Don't Fence Me In
As I started out on my morning drive today, I came upon a cow out for a stroll along the road. The fact that this was not out of the ordinary made me smile and got me to thinking.
I thought back to the many years ago when I was being trained for my first employment driving the big yellow beast. It was in Tulsa where the daily setting for my route could be summed up in four easy words – cars, concrete, buildings and people. Such contrast is the world I live in now.
My mornings allow me to encounter and absorb a multitude of sights. When it is predawn and I am just heading out for my day, there is a cottontail that passes at the same spot and same time every day. I see countless herds of cattle who haven’t wandered out of their boundaries. Each of them are doing what they do best; eating grass and participating in the single file trek to the watering hole. Spring produces many new faces. They are bright, tiny faces that belong to tiny cow bodies which jump and frolic and then run away when the big yellow beast comes rolling by. It also welcomes tiny lambs that dot the hillside with their cuteness. I have passed a gravel entryway on occasion and see a possum. I think he is old. He just sits there on his possum rear end, like he is someone’s pet watching the morning go by. Along my way there are a couple of low places on the road with wooded area on one side and water on the other. This is where the beaver will cross.
There is a pair of geese that each year will take up residence at the same pond. After a good rain I will be mindful that they may be crossing from the ditch across the road where there was surely a plentiful supply of new goose morsels to be had. Free roaming chickens are plentiful and usually have the good sense or fear enough to stay off the roadway. Guineas are not intelligent birds. They have no street smarts at all.
One morning, at an area that is one of the many popular deer crossings on my route, I happened to glance to the right. Through the woods and notice a ravine that had a small pond. Along the waters edge were a half dozen or more deer looking back through the trees as we passed by. It was picture perfect.
It isn’t just the wildlife that I have become accustomed to. The land itself is beautiful as the sun makes its appearance for the day. Watching the season’s progress on a daily basis is rather awesome. I watch from the dogwood and redbud trees in the spring to the maple trees in the fall. Pastures change from green to brown and back to green. I can even delight in the little patches of wild flowers that grow in the ditch.
I hope I never take for granted how blessed I am to be able to start each day amongst those things that revolve around what is God made as opposed to what is man made.
All of these thoughts because I saw a cow alongside the road!!
