Flagstaff is our cool, breezy host for this tournament weekend of baseball, nestled within the fresh smelling pines of the Arizona high country. Through the tall pines, I can see the briskly blowing flag at half mast in honor of all those who have fallen but are not forgotten. Joe wears flag socks with his baseball uniform for the same reason. It is good to celebrate this Memorial Day in the home of the free because of the brave.
The sun plays hide and seek with the clouds in the crisp blue sky as the temperature tags along like an unwanted younger sibling, chilling and warming as it follows the sun. I am grateful for Audrey’s long sweater coat as my desert-dwelling self shivers in the shade of a silly 59 degrees.
Today, it is a glorious day on the Frances Short Pond that lies just beyond the baseball fields.
It is a small pond within a meadow encircled by trees. All textures of green thrive with abandon here: the full roundness of the green-yellow willow trees, the shorter narrower whitish green of the delicate birch leaves, all skirted round about by the towering arrows of the dark green pine. There are scattered boulders around the shore, randomly perfected for sitting on in the recurrent ebb and flow of the sun.
Local fishermen families also line it’s shores while the Mallards and the brilliant white Pekin ducks clean themselves without fanfare or fear. The breezes ruffling the velvety down of their necks and hind quarters in untouchable waves of softness.
Sparkling twinkles of silver draw my eyes to the beauty of the wind rippled water as my ears catch the distant, patriotic rhythms of a tuba. Snatching my attention away, it signals the start of, and summons me back to, our afternoon of play.
Tripping with God: Stories of Faith and Inspiration 