Kansas above with her hoody ready for hunting season.

No the snow has not yet arrived at Wilcox. According to my friend and groundskeeper, Buddy, the Shore is experiencing a mild reprieve from a cold start to winter. Still, green grass or snowbanks a mile high, I sure wish I was there.

And yet...here on Bay Street one can sometimes see the most spectacular shows of nature. A couple of weeks ago I looked out to see a raptor of some kind circling between the buildings, spiraling up on the up drafts and then looping back low and starting the spiral again. Soon I noticed he/she had been joined by another...and another...until there were 14 in all. 14 raptors (they looked larger than the peregrines I first took them for) spinning and spinning...'kettling' my bird watching friend Marsha Jane (above) tells me. Never heard that word used that way before. A kettling of eagles. She tells me that they do that to gather before a migration.

So I live in the wilderness at Wilcox to experience nature first hand and I come to downtown Toronto, a different kind of wilderness, to find this spectacle presenting itself to me, unasked. Goes to show, like the song says, "you can't always get what you want, but you get what you need". I sure needed that kettling, that touchstone with something wild and certain.

Life continues to be a ball of uncertainty here. I go on getting my teeth fixed and having my skin attended to, such ordinary things. Things for future benefit. And I wonder each time what the point is without the lungs. Shouldn't everything go on hold until then? And then I get it, not for the first time, but for the millionth time. Why is this lesson so hard to learn?

Life is about today. Waiting until there is enough time, money, health, energy, space, willpower, is cheating yourself. There is never a perfect time to be. Borrowing from AA, "Fake it 'till you make it" if necessary. But get on with now. It's all there is. And today for me it contains a kettling of eagles and it's good.

Warm thoughts
Sandra