Anecdotally Speaking

This morning, as I started down my driveway toward the highway, I spied my next-door neighbor moving down the drive ahead of me. The frozen gravel and snow crunched beneath our tires as we moved in tandem down the drive toward the road. Her car reached the end ahead of me, hesitated, then pulled out onto the highway and moved off toward the west.

I reached the end of the drive and paused as well. Another neighbor approached from the west driving his pickup truck, towing a hayrack. We waved at each other with a friendly wag of our index fingers as he passed by in front of me. I then pulled out and headed off down the highway myself, thinking, "Boy, a lot of traffic today."

There wasn't much else to see on the rest of my trip, except maybe for a triad of ring-necked pheasants, standing in a field, straight up, frozen at attention, eying me intently as I passed by. Standing ablaze in brilliant color, flooded by the dazzling morning sunlight and set against the luminous white canvas of the pure winter snow, as if waiting for me to go, so that they could carry on with some unrevealed interrupted activity.

And then there was the red-tailed hawk, perched atop a fence post, standing so still, and so regal, so as to seem to be part of the post itself. I hardly would have noticed him if I was not looking carefully. If all goes as he expects, some rodents in the grass will fail to notice him, much to their regret.

Oh, and the flock of small birds that traced out an invisible wave in the sky as they passed by, beating up in unison, coasting down, beating up again, coasting down. Individuals acting together in harmony, unified as if one, coming from somewhere, going to who knows where.

One stop sign slowed me down on my trip. I hate delays. However, I figure that you must be philosophical about these things. You know, take the good with the bad and all of that. I should not complain, but it is annoying, nonetheless. There should be no stop signs in life, right?

Oh, I almost forgot. There was also this magnificent bald eagle, soaring with his wings outstretched, tilting and turning, twisting and spinning, without once breaking his wings for a beat the whole time I could see him as I drove by. What a way to fly! What a way to take a trip.