Unsung Heroes

I was having a conversation with a friend recently about the little things people do every day that change the world. Their stories are seldom told because their acts are done quietly behind the scenes. My friend works at the local ski resort teaching the disabled to ski. She told me a story about one disabled Desert Storm veteran that had lost both legs in that conflict. He was learning to ski with his disability. He was trudging through the snow with his prosthetics hidden from the view of others. Nearby a mother and her little girl were making their way through the snow drifts too. The little girl was a tiny little thing struggling to make her way through the deep slush. She complained to her mother that she was having a very hard time. This veteran, this American hero, reached out to the little girl and said: "Here sweetie, I'll help you..." No one could see the struggle it was for him but my friend knew and the scene touched her heart. When I heard the story it touched mine too. I felt like the story deserved to be told.

This was a very simple thing. This man neither asked for, nor expected any recognition for helping this small child. He could have displayed his own disability in an attempt to elicit sympathy for himself. He, instead, took no thought for himself. Whether it's in the heat of battle, or in the simple act of helping a child, that's what a hero does.

I'll never know this mans name or how he lost his legs, but in this simple act I can know his heart and his heroism. Things like this happen everyday all around us. There are heroes among us whose stories go untold, their songs unsung. In their simple acts they preserve what is best in us...

Home

There is no other place on earth quite like the American West. The rugged mountains, the vast plains and the sunbleached desert all dominate here. I've always felt something deeply moving about the places where the desert meets the mountains especially. Such places make me feel small and inconsequential. At the same time they make me connected to something much bigger than me. I recently moved from my home in Texas to just such a place in New Mexico.

From the front door of my new home I can look out and see Capitan Gap in the Lincoln National Forest every morning. Something quite unexpected has come from that for me. I'm much more aware of the skies here. The changes in the weather seem more spectacular, bigger than life even. When thunderstorms move in they can often be seen coming from miles away. On several occassions I've seen them share the sky with rainbows and clear blue patches on the other end of the same mountain range.

I now have deer in the yard every day. I've seen bear, elk and mountain lions around the mountains and the African imported Oryx in the nearby desert. The edge of the desert is only miles from here and, like I said, the place where the mountains meet the desert has always been magical to me.

The local culture is made up of Mexican, Spanish, Apache, Navajo and Old Western influences mixed with modern American. A few miles to the East is the historic town of Lincoln of Billy the Kid fame and twenty miles to the South is Ruidoso, a mountain resort community, known for skiing and horse racing. The Mescalero Apache reservation is right next door where people come to gamble at the Inn of the Mountain Gods. Whenever I hear that native Americans got the worst land in the country, I think of the Mescalero reservation. It is one of the most beautiful places on earth. White men once saw it as useless because they couldn't grow crops or raise cattle on it. The modern world would, no doubt, bring a smile to the Ancestors of the Apache now making money hand over fist from white gamblers.

I now live in a town that doesn't even have a stop light. I've jokingly referred to it as New Mexico's version of Mayberry. Some great folks live here...most I've met are very friendly. Most people seem to come here to be left alone and just about everyone respects that. It is so easy to feel blessed here. It feels easier to breathe here somehow.

I often think of a line from the movie "Dances With Wolves" wherein Kevin Costners character says of the American West: "Every day here ends with a miracle." I know the truth of that now. I see miracles here everyday. I don't often use the word 'spiritual' but I have to say that there is somiething deeply spiritual about this place. When I'm away it seems to whisper to me to return. God has left His fingerprints all over this...land of enchantment.