creatures large and small.

 “Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it” Ralph Waldo Emerson

assuming i’d spot wild-life only off in the distance, my eyes were peeled before practically tripping over a large buck that absently wandered out of the woods in front of me. 

a couple of years ago, that autumn when for some reason the area was crawling with bear, everybody was posting pics on facebook: cute bears in backyard pools, up in fruit trees or crossing roads. but by late october i still hadn’t seen even one cub and my buddy said i was probably the last. i was wandering, looking. desperately searching. 

hardly a week later, driving slowly up chemin des erables and peering off into the fields, right and left, i very nearly crashed my truck right into a fine bunionesque specimen. and i actually got out to apologize. he accepted the apology rather dismissively even though i probably woulda gotten the worst of it. 

sometimes i feel as though i’m trying to consume the natural world. it’s not as if i’d have any more chance of taking any with me than my truck or mom’s silver tea set. be that as it may, i walk out in the middle of many a clear night to drink in the stars. i gaze absently beside rivers and lakes, wander through woods looking for creatures large and small. and yes i go into towns to see the people. 

i’ve gone to the omega game park three times, alone, to look at all the animals. i like that. i buy a large sack of unwashed carrots each time and feed the elk and deer. i offered one to a guy fixing fences and he shot me a withering look as if to say: ‘really?’ 

i’d been driving along the cabot trail on cape breton island for two days looking for moose. i was told to drive slowly in the early morning or i’d crash into one for sure. but it wasn’t happening for me. on the second early misty morning, in the distance i saw the clear and obvious shape of a moose. and i was excited. i approached excitedly, only to realize it was a plywood cut-out advertising ‘the moose motel’.   

i’ve seen moose in my life, bears, whales. heck, i shared a path with a snow-leopard. i discussed the meaning of life with a mountain lion. i’ve hung out with elephants, camels, even lived with a scorpion once for a few months. i may have always been like this, only i believe my fascination, with life really, has taken on more of an immediacy of late. and i don’t seem to have had enough, not even nearly enough.

"I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It's so fuckin' heroic.” Georg Carlin.