Snow Flower watched her son as he sat on a log with his head down. She knew once again Little Fox had been left behind as the other young boys went off to play. Little Fox was small for his age and not as strong as the other boys. They often ignored him and left him out of their games which hurt him deeply.
Snow Flower sat next to her son. She wanted to put her arm around him to comfort him but she knew it would only embarrass him in front of the other boys so she sat with her hands folded in her lap.
“I’m little. Even my name is Little Fox. I’ll never be as tall and strong as the other boys,” he said in a voice that was filled with pain.
“You know you will get a new name when you are older. It will be a name you earn with your courage and honor, a name you will be proud of,” Snow Flower said. “How high can you jump?”
Little Fox looked at his mother.
“I can’t jump as high as any of the other boys. I’m shorter than they are and my legs aren’t as strong,” he said.
“Sometimes jumping high just to show off is not such a good thing,” Snow Flower said, and told Little Fox an ancient legend.
Crow sat on a tree limb looking for something to eat, he was hungry but he was also lazy. He didn’t want to fly through the forest looking for food. He almost wished food would fly right into his mouth.
On the ground at the foot of the tree an ant and a grasshopper were hidden in the grass.
“I feel sorry for you,” the grasshopper said to the ant. “You are small and weak, you don’t have wings to fly, you can’t make music, you can’t jump high like I can. You must be very jealous of me.”
The ant sighed. The grasshopper was constantly making fun of him and sometimes the grasshopper would steal a juicy bit of food from the ant and jump away with it.
“I think I’m jealous of the crow. His feathers are beautiful and he can fly high in the sky and everyone can hear his voice, Caw! Caw! Caw!” the ant said. The grasshopper was insulted.
He wanted the ant to be envious of him, not the crow.
The ant was a little afraid of the grasshopper because he knew the grasshopper could bite the ant’s head off if he got angry.
“You are right that I’m just an ant and I can’t even jump. You can jump higher than any creature in the forest. I bet you can jump higher than the tall grass,” the ant said.
The grasshopper used his strong legs and leaped into the air above the grass and came back down.
“That was wonderful,” the ant said. “But I bet you can jump even higher than the tall weeds.”
“Of course I can! I could jump over a tree if I wanted to,” the grasshopper bragged and used all his strength to jump higher than he’d ever jumped before. The grasshopper jumped above the grass and above the high weeds and was no longer safely hidden by the grass and weeds.
The Crow saw him and swooped down and grabbed the grasshopper in his beak and ate him.
The ant finished chewing off a blade of grass and carried it back into his safe home.
“Did you learn anything from the story?” Snow Flower asked.
“It’s better to be an ant that is alive than a grasshopper that is dead,” Little Fox smiled.
“No, it is good to be strong and brave but better to be wise,” she said. “You are young and you aren’t as big as the other boys but you are growing bigger and stronger every day and you will catch up with them and perhaps even be bigger and stronger than they are. The grasshopper said he could jump over a tree but he couldn’t. In your mind can you picture yourself jumping over a tree?”
Little Fox closed his eyes. “Yes, in my mind I can picture myself jumping over a tree,” he said.
“In your mind, in your imagination, you have no limits. You can run faster than the wind, jump higher than a tree, fly to the top of a mountain, race with the wild deer. In your mind you have no limits,” Snow Flower said. “How high can you jump?”
“In my mind, I can jump to the moon,” he smiled. “I feel sorry for the other boys who can only jump over rocks and logs in the forest. I can jump to the moon, in my mind I have no limits.”
How high can you jump in your imagination today? What dream did you think was impossible? What has always seemed too hard, too far away, out of your reach? Your heart’s desires are within reach and nothing is impossible.
How high can you jump?
“Delight thyself also in the Lord and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart” (Psalm 37:4).
Crying Wind is the author of Crying Wind and My Searching Heart, When the Stars Danced, and Thunder in Our Hearts, Lightning in Our Veins. All her books are available from Indian Life.
