Friday, February 6th, 2015

Mayapur, India

The Mist is Thick


The mist is thick and but for the moon all is beautifully dark as our usual group hits a trail.  When the second ball of light, the sun, pulls the fog - you hear the sounds of the morning.  There's the twitter of birds, bells from the temples, and the morning cry from the local Mosque.  And, oh yes, you can't see but you can hear someone in the midst of a bucket-tossed shower - gathering up all the phlegm of the world and spitting it out.  It's a common sound, really.

The air, with its winter-end chill is practically nothing to respond to for someone in a Canadian body but it is for others.  Winter coats, sweaters, and scarves is the way of addressing it.  It did send me for a moment to the past when I would don my barn coveralls on a really chilly day in Canada.  I was off to milk the family cow at 5:30 AM.  My dad would give me a call, "John!" he'd say in an optimistic tone.  I would rise from bed and then meet the outdoor February chill.

"It's fresh, it's good for you!"  he said.  I never doubted him.  It seemed that he relished the bite on his face, a bite of robustness.  I had come to appreciate his remark many years later.  That was a warm flashback.

As we trekked onward and stopped to greet cows at the goshala, I came to pet the bull that a few days' before almost gored me.  Once again a flashback to the farm when I was in my teens.

Mayapur, I love thee! 

May the Source be with you!

6 KM