Summer days

Summer is the best time for me. Even though it gets very hot most days to the point you can't go outside unless you have air conditioning. To the cooler days when its tolerable to be out there for as long as you like. But we can't always pick and choose the days as we would want them.
What I like about summer is all the things we can do when we are outside. So many activities to keep us on our toes. The grass is a very pleasant mat of turf that you can walk or run on it in bare feet. When I was younger I spent all summer barefooted. The sidewalks always reminded me why I needed shoes.
   Yesterday was a very pleasant surprise. I had heard on the news earlier that there would be a spectacular sky show in the afternoon. Venus crossing the suns path like an eclipse as it passes across the sun. Its dangerous to look directly at the sun but I watched its effects upon the world around me.
 The shadow it cast was not very dim, like a cloud passing the sun. It was very different. The shadow it cast was not like a cloud at all, not anything like the moon during an eclipse. The shadow was much lighter than the moons shadow and not as brief as a cloud either. The duration of it seemed to begin like a charging bull in a pen, running as fast as it could yet taking its time just so we can enjoy it in what little time it had.
The world itself was never more alive at that time. Everything seemed to linger coming out of its hiding place to take a gander at what was happening before it disappeared again. A hawk sat on a power line for the longest time. As I was driving by it sat like a king watching over the world below. Could he have felt like a king at that moment?
A master of all it surveyed resting high where nothing could reach him. Hawks have remarkable eyesight. Like eagles they can see a field mouse run across the grass from that high vantage point. Well honed hunting skills enable a hawk to swoop down and snatch it up in its powerful talons and carry it off to its nest far away. To feed its young still growing in its nest.
The most wonderful part of this world is all the wildlife that is so abundant. The animals we share our world with live very different lives from us. The open fields, forests, wetlands, even the ice regions at the ends of the world and the deserts are all dwelling places for these wonderful creatures.
Weather we want to accept it or not we do learn so much from nature and all its wonder. The lessons of life are the hardest things for us to learn. Lessons of life and the cruelest lessons of death we see first hand in the wild. Seeing how life began we have also learned and watched with careful study.
Nature gives us a peace we are hard pressed to find in the city. Finding time to get away from the hustle and bussel of daily life we come to the wilds and relax in the tranquility of nature. Listening to summer rains is very relaxing. The gentleness of the falling rain quiets a troubled soul. God created a beautiful world for all people to co-habitat with nature. We were given the charge of watching over it and caring for the animals and other life in it. A great honor for us if only we learned just how much that really means.