It's one of those serendipitous moments or one of those "down from the mountain with the tablets, "moments, one of those "don't fool with mother nature," moments, or even one of those, "I was sleeping out in the desert for 40 winks," moments. 

Still, considering the caustic pain on the eyeball and headaches that followed when I tried to navigate a highway with snow-shine over the desert reflecting louder than a flash mob singing with mirrors in the Mall of America or somehow all snowshoeing and signaling across the Great Sand Dunes National Park, the relief was incalculable. 

Before the relief, there was a growing awareness of a "log jam" in my eye around the outlier of the white ball continually growing red veins like a nightmare in a sandstorm might be portrayed. It started small, like sandy grit, which is common in these years, and eons of sand blasting across the Valley floor and the buffalo's shedding hair. 

With no wash station at hand, I grabbed one eye drop for itchy relief and another for relief of the gritty feeling. I washed and washed my hands and tried to increase the humidity by putting a fire under a water pot. There was no going outside with the blizzard throwing lawn chairs about the dirt road. 

I began to understand how the lion might have felt before St. Jerome removed the thorn from his paw; or the how the lion with Androcles from Aesop's Fables felt when he could not chase after the escaped slave. 

It wasn't pretty, this eye of mine. Maybe it was turning into the Poe's eye, that vulture-like eye from the Tell-Tale Heart. This development was heavy. It was heavy like avalanche cement on a body strewn down from a mountain or the claws of a bald eagle on a scampering meal in the sage. 

Now, I was concerned that this disaster of an eye that no makeup would help – if I had worn makeup—might be conjunctivitis or Pink Eye? Standing in the San Luis Valley Eye Care reception, I related my experience and how it had been occurring for quite some time; the technicians escorted me into the glaucoma machine. No glaucoma was present. Then a look for disease: no disease noted. 

At last, I met Dr. Thomas Huff, and he examined both my eyes and the eye that screamed at me. He used that large eye scope and swung the arm so I could comfortably place my chin and forehead in the saddles, where he could then use a magnifying scope to see deep into my eyes. 

No growth, sand, or grit was found, but an eyelash! A lower lid eyelash was in-grown – it was growing into my eyeball, he said. After he sterilized special tweezers, he promptly removed the log of an eyelash. Voila, I was free of pain! And the eyelash in the lower eyeball had generated pain at the top of the eyeball – low or high, the pain dissolved with that one precision pluck. 

It was then that I realized I was self-aware, and more importantly, "other-aware," and began to understand a message from beyond: Why bother with the spec in your neighbor's eye when you have a log or plank in your own?

Nelda Curtiss is a retired college educator and long-time local columnist. Reach her at columnsbynellie.com or email her at columnsbynellie@gmail.com.