It happened because I took a walk. I love taking walks. Okay, not all of the time. On days when the pavement is slick with ice and snow and I have to watch my step more than the surrounding scenery, I’d rather stay inside with a cup of cocoa and read. No, not newspapers. I used to like to do that, and did so every day. But, well, no comment other than to say I cancelled my subscription. Too bad. I really did like to read it – except the middle of the business section with all the letters and numbers that I didn’t quite follow. Not that. But the rest of it. But not now. Now I can’t even make a cup of cocoa. But I’ll get to that in a minute.
Today, however . . . today the temperature could be best described as balmy. Balmy! That’s not easy to find near the close of October, but it was today. Though many had fallen, some leaves still clung for their beautiful red, orange, and yellow lives to the branches. You had to admire their will to live. And the sky was a faint blue: the color of my grandma’s eyes after her cataract surgery.
I waved to my neighbor, Merl, as I started out. He sat on his porch nearly every day and just watched. I don’t really know what he watched, but he seemed to find enough to interest him. Maybe he saw more than the average person. Who knows. He waved back as he took a sip of his lemonade.
I needed this. Our town’s water system was low, and we were on a strict limit – even to drink. Weather pundits claimed we’d been in a year-long drought. Unlike some fortunate souls who lived out of town, I had no cistern. The whole situation made me not only thirsty, but more than a little grumpy.
I’d passed the local grocery store (there was a line inside, each customer holding a 12 pack of Dasani or one of its poorer cousins), and was approaching the church on the corner, when the largest raven I’ve ever seen swooped so close I automatically ducked. In fact, I dived so low, my hands slammed on the pavement and I skinned the palm of one hand. As I brushed myself off, and was deciding whether to turn home or continue on, I noticed a small envelope on the ground just where the raven had flown so low.
I retrieved it and opened the flap. Inside was a crude map and one word: Walk. My eyebrows shot up and I thought, Well that decides that. I followed the trail as far as I could understand from the crudely drawn map. I glanced up at the sky. Still faint blue with no cloud in sight.
I came to the edge of a stream. It was nothing remarkable, burrowing a shallow channel, often more of a muddy trail than legitimate stream depending on the amount of rain. That was probably why hardly anyone ever paid attention to it.
That is where the map ended. I was more than a little puzzled and looked around. What had I been thinking? An envelope dropped by a raven was certainly nothing to waste my day over, was it? But I had. And by now it was no longer balmy. I was getting chilled. To the bone. It no longer felt like the close of October, but instead, the edge of November. I scolded myself as I pulled my thin sweater close and started home.
As I walked, I pondered over the events of my day. My mind wandered over the non-descript scene the map had led me to. With a start I stopped, then turned and hurried back to the stream.
Sometimes it’s the things we don’t see that are the very thing we need to notice. My mind and memory finally saw what my blind eyes had missed. The stream that was more of a muddy trail held a treasure greater than gold!
How can a stream be muddy in a drought? I dug until my fingernails were caked with mud, and there it was: An underground spring, small and beautiful!
The next day, though it was chilly, I decided to sit on my porch and just watch for awhile. I looked over and raised my cup of cocoa to Merl as he raised his glass to mine.
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