We should all be as happy as kings

Though I did not capture them with a camera, a number of “pictures” from the last 7 to 10 days keep staying with me. 

 

The first two descriptions I want to offer are alike, but different.

 

At a T-intersection of two gravel roads, I came to a stop and then made a right turn. My stop must have startled a kestrel from somewhere he was roosting, causing him to take flight. For a few heartlifting seconds, the bird was flying alongside my car just a couple feet away from the passenger side window.

 

I saw the bird there and it was as if time slowed down. It seemed I could see its muscles moving in its chest, keeping the wings in motion. I can still picture its sleek outline, the field and skyline behind it. Though a kestrel is not a particularly large bird, it is a predator–a sharp-eyed hunter that needs strong muscles and quick reflexes.

 

In those seconds the bird was in my line of sight, it seemed all that information was available to me in its profile and its intent expression.

 

The next magnificent surprise I want to describe was a swallowtail butterfly. This time, I was leaving the Waseca Junior Senior High School by its west doors. Brick and glass behind me, concrete below me, asphalt up ahead–not a setting where one expects an encounter with nature.

 

Yet there it was, flying fast.

 

The moment did not have the noise and power of a Thunderbird flyover, but it had a grace and majesty that stays with me, again like a short film in my head. My peripheral vision took note of movement. I turned my head to see what it was.

 

And there, suddenly brilliant and beautiful only a foot or two in front of my face was a swallowtail butterfly: The elegant shape and distinctive yellow and black colors stopped me in my tracks, and caused me to whisper aloud, “What are you doing here, you magnificent creature?”

 

The butterfly was already past me when I finished. “Go grace someone’s flower garden.”

 

That “snapshot” moment may have been only one or two seconds long, but again, it is locked in my memory and makes me smile when I recall it.

 

The third moment of grandeur I wish to describe came at the end of one of our recent oppressive 90-something-degree days. Of course no Minnesotan needs to be told that, when the heat and humidity work together, we get storm clouds.

 

The official name for those is “cumulonimbus,” a combination of Latin words meaning “heaped” or “piled,” and “raincloud.”

 

As it came toward evening on one of those hot days, white, glowing towers rose powerfully above us, seeming to reach to space. Though I know what those towers can become, it was impossible not to look at them with awe and appreciation–so shining white, so immense, and such a contrast to the sky around them.

 

As the sun moved toward the horizon, they became shades of pink, purple and orange. I couldn’t help thinking about the rising heat and energy which fed them and kept them looking fluffy and marshmallow-like…but with marshmallows hundreds of feet across.

 

Like the kestrel and swallowtail, all I have to do is think about this moment and the picture appears in my imagination. Even only the memories cause me to draw my breath in delight.

 

I hope my descriptions bring you pleasure, but even more, I hope you take the opportunity to appreciate moments like these when they present themselves to you. After all, as we were told in A Child’s Garden of Verse,  “The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”