It makes me happy.

A couple weeks ago I was standing on a mountain and I really did feel sunshine on my shoulders. It was about 20 degrees but the sun was ablaze and the sky was going from periwinkle to ultraviolet to deep indigo.  I know I should have been cold but suddenly my shoulders were ablaze and the rays found its way through two or three layers.

The sun was in my eyes too, but it didn’t really make me cry except to feel joy. I never knew what John Denver meant by that second line

“sunshine in my eyes can make me cry”

But in that moment I did understand. Sunshine is so beautiful it makes you cry. Beautiful as to be blinding. It was too bright to see beyond my tracks in the snow. But I could feel an ethereal love starting as a tiny pinpoint and ending in an infinite ray.  A love that came from a million miles away, a singular white light love that only a burning star can send to a slowly spinning planet. As I stood there in my tracks on the trail that led into the sky I thought of one thing only.

I belong here.

I belong in the bright light, in the sphere of the now and the know.
I will stay here as long as I can.

That is what happiness is.