Solid

The tree that never had to fight

For sun and sky and air and light,

But stood out in the open plain

And always got its share of rain,

Never became a forest king

But lived and died a scrubby thing.

The man who never had to toil,

In facing challenge did recoil,

Who never had to win his share

Of sun and sky and light and air,

Never became a manly man

But lived and died as he began.

Good timber does not grow with ease,

The stronger wind, the stronger trees,

The further sky, the greater length,

The more the storm, the more the strength.

By sun and cold, by rain and snow,

in trees and men good timbers grow.

Where thickest lies the forest growth

We find the patriarchs of both.

And they hold counsel with the stars

Whose broken branches show the scars

Of many winds and much of strife.

This is the common law of life.

 -Author Unknown

*Greg is my solid, non-scrubby king of a man that hasn't stopped fighting for sky since I met him. Here he is hugging the biggest, tallest tree on our cabin property. He is sporting an Orvis fishing shirt gifted by my dad over a decade ago and his Salt Lake City Winter Olympics cap we bought at the France v. Slovakia hockey game played on Valentine's night, 2002...the first time I left my nursing baby with a sitter. I ate my anxieties away rink side with those super-smelling cinnamon almonds no mortal can refuse.