November 15, 2007

Short Days

If you know anything about me at all, you know that I love Daylight Savings Time and the long sunlit hours that it brings. I like leaving the office at 5 p.m. and knowing that I have plenty of time to pursue my many outdoors activities. I enjoy saddling up at 8 p.m. and having plenty of daylight left for a long ride among the cows. I like watching the sun go down at 9:30 p.m. while sitting on the patio of Marfa's Hotel Paisono out on the far western edges of the Central Time Zone. I like long days.

This is the time of shortening days and heavy schedules. It is generally dark by the time I leave the office. The saddles sit passively in my tack room with the horses grazing silently in their pasture, lonely and unused. The sun often falls below the western horizon without being cheered on by one of its biggest fans. This is the time for short days.

Now entering the final quarter of my life I am discovering unexpected compensations in this time of the year. The other day I noticed an extraordinary beauty in the native gramma grasses that have now gone dormant and turned brown at Siete Ranch. It is what ranchers in west Texas call the "curing" of the grass. Though we don't have spectacular fall colors like in other parts of the country, I now pay more attention to the autumn hues that adorn the Oaks and Elms prior to their winter hibernation, what I call Thanksgiving colors. In fact, the whole scene brings forth a song of thanksgiving, especially when I have the rare opportunity to observe those winter sunsets which, frankly, are much more stunning than those we are treated to in the long days of summer.

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven" sings Ecclesiastes. God's rhythms are good, and the music at this time of the year, if one will listen, is less majestic but perhaps even more beautiful. Mozart rather than Wagner. In this season of short days, I am slowly learning how to dance by allowing the Creator to lead. Perhaps this is what could be called the "curing" of one of God's children. If so, I am glad to be in the company of such spectacular autumn beauty.