Deep Sense of Well Being

Tito wakes me as I start another attempt at counting breathes to ten. There is no light in the room save for the faint glow from the porch light of the neighbors, they a good five-iron away. I am nervous. Yesterday's snow storm, although advertised well in advance and amazingly accurate, left me with unanticipated responsibilities. The power is out in my cabin, roads need clearing, my spin class was cancelled and the PowerBarn shuttered. The house and dog, now under my charge as the owners recharge batteries in Hawaii, is secure. The power is on, Tito is fat, warm and happy, and I have the entire diem in which to carpe. But something is off.

And I don't know what it is.

The 'almost' cast in stone schedule has been obliterated like a asteroid landing on a chicken coop. What was once a routine is now nothing but red feathers and cracked eggs. In just two days I have 'lost' two spin sessions and a 10K run. I know this because they remain on my calendar nakedly missing the usual, and triumphant, strike-through. This bothers me. It reminds me how close every day I come to losing all semblance of continuity and consistency, the last two standing pillars of my former success. I remember a baseball manager, might have been the magnificent Earl Weaver, who responding to a rookie reporter one spring camp, said the difference between baseball and football is that, 'we do this every day, not just once a week'. I feel like it has been an eternity since my last workout.

Surrendering to Tito's request, I roll back the covers, sit upright and rub my eyes and her ears. In an instant I have grabbed my ski jacket, gloves and flashlight, hooked her collar to the leash and opened the front door. Where I am jolted into the present moment as if I had just died and this is heaven. The snow is a perfect blanket of ivory, somehow whiter than white. It is sparkling in amazing contrast to the pre-dawn darkness. The tracks that we blazed just few hours ago are gone, covered-up by the over-night dusting. I am dumbfounded as the combination of sights and the absence of sound mixes with the sensation of cold. I stand on the porch frozen in awe. Finally Tito tugs the leash, rolls her eyes and suggests we bliss-out among the trees where she can pee. And we are off.

Walking down to the cabin where the power remains just a word and not a utility. Mike has set up a space heater connected to his huge generator in the tiny bathroom. I know from experience that the only thing worse than having the power out are frozen pipes adding to the challenge. I laugh as I see chunks of snow from last night unmelted on the kitchen rug.

We return to the big house, a mile away, and Tito gets her gourmet breakfast and I start boiling a pot of water to french-press coffee.

As it heats I clean the plate and utensils from last nights dinner, a rather spartan but wholesome grill-cheese sandwich on a think slab of my favorite artisan whole-wheat bread, garnished with one medium-large whole green chili atop.

I am washing the fork as I look outside at the snow, the sun still an hour away. And something I read last night enters my consciousness much like what turning on a light switch does to a dark room. It was a simple phrase, not even a sentence, but here it was reminding me of its merit.

'…and he slept peacefully with a deep sense of well being.'