Balanced Rock

“A monument to the magnificence of neighborly love and caring!”

Balanced Rock

I could feel the chilling of the winter wind whipping across the icy blacktopped road.  On this early morning, it was no longer a blacktopped road.  It had become an ice-topped road.  I could feel and hear the crunching of that ice under my boot as I walked up the road with “Hairy Pupper.”  The sun was still hiding to the east, behind the Oquirrh Mountains.  I remember thinking that the bitterness of winter was forcing its quarantine there, even as my spirit was forever hoping for its release.  I guess I was looking through “rose colored” wind protection goggles when something unusual attracted my gaze.

Hairy and I stopped to look more closely at the car tracks, encased in ice, beginning to be swallowed up by blowing snow.  Our eyes continued their search for another fifteen feet or so where we saw the broken fence in front of Marv and Jan Shafer’s home.

“I guess we aren’t the only ones who had had trouble navigating this icy road.”  I said to Hairy, as we turned to continue on our well-worn path toward the ending point of our morning walk.  Yet, the winter’s treachery and the broken fence are not the ending point of this story.

As soon as our sun was able to begin to break its chains, the ice left and the ground softened.  That’s when Hairy and I, walking up a more welcoming blacktopped road, noticed a different look.  It was akin to “Balanced Rock” in Arches National Park!  Yet, it was not a monument to the magnificence of nature’s force and beauty.  It was a monument to the magnificence of neighborly love and caring!

While I am Marv and Jan’s neighbor, I am not their best neighbor!  Randy Garrison is.  Randy, a kind and active friend, has come to the aid of the Shafers on many occasions.  For example, he has trimmed their trees where only he, a person of strength and agility, could climb to reach.  And now, right in front of Hairy and me, was his latest act of goodness.

Randy had extracted the broken post and installed a new one, while placing a flat paver, perching it on top, to hold it in place while the cement anchoring its base dried.  As soon as I saw this masterpiece of goodness and engineering I recognized it as Randy’ handiwork!  It was not more than a few days hence, that he had filled in the hole and strung the horizontal slats into their rightful place.  It is a thing of beauty!

The beauty of Spring is now emerging, perhaps because of Randy’s neighborly love. I can no longer feel the chill of the winter wind whipping across our formerly icy road.  Today, on this brighter, early morning, our street is once again a blacktopped road and it is trimmed with the fully repaired white fencing that surrounds the Shafer’s home.  I can feel the love radiating from the Garrison’s home as I continue to complete my walks with Hairy Pupper.  And, it seems as if the sun shines a little brighter as I approach their houses of these two great neighbors!  In fact, because of the love shown by the Garrisons, I said to Hairy this very morning, “I can hardly remember the bitterness of winter, that had forced the sun’s temporary quarantine.”

My spirit soars as the sun shines on Erda Way’s Balanced Rock, a monument to what it means to be a great neighbor!

I guess I keep looking through “rose colored” wind protection goggles for good reason!