Manic Day Bliss

 Today I find myself in a very happy place. If I am a manic/depressive being (aren't we all to some degree) I am definitely in a manic phase and I love it. Some of my delight is triggered by the warm golden sunshine streaming down from above. (Two days in a row, it must be a record for this summer.) I'm sure yesterdays stroll through the Top of The Word on Wickersham Dome also is effecting the chemistry of bain. Indeed, one of yesterday's events most certainly is contributing to the smile in my brain.

During my hike yesterday I forgot my walking stick at a point along the trail. The stick was of a stem of diamond willow which my son had harvest from the banks of the Chena River. He gave it to me several years ago and I carved,sanded and finished it to a golden rod with deep, blood colored diamond shapes contrasting with its light golden wood. It formed the perfect shape to fit my hands with its curving, gnarled   surface. Normally such a loss would have tinted my world a bit in to depressed gray but the events that followed had an opposite effect.

When I got home I posted a blurb on Facebook about losing it. Within a very short time I received a response from a fine young lady informing me that they had found the object and were delighted to be able to put it back in my hands. She and her family of 4 had encountered me along the trail and we had briefly exchanged pleasantries. They found the stick propped up in a trailside bush and remembered that fine walking stick in my grubby hands during that brief encounter. Her young son had dutifully carried it back to the trailhead in hopes that they could return it to me. Alas, I had already departed when they arrived.

This morning I awoke to marvelous sunshine and the knowledge that I would be re-united with the lost object. While picking up the stick at Paige's home I learned that Paige and knows my daughter, Rachel, through their mutual nursing jobs at the hospital. Sometimes it truly is a small world. I love this place where I live! I exist among boundless landscapes in which I  roam and people who aren't afraid to share a bit of themselves with each other. How did I come to be so blessed?