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  • See.

    Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: A cool night. Slept well. Dr. Repine. Alice, from Alaska. Gary. A most excellent workout. Freddie’s steak sandwich as a treat for self care. Glad to get back home after driving to Colorado Eye Associates. Glaucoma. Left eye’s retina thinning. Vikings in London. Again, after all these centuries. AI glasses. Podcasts. Ovid. Homer. Cervantes. Reading the Old Guys.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: retina photography

    Kavannah: Savlanut, Patience

    One brief shining: Set your chin here, on the left side, you’ll see a green star focus on that, red takes over my visual field as my right eye rests against the lens of the retinal photography machine, which looks like a large kitchen appliance with eyes, stay focused on the star, don’t blink, don’t think, don’t move, flash of red, then to black and Dr. Repine had an actual photograph of my retina, ironic if you think about it, a photograph of the main instrument I use to see the world.

    the kind of report I get from retinal photography

    Had my eyes dilated yesterday for the various looking at my lookers that takes place each visit. Narrow angle glaucoma. As a result of which, long ago, Jane West lasered holes in my iris, drains for vitreous fluid so I wouldn’t suddenly go blind. Which narrow angle glaucoma can do to you if not managed. It’s rare. But not to me. Even with the drains the glaucoma doesn’t give up. As I’ve learned about so many bodily processes.

    This time my left eye shows signs of more aggressive thinning in the top quadrant of my left eye. We’re fine for now, Dr. Repine. See you in six months. Seeing the ophthalmologist. A deep dive into the world of medical machinery. Retinal photographs. Visual field tests. Eye pressure tests. That machine with the changeable lenses. Magnifying lenses. Most made, it seems to me, in Germany.

    Good news: 20/20 in my right eye. 20/25 in the left.

    The golden Leaves have begun to turn a darker shade, perhaps ochre on some. Drying out. Blowing off with even the gentle Winds. Already some Tree skeletons, especially the bone colored Aspens. Even the Lodgepoles shed a few Needles. Preparation. Readiness. Plant intelligence. We’re not the only ones. Even all us animals are not the only ones who have senses, read the room and react accordingly. Check out the book, Light-Eaters.

    The plaid and flannel season well underway. A while back I decided to make clothing choices easier by choosing flannel plaids for the fallow time. Found myself tending toward lighter weight flannels and plaids even in spring and the cooler part of summer. Lauren calls me the plaid guy.

    We respond to changing air temperature, moisture types and amounts. Having spent the last 50 years in the north and/or at 8,800 feet I know how. Love the changes. The adaptions. Blow cheeks, crack Wind. Come Snow and Ice.

     

    Just a moment: Saw the movie Troy three or four days ago. Was in the Trojan War part of Ovid’s Metamorphosis at the time. Ovid changed up Homer. A lot. The movie did, too. Yet both were compelling in their way. Made me take out Emily Wilson’s Iliad and put it under the Metamorphosis. My next read. All part of Herme’s Journey. Infusing the classics even more into my heart. After the Iliad? Don Quixote.

     

     

     


  • Ruth

    Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Ruth. Jen. Gabe. Sarah. Northfield Nighthawks, class of 2024. Ritchie Center. Pomp and Circumstance. Elgar. Mortarboards and gowns. Rituals. Rites of Passage. Alexandria High School, 1965. Nuggets v. Timberwolves. Battered Fish and chips. Bangers and mash. A perfect post graduation meal.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth, the graduate

    One brief shining: Up from the gymnasium floor, above the first two tiers of smooth concrete seats, we found four in a row, sat down and waited through an excruciating band warmup, a practice presentation of the colors, other family and friends streaming up even higher past us, until Elgar’s piece* used for the inauguration of Edward VII, and the Northfield High School Class of 2024 began to file in, mortarboards turned to art projects with glitter and team symbols, their teen wearers torn in that liminal space between serious moment and unrestrained hilarity.

