(Written Saturday, Sept. 25, 2010, but kept in draft form by mistake)
My back door is open and I'm sitting at my kitchen table, reading, waking up slowly. The day is bright and clear, the town is bustling, breakfast is half gone. The coffee is very good.
I hear a rumbling noise, a muffled thrumming sound and my mind takes it in, considers it and compares it to other sounds coming up from the street. At first, it's possible I'm hearing a motorcycle engine in the distance, but it sounds too - what? - thrummy, if that's a word. A weed whacker? Something is making a steady beating sound. I'm still reading the newspaper and finally look up.
There in the kitchen is a hummingbird, examining the many magnets and postcards covering the refrigerator, gently weaving back and forth a few inches, up and down an inch. One magnet is made of pressed flowers laminated between plastic. Many of the others are red, and the little bird is intrigued by them. Then he comes a bit further into the kitchen, his wings drumming the air softly. There is plenty in my kitchen that is red and attractive to a curious bird, I notice, and I hope he does not make the mistake of flying further in.
I've had brief encounters with small creatures within my own "nest" now and again, and they always stir a thrill and excitement in me. The sense of wildness entering my domain, unbidden and unpredictable, is curious. A raccoon peeked into one house, a scrub jay flew down a chimney, a coyote visited my vegetable garden. The wild world, usually shy and barely seen, is out there. I know it, I see their tracks, hear their songs, but I seldom get to see them up close, especially not arriving in my kitchen on a Saturday morning.
"Hey, there's a hummingbird in the kitchen!" I find myself exclaiming, wondering what will happen next. Suddenly, the small wild thing is telling a story and I am leaning on the edge of my seat to find out about it, hope it will be okay, wonder why it took a wrong turn.
The thrumming beat of the wings intensified when the hummer sped back out the door, and it squeaked its tiny cry to the neighborhood as it flew. Later it returned very briefly, took quick glance back at the magnets and color, zoomed away. It was a first, being visited by a speedy little dart made of feathers. I am half hoping he comes back and feels comfortable with our kitchen, but I don't want him to. Wildness and self-determination by wild things, their freedom to move amidst our predictably dangerous world, is inspiring and beautiful if not wonderfully whimsical and fun. I want them to always fly free, wander safely, out of reach of danger, original inhabitants of nature.
Showing posts with label wild animals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wild animals. Show all posts
Monday, September 27, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Coyotes, Keepers of the Keys
Yesterday I walked down to the Pacific Grove Natural History Museum; I was going to listen to an expert talk about coyotes.
The lecture was to be free (donations welcomed of course), it was at 2 PM, the middle of a glorious sunny day, a Saturday. The room filled fast, but all the attendees were middle-aged folk, some even elderly; none were younger than, say, 40 or so. Granted, Pacific Grove is a town of citizens who are mostly enjoying their Golden Years, but I still wondered why they were the only attendees in evidence. I had heard about it by reading the local daily. Nonreaders would have missed the notice if they were foregoing the morning paper and simply relying on Tweeting or Facebook. I began to think of hikes, walks, camping trips, rides and river trips - occasions when I was in the middle of natural wilderness areas for extended periods of time. It looked like the audience had, in their day, been held willing captive in the same sorts of areas as I had - wildnerness - and looked deep into the eyes of creatures there. Creatures like coyotes.
It was abundantly clear that the room was filled with animal-adoring, passionate, heart-warmed people who were committed to heroic rescue of any and all species. I overheard conversations about Animal Friends Rescue Project, SPCA, Marine Sanctuary rescue programs and more. They looked wizened and unconcerned with the likes of Brittney Spears or any other tragicomic starlet fed upon by consumers of "media." Mostly, they appeared to be there to recapture memories of wilderness encounters with wild things.
My mind wandered off to a trail I'd been walking along when I was in my 20s. It was early morning, and there was still dew on the meadow grasses. Red-winged blackbirds were waking up as the sun began its arch overhead from the distant horizon; they made a dry "shhhhharrrr-ick" back and forth. It was summer and I was at Garland Regional Park in Carmel Valley, a few miles west of the village. The Carmel River that runs along its northeastern boundary was at a trickle, but the willows and riparian brush smelled very fragrant and sweet, soaked in sage and sycamore.
My eye caught a little movement off to my right in the distance, but when making a determined scan of the scene, I missed the thing that had moved. So, I stood still and waited for awhile. Then, seeing what had been there all along in the trail ahead of me, I felt a smile creep across my face, and what I always experience as a shock of recognition of something familiar but distant and exotic. A coyote was standing at a three-quarter angle to the trail, looking at me intently, its large ears cocked like twin peaked cups. The eyes of the animal were tan and clear, intelligent, and its fur was brushy, tinged with black, free flowing, thick with finely shaded tans and browns.
