Balancing on a Fence - Awareness of Being Alive

Isn't it interesting how certain sights, tastes, sounds, can transport us someplace we've been before, even if it's years and miles away?

I think it's incredible how our memory works, storing information and losing some. Or, hanging onto nuggets, that are long forgotten, only to be brought up again in a flash of a second.

As I'm sitting here at my desk and looking outside my office window, I see the tree branches waving in the wind.The sunshine is muted in its wintry way, where even though it's 2:45 in the afternoon, it has the feeling of being much later in the day. There are patches of blue sky peeking through sweeps of clouds that are swiftly moving eastward, like big ships on the sea. They're gray, outlined with white and golden tan as the sun peeks through.

And, as I look out, it's something about the wind, about the color of the sky, about the clouds' movement, that I'm taken back to being 8 years old,, standing in my great grandparents' lawn, stepping on the edge of their wooden fence, my hands resting on top of the boards, and the tips of my toes, perched on the board at the bottom. Hanging on with my fingertips to the fence, my belly pressed into it so that I don't fall backwards, watching the sky.

I don't know what, if any, significance is held by that particular day. I don't remember anything that stands out about that day in terms of events happening. Other than balancing on the fence watching the clouds go by and feeling the wind bristle along my body, my fingertips and toes gripping. Maybe it was an awareness of being alive. Of being fully present in the moment.

I remember days like that as a child, where I'd stop suddenly and look out at the sky or mountains, and recognize in that moment that I was alive. And, be completely overwhelmed by that feeling. It's vastness. Being completely and wholly aware of and frightened by the recognition that I was present, alive, an individual, alone in my thoughts and experience of that moment of realization.

Not that I was alone in that I was by myself. Rather, that I was alone in feeling that vastness, and in that recognition. Did others have those moments? I wasn't about to ask for fear of sounding strange.

As a kid (and even now) do you have those moments of recognizing your aliveness and the vastness of this world? And, if so, how do they make you feel?