There Are Ghosts in the Valley

The past few days I have been unable to catch the bus into work.  This isn't the best, as it requires me to drive 40 minutes to the office and Angus does not get the best gas mileage.  He was purchased for his broad back and heavy muscles, not his appetite for gas.  The additional cost is tempered, however, by the fact that in my truck I can see the world around me better and I get to notice the little morning rituals of the Pend Oreille valley as I drive.

This morning I became aware that there are ghosts in the valley.  Not the coalesced personages of times gone by, not these.  I imagine these ghosts are the assembled spirits of all the varied and incessant life that pulses through the tussocks of rye grass and the tule reeds that rise out of the edges of the little moors  dotting the valley.  For every turkey I see crossing the road or every coyote who stares furtively out of the woods as I pass, there is a multitude of creatures and growing green life in the brush.  

As the sun rises and touches the waving pastures these ghosts rise up and twine through the reeds, leaving their misty trails in the hollows and meres.  Slowly the day warms around me as I drive and the mist of their communal presence rises up the valley into the trees above, eventually curling over the peaks to the east and west of the river before dissipating to await the next morning, the next sunrise over wet and bowing grass.

Simple mists they may be to you, but to my eyes they have a life of their own.  Each day, save for the hottest part of the summer, I watch them go through this cycle before the warming sun grows too much for them.  Each day they seem to wend their way in new paths, higher and higher.  They are as much a part of mornings in this river valley as the deer and the geese and the sleepy drivers making their way to work.