The dogs woke me up early this morning. They slept with me last night and spend most of it trying to edge on another out for the best spot. The best spot was not snuggling with loyal devotion next to me. They both wanted the pillows.
So, I went out and looked at the sky.
In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west, people create them out of their own minds and then believe them to be true.
Buddha
I decided to take a short trip to the Lichertman Nature Center, a 65 acre preserve in the heart of Memphis. It has a deceptively simple approach: dividing the area between forest, meadow, and lake, and giving brief explanations of exactly what they are and what one can expect to find there. There is also a small indoor teaching facility housing some of the wild life found in that area.
I met Gertie, the friendly domestic rat who is used in some of the educational programs. I don't know why she was interested in the hand sanitizer.
Both the bullfrog and the rat snake flirted with me. The rat snake was very curious, he looked right at me and bobbed around.
When I got there,mine was the only car in the parking look save employees, I wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or not. Having a whispering 65 acres to myself seemed like a little treasure but I was a bit disappointed not to see any other meandering souls.
Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.
Frank Lloyd Wright
One takes an odd pleasure in solitude if there is a chance the world is being discovered by another being invested in solitude. It is perverse logic, like trying to herd cats or get anarchists to agree to anything at meeting.
Small worlds were busy with the business of survival.
There was plenty of native meadowland foliage, delicate and hardy at the same time.
I wandered on my own for quite some time and then it happened. I met somebody who was trying to change the world. It was a young mother. How was she trying to change the world you ask? She was sitting in silence with her lovely little daughter who was some where between two and three. They were just sitting and looking in the shade of a pavilion. We chatted for a few moments and I left them. I am sure if I had told the young mother she was doing the universe a great service she might have thought me odd. I was reminded however that my own persistent curiosity about my surroundings can be directly attributed to my own mother. I spent much of my childhood camping and walking in the woods. My mother declared that one day she wanted either a cabin in the woods or a house in the country. She got the house in the country and spends time tending to her bees, making soap and honey, and selling some here and there.
I hope the little girl discovered a secret world.
So often we find it hard to be good environmental citizens. I know I have my vast failings. Many of us worry that what we do won't be enough anyway, there are forces at work more powerful than us who make the decisions and undermine our paltry efforts and we are left worried and disillusioned. What difference am I really making we might ask. I think the simple steps, the unconscious steps, might end up having the greatest impact. Just introducing our kids to the forest and the backyard with no apparent agenda, no lectures or details might just be the first step in the education of a life time. Sure kids have so much completing for their attention, constant stimuli, and rampant consumerism. Maybe, just maybe that little girl I met will battle those forces with trips into meadows and forests and the next environmental citizen will emerge.
Let children walk with Nature. let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in the woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stringless indeed, and as beautiful as life.
John Muir
This gorgeous spider has taken up residence over our back door. I imagine her lifespan is a short one so we have decided to leave the back door to her until her work is done.
If a man walks in the woods for the love of them half each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a spectator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
Henry David Thoreau
Peace and thanks for looking.