every time. I know absolutely now that it’s never the same way twice. There are always degrees and shades of light and the wind does subtle things to change it if you look close enough. At any time of the year it’s a treat and a joy.
It really doesn’t really matter what season it is. Every morning in every time of the year has its magic. Sure, sometimes you have to struggle to see it when it’s foggy or rainy or the cold of winter slaps you hard when you step outside. Mountain weather is a temperamental thing. Views you pine for can be occluded. Landscapes you wake seeking to breathe in and inhabit can be invisible. However, each day has things to show and inform you no matter what’s happening in the atmosphere. It’s always there.
You just have to want to see it.
For me it’s the sensation of being removed from everything that allows the charm to happen.
There’s no morning traffic here except for our neighbours making their way to town to work.
But there are only fifty nine houses here so the flow is minimal. There is absolutely no noise and that can be strange at first. I lived in the hurly-burly world of cities most of my life and background noise is something that you learn to ignore. The absence is jarring when you first hear it though.
Once your ears adjust to the lack of volume you can really start to hear. In five years I’ve learned that the breeze has different voices. The wind churns treetops so they sound like fans whirring when it’s strong enough. I’ve learned that the approach of rain can sound like applause in the trees and that the water birds actually talk to each other. I’ve heard coyote song, raven croaks and the relentless buzz of insect life that changes with the temperature.
You learn how easily we take the ability to hear for granted.
You can hear snow fall. That amazed me when I heard it the first time. You hear creatures move in the bush and you hear your own heartbeat when you close your eyes and breathe. It’s like learning a whole new group of senses, really because morning is a sensual experience out here. You not only wake to it, you come alive in it. Sitting in the absolute stillness of a mountain morning you feel yourself shrug to wakefulness along with the rest of Creation.
It’s so still you can feel the boundaries of things shimmer with the effort it takes
to hold themselves in. It’s like the whole world is holding a collective breathe, waiting for permission to breathe. It’s a powerful sensation to be a part of. Everywhere around you there is this sense that the world and the universe are entering another day together. Another entry into self-knowledge you make; separately but together. That’s not just an Indian thing – it’s a human one.
In that perfect silence where not even a faint breeze strays, the idea of manitous - of spirits - hovered over everything becomes the first wavered light of the sun through the clouds and the storm that gathers to the west announces itself in a fanfare of silence. You have to really want to experience that to get it. I know. For years I was too damn busy, too engaged, to responsible and too afraid to fall behind and my mornings were largely caffeine, anxiety and expectation. I was rushed in everything.
Now, especially that summer has arrived, there’s a deck and a cup of Joe and a landscape that inspires me. I take time to stop thinking. Funny, how the first thing we do when we wake is to think. In the long ago time, my people say, our first inclination was to feel; to feel awake, to feel alive, to feel grateful. Then, once we’d made those conscious contacts, we started to think. I try to remember those words these days.
Reflection is a wonderful thing. It brings you back to the full realization of who you are. It’s strong medicine, available to all of us. You just have to want to feel it.
Small wonder, you say that there’s no word for “power” in your language, only spirit, only medicine but then there’s no word for “obvious” either. The spirit of a morning becomes coffee, air, the feel of the land around you and the notion that life and Creation always brings you to the places you need to be.