Three Years: Morning Prayer in the Cold

Fall – Week 42 – Morning Prayer and Wild Anticipation

In Her Nature is a year long exploration into the healing power of the natural world. Season by season, setting out to awaken the spirit, and rekindle joy. The weekly journal of a neighborhood, its plants and birds and creatures — and how they are helping repair a heart and rebirth a soul.

Two days ago was the anniversary, three years since my accident. Three years since something broke that I thought might never mend. Not just bone and vertebrae, though those too. Something more essential, the sense that my body was a place I could trust, that the world was a place I could move through freely, that tomorrow would reliably resemble today in the ways that matter.

I’ve learned to meet these anniversaries by doing what I always do. Driving to the barn, tending the horses, moving through my morning ritual. There’s something about keeping my hands busy, about being with animals who don’t know anything about anniversaries or the weight certain dates carry.

This time, driving to the barn in the cold Colorado dawn, the world offered me everything it had.

The geese announced themselves before I saw them, their unmistakable honking cutting through the truck’s heater hum. A whole gaggle loitering by the roadside, their gossip rising like steam in the cold air. They barely shifted as I passed, just tracked me with their dark eyes, unbothered, at home in their bodies in a way I remember envying. In a way I’m becoming again.

Their calls faded as the road curved toward the cornfields, and that’s when the morning revealed its next gift: the elk again. A bull and his cow, massive and deliberate, their breath making the same mist as the geese but heavier, more substantial. Great plumes rising from their nostrils as they crossed the mowed stubble. I slowed to watch, and for a moment we breathed the same air, shared the same impossible fact of continuing.

The cold had sharpened everything - edges, colors, sounds. Even the mountains seemed closer, their peaks catching first light while clouds rolled over like slow thoughts. As I pulled up to the barn, movement overhead drew my gaze: two bald eagles circling on thermals I couldn’t see but knew were there, their white heads and tails brilliant against all that blue.

Yesterday it had been sandhill cranes that stopped me mid-step. First their calls, that prehistoric rolling purr that makes you look up no matter what you’re doing. Then I saw them, a long line scribing their ancient path south, their bodies improbably graceful for something so large. Such a rare sight here, such a gift to witness their migration. I stood in the pasture watching until they disappeared, feeling that particular joy that comes from encountering something wild and unplanned.

These days I notice I’m excited by things again. Not just moved or grateful, but genuinely excited. That bright anticipation I thought might have broken along with everything else three years ago. A big part of happiness, I’m learning, is being excited. It’s been so long since I woke up curious about what the day might bring, eager to see how it will unfold. Not just wondering what might fly overhead or bloom unexpectedly, but feeling that old familiar pull toward the hours ahead. The conversations, the small discoveries, the ordinary moments that might surprise me. That feeling of possibility that makes you want to get out of bed, not because you have to, but because you want to see what happens next.

Even the crickets know something about holding on to joy while you can. Their evening chorus has quieted now that the cold has come closer. No longer the full-throated summer symphony but something more tentative, precious. When I come home after dark, their trill is softer, slower, like they’re counting out their last days note by note. I stand on the porch listening, knowing this they will be gone soon, replaced by winter’s deeper silence. But for now they’re still here, still singing. They make me smile.

This is my reality, I thought. This moment, this body, this morning, this life. Theirs. Mine.

But threaded through the joy: I still think of Deus, my old horse. Especially on these anniversaries. The way grief doesn’t fade just because time passes or new joys arrive. The cold morning made me think of him. How this time of year his coat would thicken for winter, how he’d stand with his rump to the wind, how he’d call to me across the frozen ground. How we couldn’t find our way back to each other after that day. I don’t know what pasture he grazes now, whose hands touch that growing winter coat.

I said a prayer for him there between the circling eagles and the horses below. Mostly for him - that someone sees his worth, and keeps him warm. But also for myself, for this particular kind of sorrow that comes from loving something you can’t protect forever.

Even a year ago, feeling excited about anything seemed impossible. Not the grief, the grief felt permanent, etched into me like the date itself. But this? This brightness, this anticipation of what each morning might bring? That seemed like a story other people got to tell.

Writing this journal has been part of it, these weekly returnings to the page. Some weeks about the aspens and aging, about bearing witness. Other weeks about the way grief and joy braid together, inseparable. About the geometry of healing, how it’s never the straight line you expect. About learning that showing up is sometimes all we can do, and sometimes everything.

What I didn’t expect was how the writing would work alongside the landscape to unlock something I thought was gone. How watching geese gossip and cranes trace their ancient paths would slowly teach me about freedom again. Real freedom. Not the kind I had before, when I didn’t know how quickly a life could change, but something deeper. The freedom that comes from knowing exactly how fragile everything is and choosing to love it anyway.

I think I feel more unshackled now than I did before the fall. It’s a paradox I’m still learning to understand. Having been caged, by pain, by fear, by the sudden smallness of my world. I know what it means to wake up already defeated, to move through days like walking through deep water. Which makes this new lightness extraordinary.

Sometimes I wonder: will this last? Will I keep waking up happy? Will the excitement hold? But maybe that’s the wrong question. Maybe the gift isn’t in the lasting but in the knowing. Knowing that if I once found my way back here, I can find it again.

Three years ago, everything broke. Today, I’m not fixed - I’m transformed. Not despite the breaking, but because of it. Because I learned that showing up each morning is its own kind of prayer. Because the Colorado landscape became my teacher. Because even in grief for what’s lost, there’s room for this wild anticipation of what’s next.

The crickets are still singing tonight. And so am I.

---

—> What moments of natural wonder caught your attention this week? Please share your stories and photos in the comments below. Let’s experience nature’s gifts together.

As always, thank you so much for reading and supporting me.

Love,

Jane