     

    Yes. It happened. Ruth graduated! Sarah and I drove down, I chose to park faraway and Uber in. To save a lot of walking. In that sense it worked well. However, I did park faraway. Further than I thought. Yeah, sure, maps. Who needs a map? I knew where I was. And, I did. It just wasn’t close to Denver University. Oh, well.

    The whole ceremony, once it began, ran right at two hours. Done pretty well. Things moved right along. It was one of thousands of high school graduations that day. Just one. But it was the one. The one that mattered for us. Ruth’s day.

    We tried to locate her. Hard even though we knew she’d sit in the fourth row from the back and on the right side facing front. I mean, there were all those blue gowns and faces obscured by unfamiliar funny hats with tassels. Plus, just to give it another degree of difficulty the girl who sat next to her had the same curly hair. Oh. There she is. We waved. She didn’t see. How could she?

    There were many speeches. A lot of flying high. A lot of you will succeed against any diversity, will persevere, will find your dream if you work hard and stay kind.

    Then, Ruth crossed the stage: Ruth Elizabeth Olson. Her moment. Our moment. Diploma and Nighthawk metal feather in hand she went down the steps and back to her seat next to the curly haired girl and that was that. Well, in another 30 to 45 minutes.

    Dinner after was at a British Pub themed fish and chips joint where Ruth and Gabe and I have eaten many times. Where we ran into more graduates, in particular Wilson, a former friend of Ruth’s from her Macauliffe days.

     

    *BTW: Elgar’s composition

    The title is taken from act 3, scene 3 of Shakespeare‘s Othello:

    Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump,
    The spirit-stirring drum, th’ear-piercing fife,
    The royal banner, and all quality,
    Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war![1]


  • Swings

    Spring and the Purim Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Diane. Rebecca. Mussar group. Rabbi Jamie. Evergreen Market Cooking School. A usual busy Thursday. Alan and Tara tomorrow. Shabbat. Then, Socrates’ Cafe. Jackie. Purim Spiel. Sunday. Ancient Brothers. Evergreen Chamber Orchestra. Busy guy. Bechira. Choice point. Kehillah. Community. Resurrection. New life.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Choosing how I feel

    One brief shining: Got a call two nights ago from Joanne, hello Charlie, do you still want the Shema on your tallit, yes I do, thank you, you’ll look spiffy.

     

    Over the next few days I’ll have lunch with Rebecca, breakfast with Alan, attend Thursday afternoon mussar, have a session on Jewish holidays with Rabbi Jamie, learn knife handling skills at a cooking school, continue work on my torah portion with Tara, participate for the first time in the Socrates’ Cafe, go to a Purim spiel at CBE, discuss pleasure with the Ancient Brothers, and attend a chamber music concert at St. Laurence Episcopal. Gosh. Cramming human interaction into a four day weekend. More than I usually do in a month.

    All the while last week’s storm slowly sublimates, Great Sol beams it up, up, up into Water vapor. Half of my driveway looks like the leading edge of a Glacier with striations of Snow laid down at different points of the storm compacting each other, creating a layer cake look. In the back where the white has no disturbance the drifts and shallow areas quietly lose their height, as if they were a slowly deflating balloon.

     

    My revenant from yesterday has moved on or sunk back in. This morning I’m glad to see Great Sol, glad to see my Lodgepole companion, glad to sit here on the third level of Shadow Mountain Home, and write.

    Moods swing. Sometimes like that big, big swing in Bangkok*. A huge swing, over 90 feet high, featured in a ceremony with Hindu origins. Certain Thai folk would swing and swing and swing trying to reach a bag of coins placed on a pillar. Occasionally one would reach out for the bag of coins, miss, and fall to their death. Mood swings can have us reaching for a bag of feelings just out of our grasp, feelings that would either make us finally all right, or doomed.

    So many suicides, I’m sure, were people on the Giant Swing, hoping for relief, any relief, from suffering, reaching for it. On a less dramatic note we can allow our moods to engulf us for a minute, an hour, a day, a week and while there to wreck havoc on our sense of well-being.

