It's been awhile since I've done one of these, partly because there haven't been many for me recently, but a few days back I stopped on the way back from the dentist for a run along the Potomac River, and had an amazing one. Before I get into it, for those who are new to the series, what was your last most beautiful moment? It's easy to get caught up in all the Things That Are Going Wrong, And Are Not As They Should Be. I still hope that one day all the headlines will read "Everything's fixed! Things are great!", but that seems statistically unlikely. Which it's why it's important to sometimes celebrate the moments of beauty that we experience.
I love trail running in nature. I don't like running on roads or sidewalks or paved trails. Give me a curving trail of hard-packed dirt through nature, jumping fallen logs and weaving through trees, along stream banks, and I'm in bliss. I don't have that near me right now, and have not been exercising much the last few months, but a few days back everything came together and dropped me on a trail from Carderock, along the Potomac, downstream of Mather Gorge
The river sprawls out a bit here, 100 foot high rock ramparts softened by sandy forested bluffs. There's a high canopy of mixed-oak, an 80+ year old cathedral, but pawpaw trees dominate the understory, since they're the only sapling that the deer won't browse to death. The trail wends and curves as I balance with my body, focussed on the path in front of me while soaking in the fall around me, reds and browns and greys, with the occasional startle-flash of a squirrel.
On the way back, I slow down and walk out to the river. The brunt of the flow is shifted to the other bank upstream, and there's a small complex of wetlands and beaches and water-worn boulders along the water. I flush out a 6-point buck and a large blue heron at the same time in a dense mat of invasives, not sure who startled whom. The buck tears off, trailing a vine caught in his horns as the heron flaps and wheels awkwardly for altitude.
I hate being a disruption, but I also blame the blue heron - they have a profound mistrust of humans, which I don't understand. The deer along the Potomac corridor in this area are far more cautious than those you encounter in the suburbs, although they haven't been hunted in generations. But blue herons have a deeply ingrained mistrust of humans, and wheel out squawking their contempt long before I'd pose a threat, as if reacting to some profound enmity that I know nothing of.
A bit further on, I climbed up on a 20-foot high driftwood logjam, left by summer floods, and balanced up to a perch on a dry-rotting log, 30 feet above the water. I sat buddha and watched awhile, not expecting much, but with a great view of the river and rapids. I noticed the scrabble-flash of a snake, disappearing into the driftwood tangle, and a few minutes later, the furred ruff of a mammal cautiously concealing itself in the wood below me - the size of a groundhog, but they're not usually so close to the water.
I knew that I was a disturbance - I'd gone off-trail, broken the pact. DC has a few million more people living here now than a few centuries ago, and what wilderness remains has learned to live on the remnant margins. Most people don't leave the roads, and most of those that do, stay on the paths. When I'm in nature, I tend to leave the paths and try to find the wild. There is a level on which this is transgressive - I'm a tourist, disrupting a well-established culture, without much reason to be there. I don't belong, but I do try to approach in a respectful way.
A few minutes later, I notice a movement, and slowly move my attention towards it. There's a young fox, stretching like it's just come out of a nap, looking up towards me. I don't usually see foxes before dusk, so I expect that I've flushed this one out. And I know that they don't have very good static vision, so I slowly move my focus towards it, and then when the fox blinks calmly, I blink back, slow-shift attention away, and then return. We casually watch each other for a few minutes, and then the fox melts back into the deadfall, which I realize would make a perfect den - there must be paths and tunnels throughout.
The fox was healthy, and young, a bright orange-red coat and white chest, well-fed. I decide that the first flash of fur I saw must have also been a fox, just as I notice a fox move out from the deadfall and track into the forest. Were they all the same fox? The boldness of the second doesn't match the caution of the first and third. I wonder about the viability of a den so obviously below the floodline, but the real den could have been higher up, and this deadfall area just a favorite shelter.
I sit a few minutes more, and just as I'm about to leave, hear a flutter to my left, turn slow, and see a hawk has landed in a branch at my height, about 15 feet away. I know that hawks have excellent vision, and that this one knows I'm here, is visiting deliberately. I'd traded calls with a flock of crows over the last half-hour, as they flew out and crossed the river. One of the main things that I have going for me in nature interactions is that I have a pretty credible crow call. Although very few crows have ever taken it seriously.
The hawk, which a more serious naturalist would have been able to identify, stands and flutters, ruffs itself a bit in the breeze. I'm careful not to look to hard at it, and don't notice when it leaves. I've never been so close to a raptor, in a natural setting, nor so intimately to foxes. Sometimes I've been sitting close to where their trail went past, when they were walking it, sometimes I've accidentally startled them, sometimes I've woken to them stealthing into my campsite, but this encounter was special, because I felt that I'd met them on their territory, and at least not terrified them.
I had a dream a week or two back, where I was visiting a fenced-off wild place, near the house where I grew up. I saw rabbit dens, and rabbit corpses - the area had been mown, and then there'd been a slaughter. I found the corpse of a fox, and a wildcat, and was enraged at the slaughter. I wanted to document it.
When I woke up, I realized that the dream had been about a loss of a special place, of a wildness that I'd lost faith in. That experience on the Potomac, with hawk and buck, and foxes and heron, was a reminder that the wild was still there. That was my last most beautiful moment.
What was yours?