Just Write {158}

I looked up at the stars tonight, on a perfectly clear fall evening. Every constellation looks like a Dipper to me. Little or Big Dipper, I don’t know. I get distracted before I even take a closer look.

I see all the stars at once.

In college, I took Astronomy. Obviously, I didn’t learn much, or retained very little of it.

But there I stood, my neck bent with my face to the salt and peppered sky. For October in Minnesota, it has been warm, gorgeous. Not easy to describe at all. The last two days have been still and bright and crisp, with that nothing-like-it autumn smell in the air.

There was a walk in the woods the other day. Up a hill and to a fallen tree. There were pricklies on my sweater and stuck to my jeans. Some even got in my pocket. I pulled at them and then realized I didn’t care if they were there. Later they’d be evidence of a time that felt perfect, peaceful, serene, holy.

The only sounds were the rustling of leaves while a few squirrels hopped nearby, stopped to stare, hopped some more. One stood on its hind legs and held a big acorn to its mouth. It didn’t blink, stood frozen there, like a staring contest. Then off it went again, leaping from low branch to low branch, a bed of brown crisp leaves beneath, covering every inch of the ground. Those leaves were just the right blanket for us to sit on, leaning back on the trunk of a fallen tree, perfectly still and staring, like a contest.

Light cut through, the wind did not. If you can wear a sweatshirt and not be cold, or hot, in the sun…life is good.

This was a gift. I mean, the sweatshirt, yes, but simply the walk and the time to sit in the woods, to be quiet together. And then to get up and take the long way back on purpose. To follow a trail or not, walking slowly on purpose. To remember together and walk and talk ,or walk and not talk, and have either words or no words feel good and right.

We took a breath after weeks and maybe months of running, with our backs against a dead tree. Our souls sighed and hung out together, like they always have, despite time and distance and the reality of the separate lives we led. The ones that were just right for their time.

It’s impossible to see where connections begin, how they start, why they stay.

So tonight I looked up at the stars and thought about that. And even if the mystery of soul connection isn’t something I can make sense of, I take it in all at once, for its beauty.

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This is the 158th installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments. {New here? Please see the details.} I would love to read your freely written words so join me and link up below. You can add the url of your post at any time. Just be sure it’s a link to your Just Write post, not to your main page. (Then link back to this post in your Just Write post so people know where to go if they’d like to join in.) (Any links not following those two guidelines will be deleted.)

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