    I’ve learned some tricks to deal with them. Tal’s How do I feel? Writing blog posts. Knowing that they’re moods and not permanent conditions. An awareness that they come and go. Perhaps talking of Michelangelo. Prufrock let his  mood take over.

     

    *According to ancient Hindu mythology, after Brahma created the world he sent Shiva to look after it. When Shiva descended to the earth, Naga serpents wrapped around the mountains in order to keep the earth in place. After Shiva found the earth solid, the Nagas moved to the seas in celebration and made the earth stable completely. The Swing Ceremony was a re-enactment of this. The pillars of the Giant Swing represented the mountains, while the circular base of the swing represented the earth and the seas. In the ceremony Brahamanas would swing, trying to grab a bag of coins placed on one of the pillars. wiki

     

     

     


  • A Man?

    Imbolc and the 77 Moon

    Shabbat gratefuls: Snow. Cold. Winter Storms. Bringing Water we need. My own tiny Aquifer. A steel blue overcast Sky. Black Mountain gone. (I suspect it’s still there, though) Lodgepole Branches gathering Snow. The Supreme Court. Alan. Relationships. My life’s focus these days. Including with myself. Bereshit. Mishpatim. Parshas I’m studying now. That Shabbat feeling. Candles.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Eye

    One brief shining: The Lodgepole out my window has Branches focused toward the east, toward Great Sol’s return appearance after a Mountain night; on Their west side, where Their colleagues grow, the Branches never emerged, the same true for Others who face out toward the open air with an eager reach, why waste energy where it’s all shade anyhow?

     

    Been thinking about sexuality and aging. Yes, I know about the rising instances of STD’s among those in their seventies, geez guys and gals. Come on. Not my point. Good for them except for the no protection part. No, I’ve been thinking about myself and others like me, not an insignificant sized group I imagine, who have had their genital sexuality compromised by surgery or drugs. Or, indifference. Yes, it happens as many of you know.

    In my case a prostatectomy and subsequent radiation, drugs, and two years of chemo have left me nonfunctional sexually. Been the case since 2018 or so. Kate’s illness made this less of a problem than it could have been. I know. TMI. Maybe. Nobody’s gonna hold you down and make you read this. However I know I’m not alone and I feel like this lacunae in our common conversation needs fixing. I mean, we’re all adults here, right?

    In the case of those us who have had androgen deprivation therapy (adt), a usual treatment in the case of prostate cancer, the goal is to push testosterone, which feeds the cancer, as low as possible. The standard is the level of testosterone in a man who has been castrated. Testosterone goes low, so does the sex drive. My T score has been around zero for the last 9 years.

    Doesn’t mean I don’t have desire. It’s rare, but it does happen. Yet even so the combination of low testosterone and other chemical insults mean I can no longer get an erection. Factor in fatigue from a funky thyroid, now remedied, and fatigue from the adt drugs and the chemo. Not a lot of energy of any kind, let alone sexual energy.

    However, all this is prolegomena to the main thought. That is, what does gender mean in such a situation? I’m a man, a cisgender male. Heteronormative in my desire. All my life. And happily so. Yet what am I now? In effect I have been chemically castrated. My sexual drive gone. And even were it not, a real inability to function as I had for my adult life until cancer.

    Who am I now? Am I a eunuch? Am I still a man in the strict biological sense? What do these losses mean for me as a man? I’m not sure. I feel the same in most ways. Yet I also know I’m changed. Not the same as I was fifteen years ago. Am I now a solitary, a hermit not only by emotional inclination but also by biological reality?

