The small paperback thesaurus I carry on my driving job furnished some words to describe today's scarlet sunrise. I formed a list of words like grand, splendid, noble, radiant, superb and magnificent. After thinking it over, I decided my using these words would not be in character. I generally speak in the vernacular, so it suffices to say that it was one damn, beautiful sunrise.
My present occupation lets me drive through a countryside where I've had chances to view many remarkable sights. Two winters back near Wing I drove past the largest convention of whitetail deer I've ever seen, numbering at least a hundred. Maybe they had gathered to relax and see who had survived the hunting season. That same day driving while driving between Turtle Lake and Underwood, the mother of all pheasant flocks, probably two hundred, materialized alongside the road near a shelterbelt. I have seen coyotes loping along the horizon, two bald eagles arguing over a carrion rabbit in a stubble field, mule deer, antelope, ducks, geese, summer weasels and winter ermine.
And there's always the river - the Missouri - with its wandering sand bars, today's thin-skinned ice that comes and goes with the temperature, and the hills and buttes where the river finds its course. I guess one doesn't really need a thesaurus to describe it when you can be there to feel it.
