Betwixt the points of Section 8, Interstate, and City's Main Artery sits a 1/8th acre property, a Beatrix-Pott'd plot of greenery and woodland creatures which I like to call our land. As a family we work toward our dreams of natural sustenance and we acknowledge our home's relationship with squirrels and birds and chipmunks and mice (thank you, Stephie Kitty) and groundhogs, all the while receiving the headlines of chemical pollution and genetically altered foods and oil spills. Sometimes today's headlines make us feel like it's a mistake that we human beings share the planet with the rest of nature.
Tonight while Wally was working and after Jimmy went na-nights I took a moment of me-time into the back yard and soon found myself face-to-face with a skunk. I was shocked, I hadn't been near a skunk in quite a while so after he passed me and slipped around the corner of the house I hid behind a chair. Thirty seconds later he returned, presumably to check our back porch for catfood, but he stopped for a half moment as I squicked out a 2nd "holy shit!" attack and then turned around and hugged the fence as he ran towards the compost pile. Phew, thankfully not 'p.u.'
And then I started thinking...how nice it is, that here we regularly deal with bland, earthy-colored but personally harmless wild rodentia, yet when it comes to a real threat, like a squirty skunk, that a skunk's coloring is unmistakable. Deer and meese and bears may also wear brown-tones, but they also have the size to indicate their danger---but these Black and White skunks who are so easily identified by day or by night...they really set a level playing field, like a warning sign to all us jerky territorial humans to back off, or else. A symbiotic understanding of power. After a day of reading about government lies and oil-drenched pelicans and how the American Cancer Society's aim isn't actually to eliminate cancer, the skunk encounter really illuminated the natural relationship that we have with animals and with the land, and it made me feel a little bit better about being here. Kumbaya. (but we still need to do better, gawd!)
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2 comments:
...and the beat goes on as passed from mother and father to child and to watch it flourish again in Libbytown is wondrous. I think you probably know that when your great grandparents came from Nova Scotia they had their first home there and midst their garden my Nana raised turkeys! However, the Laceys certainly did something right because your mother flourishes still in your delights!
Turkeys! We're working towards chickens someday, and if the shit comes down (2012), rabbits in the basement, but turkeys, wow! Them's big! Which street again?
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