We were walking across the abandoned school yard when I heard them. They are always the noisiest birds around, so they are easy to spot.

It was our neighborhood flock of crows. (A flock of crows is actually called a “murder” of crows, for some odd reason, but I digress.)

This morning they were congregated in a big oak next to the last house on the road, and they were causing quite a ruckus, for reasons known only to them.

The crows seem to me to be the bad boys (and girls) of the neighborhood. They always seem to be causing trouble and lording it over everyone else. They are noisy, confident, cocky, even.

Their only real competition is the blue jays, most of whom have gone south for the winter, so the crows are temporarily head of their fiefdom.

When I was growing up, I was such a good girl that I could never be a bad girl. I didn’t even have the guts to try out being a bad girl. Not that this is something that I am particularly proud of. Life was just simpler and very polarized back then. Between the two, good girl seemed to be the better option.

Now my life is more grey than black and white. I enjoy the crows. And, for the most part, I admire and appreciate them.

They are clever, resilient, and quite resourceful. They are also highly intelligent.

But what I like best about them is that they are rambunctious and playful. Every fall, they assemble in the black walnut tree in our back yard, and they pick off every walnut that still remains on the tree, for no good reason, except to see them drop, it seems.

They, along with their relatives, the ravens, are associated with trickster energy.

In mythology, tricksters challenge authority. They break all the rules. They are mischievious.

I need trickster energy. I need to challenge convention, and to step outside of the box. I need to be playful. Today, the crows came to remind me of that.

Where do you need trickster energy?

This clover has survived a foot of snow, a deluge of rain, and a lot of brisk winds, all in the last few weeks.

Clover is very common in the ditches and fields here. My farmer neighbor planted a swath of it at the edge of his corn field two years ago, and he cut it a few times over the season, to feed it to his cows. It has now spread over to my side of the road, and this one has somehow escaped being cut by the road maintenance crews.

I was amazed to see this blossom, because I haven’t found anything else recently that is still blooming. This morning it is covered in frost.

Sometimes it is in the most ordinary things that we find beauty.

My soul needs these moments of beauty. When I saw this, it pulled my mind out of its trance. I loved the color and delicate-looking nature of it.

I think all of our souls need these moments of beauty, and I also think that they are all around us. It is just that I miss most of them because my mind is pulled in so many directions as I am walking.

Today I recommit to myself that I will pay more attention as I walk, and that I will really see the beauty that is around me. This clover has taught me this.

Where do your moments of beauty show up?

Harper The Dog and I were – you guessed it – on a walk at the park when I noticed a man and woman coming slowly up the path towards us. The woman was using a walking stick, and she was moving very slowly.

I asked Harper to sit, as I do for all passerby’s, and when the man reached us, he stopped to talk. Almost everybody stops to talk to Harper; he’s quite the attention getter.

His wife caught up to us, and we had the most delightful conversation. They lived in Woodstock, about 20 miles away, and they said that they come to the park often.

Animated, they told me about how they love living in their house in Woodstock so much that they have hesitated to move into a smaller house, even though they don’t really need all the space they have.

They told me how much they love their walks in the park, and seeing the colors change in the prairie all through the seasons. I love that too.

She told me about a dog that her grandmother had, when she was a little girl, living on her grandmother’s farm.

It was clear to me, just from a few moments of conversation, that they loved their whole lives, and each other.

They loved to stay active, and they loved being out in Nature. They love it so much that they frequently drive 20 miles to the park.

Then, he told me he was ninety years old.

I loved this couple immediately. They inspired me, with their clear commitment to grab life and live it to the hilt. With their commitment to remain active, they were exactly the antidote I needed to counteract all of our cultural beliefs that aging is a slow, painful decline into inactivity and death.

We said goodbye, and they moved at a crawl, up the steep hill that Harper and I had just come down. I marveled at their vitality and their positive spirit. I felt so blessed that they had come across my path that day. What a gift.

They are who I want to be, with however much time I have.

Who do you want to be?