Rereading the 2004 thread [The One Place...} cause me to ruminate.

I think that I am by inclination and habit a happy person (I've tried both happy and sad and, believe me, - happy is better!) but human beings are complex and contradictory beings and I suspect that most of us are not totally at peace, not normally totally happy, rarely supremely content.

Reading that thread of resonating, permeating beauty reminds me of moments when I have been totally happy.

When I was a kid we lived on a farm in the country, the nearest neighbors a mile away and from perhaps age 8 to age 13, on hot summer nights - or even nights when no rain was promised - my brothers and I would take our bedrolls into the large backyard and make our beds under the stars. Five lumpy bedrolls scattered across the yard, the grove of oak trees rustling in the background.

I would keep my eyes open as long as I could, gazing on the dense Milky Way - haven't seen that in years and years - hanging high above me. Nights in western Oregon even in summer normally get almost chilly and the slight breeze on my face and arms would eventually die down so that the dew would settle in my hair and on my mother-made heavy comforters and by morning I was snuggled deep into the covers.

Early in the morning when it was just breaking dawn the oldest of my brothers would wake us and we dressed inside our bedrolls and then we'd brave the chill in the new world outside and follow him across the fields to bring the milch cows down from the 'first' pasture, our bare feet 'breaking' the dew-laden short grasses. Looking back at our footprints I could see our progress in the dew.