my whirled

Oh the cold! On this gloomy morning with my hands shoved into the fire I offered my kingdom for a sunny afternoon. And low, it came to pass. A sunny afternoon to peirce the chill and my whole kingdom still belonged to me. Not all richness is cut with a deal.
Such blessing I have been bestowed, a day above freezing and two hours to enjoy it! I called around hunting firewood, but there was none to be had. At first that seemed a waste of a day barely above freezing. It sure would have made it easier to load and stack, but oh well.. musta been another purpose for me on this sunny day.
My bones creaked up from the workbench and carried my flesh up on the ridge where I observed some sort of sign.
I was wandering along the ridge top, lost in tracing my eyes along the curvy beech branches overhead against the intense blue of the sky when a movement and rustle caught my eye not far on down the path in front of me.
Almost never without my camera, today I had left it behind as a sort of half-thought-out spiritual discipline, and for an instant I felt regret that this might be the missed bird photo op of a lifetime.
But I didn't see a bird, I watched in rapt stillness as first one leaf and then another lifted animatedly off the ground about a foot, swirled around and flopped back to the earth with a decided rustle. Two leaves dancing became three and then four and then I realized it was a jerkily choreographed and ever so sublte whirlwind. Back to the earth they would fall with a rustle. Then another little square of dancers would rise up a little on farther down the ridge and repeat the display. Each little whirlwind was moving a little closer to me. And I wondered what would happen when their path met mine. I stood at total attention, searching the tree tops for any sign of wind, but it was very still and blue and cold and sunny, except for the tiny advancing whirlwind. Picking up new leaves and dropping the old ones every yard or so, it finally reached me.
It rustled the leaves and swirled them around my feet, up my legs and around my waste. Then it was gone.