Sameness

As I opened the Eastern door of the cabin and stepped out, Acorn fell from Oak tree. I looked up to see Squirrel clambering through the branches. The morning was warm and thick. A good day to be lazy, I thought. Just rolling along. Nothing out of the ordinary.

By this time I was in the screen house, and heard a splash on the old Cow pond. Louder than duck, I thought, craning my head to see past the plants that blocked my view. I saw a black bird hit the water, but only briefly as it was lost behind a bush. Cormorant? Loon? If it was Cormorant she would swim to the log and climb out. I adjusted my view to see the log and, sure enough, there she was fluffing out her soaked feathers.

As I watched her fly and drop and swim and climb back onto the log to look around, I thought about how quickly my morning had turned from familiar to extraordinary. I had never seen Cormorant on the pond before. Just when I thought I would settle down to a morning of same she made it different.

Cormorant reminds me that I can never know when the landscape of my path will transform. She gets me thinking that perhaps the sameness that I was experiencing before she showed up was more about what I was paying attention to and not what was actually going on around me.

Today, I will keep my head up and my eyes open as the landscape of my path unfolds in front of me. What will I notice and what will it take to shake me out of the illusion of sameness that might overtake me?