Beating "The Beast"

Some yesterdays ago Rob and I set off on another one of our rambles. Quite often we stop to rescue worms from the UPS trucks continually winding up our neighborhood lanes or baby newts from old state roads. We make daily pilgrimages to numerous bird and hummingbird feeders and to horses and a donkey named Mabel. We follow foxes with our eyes, only recently beginning to understand their caution with humans. We tend the plants in our gardens with gentle care as one would small children newly added to the family fold. Every day is a new opportunity to do a lot of the same routines but always with gratitude.

Recently we made a trip to Waynesville and Maggie Valley searching for new homes to check out and new trails to explore. I was having an off day, feeling a bit out of sorts, wondering where all of us are truly headed within these mostly unpleasant times. Where does "The Beast" end? And how do we navigate our way through something foreign to the whole world to somewhere (over the rainbow) all of us would like?

While no one yet knows the answer to the first question, the answer to the second one was beneath my well-worn hiking boots. I was standing on a healthy patch of Prunella Vulgaris, commonly known as the self-heal herb. We got this, people, because as my Depression-era Grandma Thelma used to say, "It's a good ole world. What you don't have, you can do without." And secondly, kind gestures no matter how small make a big old world go around...yours, mine, and everyone else's.