A Time Alone to Listen

By the time I hiked the quarter mile or so to the rocky outcropping the bottom half of my pant legs were soaked from the morning dew. I was panting heavier than the short hike should have induced, but the footing was uneven and the prairie grasses grabbed at and hindered my progress making the task of hiking much more difficult than one might expect. The familiar outcropping jutted from the earth along the edge of a rise that fell away toward a distant arroyo and somewhere down there was heard the morning yelps and howls of a coyote family returning from their evening hunt.

The ever present Oklahoma breeze was once again starting to stir the landscape, a landscape magnificent in its own way, a place where what once was, yet still remains, a place almost lost, yet now protected held now in reserve as one of the last token, large scale examples of Tallgrass Prairie. Along the horizon the morning glow cast the pale tint of pre-dawn where the slumbering cool of the day lingered as long as it could before being driven away by the heat of the sun.

I removed my camera backpack, gently laying it next to one of the larger stone emplacements, then I sat on the smoothest place I could find and let the fog of sleepiness lift from my eyes. As the morning progressed, prairie birds blended their songs into an orchestrated performance that somehow seemed to play out in a perfect rhythm and the prairie became alive once again.

With the rising sun, the veil of pale darkness that hovered over the land filled with color. Around me, in all directions, no sign of human presence appeared. It was as though I stepped through a window to travel to an earlier time where the only sounds were of the prairie, the only scene were from the prairie, and the only purpose was to find space where one could spend a quality life moment...time alone.

If the prairie could speak it would say, "Come...listen to my song...a song written just for you." Haunted I am, at times, by the song of the prairie, a song seeking a place to reside inside my soul hoping to discover a new outlet of expression. I must again someday, return and rediscover A Time Alone to Listen.