Tonight I ate strawberry jam and crackers after dinner.  I have no regrets.  How could I?  So much exists to encourage me toward contentment.

I live in a place where snow geese descend upon deliberately flooded fields to make their home where winter barely kisses the earth.  Their cries awaken me and I think, Ah, they arrived at last.  They rise as one into the tender sky of the early sun and ease back to the ground at twilight.

I live in a place where the sun spreads its crimson glow across low-lying clouds at evening’s end, and dances over the billowing tule fog at daybreak.  I drive to work beneath the sure, steady beat of a hawk’s wing and the dancing flutter of gathering songbirds.

I live in a place where farmers give over their acreage to Sandhill cranes, and egrets, and blue herons.  Snowy birds on slender legs stand among stodgy ewes alongside the highway.  The rain eases to honor the sheep dog as he noses the flock toward the pasture.  

I have no complaints.  As far as I know, only one person on the planet holds me  in contempt.  Maybe two or three regret knowing me.  One, possibly, wishes that I had never crossed his path.  A smattering of lawyers still shake their heads in recollection of cases against me.  

But otherwise, I have excuse only for joy.  Blame it on the sunset.  It pulls me to the roadside every time.  I cannot resist.  When its last rays ease themselves below the horizon, I can barely contain my rapture as I resume my journey home.

It’s the thirteenth day of the seventy-third month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Taken in the California Delta on 10 January 2020 with a Canon PowerShot set on auto. The color has not been altered.  I straightened several but otherwise they appear as I shot them, and I am no photographer.  What you see is what the heavens provided.