The coyote trotted away, slipping into the thicket of brush that darkened the river bank with a graceful lift of its tail. But before it turned and disappeared, away from me and my human-ness, it gave me a steady look, sizing me up and judging me unsafe, cause for alarm. What I saw in its eyes and then felt in my being as I watched it watching me was its nearness to its origin, its mysterious wild life. It conveyed a lightness of being to me in its gaze, its carriage, its assumption of power in the moment. Truly unfettered by the constructs of regulated society, this small dog-like animal seemed both to beckon to me and dismiss me as unworthy of its presence. "Wait!" was all I could think.
I felt separated from the coyote world and dulled by the disconnection from it, frustrated to be so. The coyote, in all its rufous furryness, its trotting solitude, ear-perked keen alertness, was looking at me from the distant edge of a wide chasm, across which we have stepped and not returned. Choosing frozen dinners and plastic wrap, we reek of them. We have, to our detriment, given up the keys to the kingdom that the coyote still holds, and now - except for the devoted few who strive to reclaim those keys - we plod clumsily and with near blindness across the landscape. Occasionally we blunder into an encounter with a song-dog coyote and a glimmer of recognition of what we used to be - alive on the earth. Now we are agnostic; we have no knowledge anymore as people; we are not wild; we are not free.
Look for coyotes, bobcats, deer, and watch them watching us, but keep them wild because they are far more important when they are wild, not human, untamed and free. We once were as they are still; if they are ensnared and brought to ruin, we will be more so than ever before.
The lecture was to be free (donations welcomed of course), it was at 2 PM, the middle of a glorious sunny day, a Saturday. The room filled fast, but all the attendees were middle-aged folk, some even elderly; none were younger than, say, 40 or so. Granted, Pacific Grove is a town of citizens who are mostly enjoying their Golden Years, but I still wondered why they were the only attendees in evidence. I had heard about it by reading the local daily. Nonreaders would have missed the notice if they were foregoing the morning paper and simply relying on Tweeting or Facebook. I began to think of hikes, walks, camping trips, rides and river trips - occasions when I was in the middle of natural wilderness areas for extended periods of time. It looked like the audience had, in their day, been held willing captive in the same sorts of areas as I had - wildnerness - and looked deep into the eyes of creatures there. Creatures like coyotes.
It was abundantly clear that the room was filled with animal-adoring, passionate, heart-warmed people who were committed to heroic rescue of any and all species. I overheard conversations about Animal Friends Rescue Project, SPCA, Marine Sanctuary rescue programs and more. They looked wizened and unconcerned with the likes of Brittney Spears or any other tragicomic starlet fed upon by consumers of "media." Mostly, they appeared to be there to recapture memories of wilderness encounters with wild things.
My mind wandered off to a trail I'd been walking along when I was in my 20s. It was early morning, and there was still dew on the meadow grasses. Red-winged blackbirds were waking up as the sun began its arch overhead from the distant horizon; they made a dry "shhhhharrrr-ick" back and forth. It was summer and I was at Garland Regional Park in Carmel Valley, a few miles west of the village. The Carmel River that runs along its northeastern boundary was at a trickle, but the willows and riparian brush smelled very fragrant and sweet, soaked in sage and sycamore.
My eye caught a little movement off to my right in the distance, but when making a determined scan of the scene, I missed the thing that had moved. So, I stood still and waited for awhile. Then, seeing what had been there all along in the trail ahead of me, I felt a smile creep across my face, and what I always experience as a shock of recognition of something familiar but distant and exotic. A coyote was standing at a three-quarter angle to the trail, looking at me intently, its large ears cocked like twin peaked cups. The eyes of the animal were tan and clear, intelligent, and its fur was brushy, tinged with black, free flowing, thick with finely shaded tans and browns.
The coyote trotted away, slipping into the thicket of brush that darkened the river bank with a graceful lift of its tail. But before it turned and disappeared, away from me and my human-ness, it gave me a steady look, sizing me up and judging me unsafe, cause for alarm. What I saw in its eyes and then felt in my being as I watched it watching me was its nearness to its origin, its mysterious wild life. It conveyed a lightness of being to me in its gaze, its carriage, its assumption of power in the moment. Truly unfettered by the constructs of regulated society, this small dog-like animal seemed both to beckon to me and dismiss me as unworthy of its presence. "Wait!" was all I could think.
I felt separated from the coyote world and dulled by the disconnection from it, frustrated to be so. The coyote, in all its rufous furryness, its trotting solitude, ear-perked keen alertness, was looking at me from the distant edge of a wide chasm, across which we have stepped and not returned. Choosing frozen dinners and plastic wrap, we reek of them. We have, to our detriment, given up the keys to the kingdom that the coyote still holds, and now - except for the devoted few who strive to reclaim those keys - we plod clumsily and with near blindness across the landscape. Occasionally we blunder into an encounter with a song-dog coyote and a glimmer of recognition of what we used to be - alive on the earth. Now we are agnostic; we have no knowledge anymore as people; we are not wild; we are not free.
Look for coyotes, bobcats, deer, and watch them watching us, but keep them wild because they are far more important when they are wild, not human, untamed and free. We once were as they are still; if they are ensnared and brought to ruin, we will be more so than ever before.
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