Laurel M. Ross

I bought blue mittens on a sweltering summer day when wool was the last thing I needed.  Those fuzzy beauties enchanted me.   

When December arrived I was pleased to retrieve my lovely mittens to wear as I ambled on my favorite prairie trail. 

It was a splendid walk.  The low sun illuminated the meandering tracks of coyotes, cottontails and white tailed deer on the surface of the snow.  The fresh pleasures of December always trick me into believing that I love winter and on that day I completely forgot the inevitable dreary February. 

At home later, my reverie was rocked when I discovered that my left mitten was missing.  I mourned. I actually wailed.

Returning to the prairie two days later, I hoped to find my wayward mitten and was not disappointed.  In the distance a bright blue splotch stood out in the grey winter landscape, but as I got closer I saw that it was ravaged, only shreds of lining remaining. 

Voles!  I imagined a foraging rodent discovering my mitten and scavenging the wool to line her snow tunnel with the color of the sky.

My attachment to the mitten melted.  I felt no grievance.   I was part of a larger story. 

A ewe dined on grass.  Her sheep body produced wool which was shorn and sold.  The wool was transformed into blue yarn and fashioned into mittens.  Through my carelessness and vole resourcefulness, the wool became insulation for an underground nest. 

In time, all will become prairie soil and grow new grass that will become the flesh of ewes and voles! 

And so on forever.