The Use of Time

"Time is free, but it's priceless.

You can't own it, but you can use it.

You can't keep it, but you can 

spend it.  Once you've lost it, you

can never get it back."

Harvey Mackay

It has been a busy week and I feel tired, but not spent.  I have not wasted these unusually gentle and mild days recently and I delight in that.  I have hiked, ridden a century, and hiked some more.  Some activities have been with company.  Others solo.  All delightful.  One of those weeks that you really don't want to end because you feel happy and healthy despite the years that tug incessantly reminding you with a pain here and a stiffness there that you are not truly young anymore.  More than one of those days that happen occasionally when it is not yet spring but you can almost smell spring in the air and you long for its embrace, for the color and warmth and sound and raucous delights that it bestows upon the world.  As if being released from a strict headmaster for break to run wild and do as you please.

 

 

Yes, there are signs that spring is on the way, the occasional shy, pale green leaf testing the air, the spirited sound of peepers longing for company after a long winter of hibernation, tree buds starting to form, swelling outward and blurring the sharp definition of branches in winter,  birds beginning to sing and talk of nesting territory, daffodils slowly but steadily pushing their green stems upward promising to lighten the world soon with their brilliant yellow flowers, joyfully dancing with each gust of wind.  

 

The arrival of spring sometimes feels to me as if the earth herself were rejoicing.   Like a wooing lover, she lays gifts at my feet daily that are no less delightful despite the fact that the years have taught me to expect them.  And it is priceless.  I know that despite my best attempts, spring will slip once again through my fingertips dancing away, yielding to summer.  And so I must not waste these precious days.  Age hammers into me the reality that these days are numbered, not to make me sad or morose, merely to make me more appreciative.  Yes, with age I take many things less for granted.  Rather odd because it seems that it would work the other way.  But it doesn't.  At least for me.  

I wish I could say that I always make good use of my time, that I don't waste the time that has been given me, but being human I can't.  But I did not waste this week.  This week is gone, and I certainly can't get it back, but I can remember it and be glad.  Glad for the glimpse of warmer, spring weather, glad for my health, glad for companionship, glad for alone time in the midst of beauty.  Glad for my blessings.  

My lunch spot and a few other photos from solo hikes on the Knobstone.