Once Upon A Time

I sat on the front porch of a little cabin in the woods overlooking a lake.  The sun wasn't up yet but the sky was starting to get lighter.  I was leaning against the wall with my feet up on the hand rail.  The water was calm, it's surface like glass reflecting back the sky and the opposite shoreline.  I heard a loon call in the distance.  I had a job doing maintenance at a children's camp and I was waiting for my day to start.

I huddled under a small reflective tarp in a large open field.  Hail as large as dimes beat down on the tarp.  For a moment I could barely see more than three feet in front of me and all I could hear was the roar of the hail on the tarp.  Several other huddled tarps dotted the hillside around me as we all waited out the storm.  I had a job tree planting in northern BC and for a few minutes I was on hold.

I went for a jog over rolling green hills through the English countryside.  As I crested one particular rise I saw a ribbon of mist snaking through the valley below me.  The fog was rising up off a small stream that meandered through the hills in the cool of the morning.  Sight and sound became muffled as I was swallowed up by the fog.  I was attending college in England, living in a grand manor house.

Once upon a time is what happens in storybooks and fairy tales.  Now I sit in front of a computer reliving memories of a time frozen in the past, waiting to go to work.  I hear a bird chirp and the sun is starting to rise.  The winter snow has melted and my blueberry bushes are starting to bud.  It is time to get up and embrace a new day, leave the past behind and move on.