Something Important: Advice from Winnie the Pooh

A friend posted this snippet from a Winnie the Pooh story on Facebook last weekend. It was the perfect description of a Friday morning fishing trip to our pasture on the Ninnescah River.

I suppose I could have been "busy" doing something else ... something that the world might deem more Important (with a Capital I, of course)!

But as dusk fell that evening, and my husband declared, "This was a great day!" a morning spent fishing seemed pretty IMPORTANT after all.

I did, indeed, listen to the birds. I wish I could have photographed a yellow bird that darted in a fast-moving Crayola-bright stripe against the Van Gogh-blue sky ... but I'll just have to remember the image in my mind.

I didn't see any squirrels ... but I saw some cows and calves, and I listened to them call to one another as they curiously watched the pasture interlopers along the river banks.

I heard the crashing of water against rocks as the water spilled over the dam.

I looked for spring blooms among the green pasture grasses. The milkweed will feed the butterflies as they migrate through our region. The pink blooms on the salt cedar waved in the breeze. And the tiny yellow flowers that hid in verdant green reminded me of play-yard days at Byers Grade School, where we sucked on the slightly sour stems as we played Red Rover, Red Rover and other games.

And we actually caught some fish.

A 4-pound catfish was the biggest catch of the day, but we had several that were close to that size.

We caught them early in our fishing excursion, which always makes me more motivated to keep dangling the fishing line in the murky waters.

The river is swollen with this spring's abundant rains.

Sitting in a lawn chair along the green river bank is not a bad way to spend a spring morning.

As anyone who knows me could predict, I also brought a book, though I didn't crack open the pages quite as quickly as usual since the fish were biting.

And then I realized that the book was titled "Runaway." It seemed appropriate that we had "run away" from our daily duties to a quiet pasture for a morning of solitude ...

I'm thankful for this hidden treasure, down a dirt road, through a gate under a towering cottonwood tree and a short ride via 4-wheeler.

We had sunshine part of the day on Friday and on Sunday. However, on Monday, we received another 2.10 inches of rain. That brought our total (as of 5 PM Monday) for the past two weeks to 8.10 inches, and there are raindrops on the weather map all week long. I guess it's another lesson in taking time for Important things when you can.