The Beauty in Adversity

This morning was both frosty, and foggy.  I was surprised by the fog because it had been such a cold, clear night.  And because the thermometer on the back deck (which is extremely accurate before sunrise and from mid-afternoon on) read only 28 degrees at seven a.m.

The fog was created by the warmer, moister, air at ground level contacting the much colder air that came down from the atmosphere in the darkest, coldest hours of the predawn.  (Yes, the temperature does actually drop a little just before dawn.  Any deer hunter who has ever paid attention to how cold they get in the half-hour or so before sunrise can attest to that.)  And that fog was freezing on every cold surface it contacted:  shingles on the roof, siding on the barn, windshields on vehicles, blades of grass, fences, and even the stalks and pods of the soybeans in the field adjacent to the horse farm.

Most people would grumble about going outside in the dark earliness before the sun rises.  Most people would grumble about the poor visibility created by the fog.  Most people would grumble about the cold air, about the thick frost that had to be scraped from windshields before leaving for work.

Honestly, I wasn't thrilled about having to leave for work.  I would much rather walk out to my own barn to feed my horses.  They were supposed to come home this summer.  We were supposed to erect fences and build stall walls so that I could keep them here instead of work off their board another winter at the horse farm.  Not only hasn't that happened, it's not going to:  bringing them home before winter, that is. A long story for another post, let's just suffice it to say that I was not happy this morning to be leaving for work in the dark, in the cold, in the fog, and having to quickly attempt to remove heavy frost from my windshield so that I could get to that work, which I didn't want to go to, on time.

But. . . I soon lost my unhappiness in the beauty of the morning.  I mean, if I hadn't been where I was, at the time I was, because of the circumstances I was in, I would have totally missed all of this:

heading out to the back fields to check on horses

soybeans in the fog

frost rimed soybeans

soybean field as the rising sun shines through the fog

a truly beautiful start to the day

And isn't that the way it usually goes:  if we didn't have to be places we didn't think we wanted to be we would miss out on some of the best experiences there are to be had in life.