The Great West

For miles and miles and miles, all I see is mountains and boulders, grasslands and sky.  It is enormous.  It is vast.  I can't even comprehend how much land and sky and space is out there.  I am in awe.  I breathe it in.  I ground myself.  I dig my feet into the earth and turn my face to the sun and soak in the grandeur of our land.  This is a moment that opens me. 

I am but a small grain of sand in the landscape of our world.  One speck.  And I feel it here.

I have emotions, I have goals, I have worries, I have cares.  So often, one of these, or many, are my world.  They consume me.  They mark me.  They prevent me from seeing beyond my speck.  In those moments, my little grain of sand is a big as the land I soak in now.

I am standing, with my feet in the earth, listening to the tumble of the stream over the rocky bed, feeling the cool breeze as it whispers across my face.  My worries are carried into that stream.  My cares become songs in that breeze.  My emotions are warmed by the sun, and my little speck joins the vast landscape before me.

I am part of this.  I am a single grain, and I am woven into this great land, and I am part of it.  It is bigger than me, and I am part of it.  This land is in me.  It is me.  It is my breath, my heartbeat.

For miles and miles and miles all I see is open land.  It is vast, it is enormous.  It is bigger than I'll ever be, and I breathe it in.  I dig my feet into the earth, and it grounds me.  I breathe it in, and it warms me.  And as I stand in this moment, my hearbeat joins the pulse of this land.