I love the way words sound when I come in from exercise in the cold. And my mouth doesn't quite work because the muscles have stiffened with chill.  I love to feel warm and toasty, energized at my core, muscles loose, strong and efficient, but my lower lip won't move quite right to shape the words. It's helps the experience linger when you step back into a warm shelter, drink some hot tea and feel the tips of your fingers and your chin and lips and ears go back to normal.  I feel vigorous and virtuous and lucky that I could do it again today. The exact same way skiers feel when they stop on the mountainside for a break and crowd around for the bathroom, shedding layers of equipment, ordering refreshment, laughing about the look on someone's face when she hit a surprise bump.  No kidding. Out here on a little farm in the prairie, all by my lonesome.  Just me and the dog on a dreary winter day.

 If anybody had told my eighteen year old self that one of my favorite things to do as a mom and grandmother would be outdoor exercise around the perimeter of my own little ten acres - especially during winter -  I'd have laughed them out of town.  I hated being cold.  My eighteen year old self was so keen to get out of the boring small town and landscape of the midwest to see more world. Any other part of the world.  I'd seen all the midwest and winters I wanted by eighteen.  I knew I'd never appreciate anything about the midwest ever again.  And here I am, traveling this same path day after day - not along a mountainside but around a plowed, frozen empty field passing a rag tag pond and ditches, silly with glee to have the time and health and privilege to do it.

It took a while and a lot of travel for my young self to learn that inhabiting any body on this living blue planet in this moment in time is quite the privilege. Because of these filters and experiences, limits and gifts this body gives us, we live for a bit exactly our way. And it's new every day, always full of surprises if we keep our attitude open to now.  My bright, ambitious eighteen year old self wouldn't have believed I would be back on the prairie and loving it after living in other countries, getting decades worth of advanced education at impressive schools in big cities and working at important jobs. I doubt I could have explained it to her. Still, I know she'd be glad to hear it was all good.

The older I get, the less I worry about the accomplishments, the way I look, the places I haven't yet seen. While I'm still able, I'm still eager to go see a new, beautiful place. Just, I also do see the beauty that's right in front of my face right now, every day. So I will try to stay as fit and strong as I can inside this frail, temporary frame. Something new is bound to go wrong sometime with this equipment. Happens to all of us.  So I intend to appreciate what is right up to that moment.  You'll rust out before you wear out.  Not much rust here.  But rust can make things beautiful too.