The moonrise always seems sudden as she pops up over the small island that sits opposite me. She is not there and then she is; Luna. dazzling, casting wide red-gold swathes on the rippling water. As she glides along her course she sits on top of my skylights for hours. The Harvest Moon shed so much light my little house was still illuminated at 4.30 a.m. Impossible not to be awed by all that power and beauty, luxuriant to bathe in it, held in the force-field until it moved on.
Nature keeps me sane in an insane world. It is why I keep coming back to this crooked little cottage in this glorious spot. A born and bred city woman, I sorely miss the cultural and intellectual stimulation of urban life but here, my soul is restored.
This morning I had to stop on the road for a passing deer with his baby array of an impressively shaped rack of horns. He is one of a family of four who often show up in my garden, arriving silently. Frequently I raise my head from a book or laptop and find myself looking right into their eyes. Absolutely peaceful, observant, fearless.I clap my hands gently and they leave,not panicked but gracefully and quick. The make effortless leaps that Barishnikov would be proud of in his prime.
I have had a few encounters with bears both here and in Connecticut. Each time they just passed me by and really, how sensible. If you have all that power and force innately there is no need to prove it unless attacked. A lesson that could prevent war if we would only learn it.The insects love me and prove it every time I step outdoors to return with mosquito, spider or who-knows-what bites.
The moonlight brings out all creatures great and small and my motion sensor lights click regularly on and off. I do not see coyotes but I hear them.
Raccoons are omnipresent no matter how I try to discourage them. I cut back the 30 year old grapevine that yielded more than 100 lbs of sweet grapes each summer. A family of raccoons nightly traversed my roof, made an immense racket and were slowly demolishing it on their way to the fruit. Any evening in summer I can go on my deck and look into their eyes too. They just go about their business, uninterested in me or my alleged ownership of the vine.
If only people could co-exist like this, go about their business and allow different critters to go about theirs out of genuine acceptance of the nature of things.
It is not all Francis of Assisi ish amongst the wild animals. Last night there was some loud gnawing, a really unpleasant feral noise in an otherwise silent night. I could not see anything so just closed my window against the sound.This morning there are three large mounds of fresh poop in the garden, of a shape that is not raccoon nor deer nor bear. Hmmmm. I wonder who that visitor was.
The news from everywhere is mostly bad; man’s inhumanity to man is commonplace now. Children the world over, in developed and undeveloped countries, are everyday subjected to horrors of abuse and want. Racism continues unabated – assinine and ignorant divisions of human worth based on colour.
Everywhere I look here are flowers and plants of different shapes and shade; ,gardens and parks are a riot of colour; each bird and fish is different from the other. Nature encompasses all of them – how have we become so denatured that we cannot?
And then there is a pod of whales in the bay, breathtaking – and the tall mountains,and the trees changing their colours, dropping the old to be rebirthed in spring. The symphony of life is constant, interconnected and solo.
When humans appear to have lost the plot entirely, nature carries on. We are so unimportant really, just one creature amongst a large family of creatures. Opposable thumbs are not enough – we do not look very superior any more. Maybe we should behave more like animals?