Rare is the time that I have to sit down and actually watch television, much less daytime television. When I was a kid my grandmother would sit all afternoon after doing the housework and watch her “stories” or soap operas. It was an early lesson on how much we can become a part of someone else’s life- even if it’s a fictional life. If it seems better than ours we watch to dream away the banality of our meager existence. Should our TV bestow images that seem worse than our lives, we feel lucky to be alive.

I felt pretty comfortable with my take on television.

Every morning I have three choices. The first route takes me to the river. From that vantage point I can watch the water become one with the bay the river empties into. If I am very lucky and the timing is right, my only companion is the big golden eagle that makes it’s way west out over the water. Every trip to the river is like being born again.

My second choice takes me through the small subdivision on the hill above my home. There I walk as the neighborhood is just waking up. The dogs on the corner announce my arrival and departure like a train engineer. Lights are on in some windows, even though the sun is breaking over the trees. Toys left out all night are covered with dew and sometimes I can hear the sounds of humans beginning their day.

Choice number three takes me past the river and the houses out to the forest. I rarely take the same path in to the woods but this morning I find a familiar route. There are many other foot prints that have pushed the sand into formations since my last visit. Deer have been here and by the looks of it a large dog or maybe a wolf. Someone is wearing about a size 9 Nike running shoe (as compared by my size 13 New Balance.) This path takes me through the pines to a small rise in the middle of a meadow. A makeshift altar made out of gnarled stumps seems to hold this place holy. The only sounds out here are the calls of birds to each other or a flock of Canadian Geese overhead. And the sound of the wind.

This is where I pray. This is where I think. This is where I would choose to die.

But that is one choice I most likely don’t have, very few of us do.

Not far from this place is a small town cemetery with names and dates, some dating back to the late 1800’s and some just weeks old. I think about their lives and the hopes they had and how fortunate I am to be alive, how much I have going for me, how thankful I am to just be here. Words float to me from some far-away place in my mind from a long time ago, written by a friend no longer with me..

“Lost and alone on some forgotten highway, traveled by many, remembered by few,

Looking for something that I can believe in, looking for something that I’d like to do

With my life.

There’s nothing behind me and nothing the ties me to something that might have been true yesterday.

There’s a spirit that guides me and a light that shines for me. My life is worth the living and I don’t need to see the end.”

As I look at those names etched on stone I wonder how many more mornings like this I have. I wonder if I have more yesterdays than tomorrows. I wonder how the world will be without me in it.

And then comes the shift.

The focus goes to moments and how important they are. The vision of just one more sunrise and one more hug and one more smile and one more thunderstorm.

There is a full body of evidence that I am going to die someday and without crapping in your mess kit, you are too. After having my share of auto accidents, electrical shocks, major surgeries and other maladies I am not afraid to die.

As the sun begins its rounds for this day I head back home. My footprints in the sand will be erased by the predicted thunderstorms heading in from the west. The pines will hold my thoughts until our next appointment and as I near the black top the last vestiges sacred spaces begin to evaporate.

I think most of us are afraid to die. We should be more afraid of not living.

As the dogs greet me back near civilization I vow to find the next level within myself and for myself and put my thoughts down on paper.

I have a message for you from my friend and the forest and the sunrise.

“Life is worth the living and you don’t need to see the end.”

John St.Augustine