Along Mill Creek Road…

Today, along Mill Creek Road, Montana’s Mill Creek itself did what it has done for millennia, times like these, times when winter’s snowpack has meant an extended spring, creeks like Mill Creek, roiling as it has so often roiled before, meeting the Yellowstone River, the river itself belly-high, spreading itself hip to hip, water, so much water, rippling between.

Out here in Montana’s Paradise Valley, life literally flows on.

The valley itself at the whim, the wile, of that Yellowstone.

The river, yet again, declaring ownership of its banks, reminding those living nearby that those banks are fluid, that life itself is ever subject to change.

This one river announcing itself one year, surprising another. Those mountains now and forever rimming the horizon.

All that is different is that I am this year witness.

Witness to this life.

To this creek, this river.

To life itself.

Life rippling rock to rock. Bank to bank.

Those banks widening, this year to accommodate life’s flow, as it has always before accommodated life’s flow. And, another year, barely breaching rock.

And me, looking, listening to that water meeting that rock. The creek itself today exultant.

Me, at the same time, so small.

This speck, my life, against this landscape, against all of time.

And me today sixty…