     

     


  • Angel

    Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Alan. Joan. InSpire concerts. Bread Lounge. Bastiens Steak House. DAM. Heidi Saltzman. Irv. Kippahs. Mussar. Great Sol. The sacred surrounding us, above us, below us, within us, around us. Like Water vapor in the Air. Supporting us like the Granite and Gneiss of Shadow Mountain. Energizing us like our morning coffee. Mezuzahs on my front door, my back door, my bedroom door. Moving between spaces, thresholds, liminal spaces. A sacred moment. My son arriving on a 747 from Calcutta 42 years ago today. His wonderful life.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: My son

    One brief shining: Turned off the electric menorah with all eight lights plus the shamash going dark, watched the bright blue beeswax candles burn down on my crystal menorah after saying the Hanukah prayer for the eighth time, finished with my first Jewish holiday as a Jew, feeling my Jewish identity grow and strengthen, as it does when I touch the mezuzahs on my door frames, put on my kippah.

     

    42 years ago tonight. At midnight. A 747 landed in Minneapolis. The night was bitter cold, well below zero and it had come from the warmer geography of the Indian subcontinent. Within were two nuns in blue and white habits each carrying a wicker basket with two tiny babies. When they deplaned and came to Raeone and me, we were suddenly, immediately, right then parents. Oh. My.

    My son (whose name I don’t use for security purposes for him.) lay next to the boy who would later become Willie. By happenstance a work friend, Luann, had also adopted from India and her son was in the basket next to ours. Not sure how she did it but Raeone made off with the wicker basket. Which she still has. What happened to the other two I don’t recall, my gaze and attention fixated on the 4.4 pound body of OUR baby. Would we kill him? His body, wrinkled and brown, looked too small to survive. And we were responsible? Yikes!

    The short answer. Almost. At the time I drove an orange Volkswagen, the original bug. Which, from time to time, including this time suffered from frozen gas line syndrome. We sputtered to a stop a mile or two from the airport on our way home. The bug immobile. Oh, oh. Fortunately for my son and Raeone, Luann and Willy came by, recognized my car, stopped and took them to our house in Minneapolis.

    Me? Not so much. 15 degrees below zero and windy. This is, btw, before cell phones. A truck stopped. A Latino man got out. I explained. He offered to tow me to our house. Thank God. He had a tow rope in his truck, hooked it up and I rode with him.

    He came inside with me to see my son and warm up a bit. His name? Angel. As I said above, the sacred surrounds us.

     


  • Saturday

    Summer and the Herme Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Honor. Kavod. Mussar. Weighty. We are holy souls. Sacred. Revelation. Community. Havurah. Interest groups. Anavah. Humility. Israel. Korea. My son, his wife. Her sisters. Murdoch. Investigations of our orange bitter lozenge of the mind. Smart phones. The Trail to Cold Mountain. Writing. Acting. Acting class. Eudaimonia. Vince. Luke. Leo and Gracie. Ann. Han Shan.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Oppenheimer

    One brief shining: Parting the insect curtain with its magnetic strip lets me enter a place where Cat says Hi, Charlie! and other waiters and waitresses smile, the owner too, and I go to the 2 top or a booth depending on the business of the day order a cup of coffee and open my book right now Two Koreas while I wait to order two eggs over easy, crisp bacon, sliced tomatoes, and toast.

     

    Started yesterday at Aspen Perks. Where the wait staff knows my name. Not the best food, but the best company. OK food. Quieter than Conifer Cafe, closer than Primo’s. Massages my need for human connection. Have wanted to see Pete and Murphy since our conversation a month or so ago, but they’ve not shown up since or our times have not coincided. Though. It’s a small town. I’ll run into them again.

    Still reading the second of my two histories of contemporary Korea, The Two Koreas. Written by a journalist it has reportorial style. Not the depth of Korea’s Place in the Sun, anecdotal with a first draft of history feel. My preference is Korea’s Place in the Sun but reading the two of them cements names, dates, places. Have let the Korean slide while focused on The Trail to Cold Mountain and reading these histories. May return to it in August.

     

    The rest of the day yesterday I read and learned lines. Three pages down. Two more to go before I hit Han Shan’s poetry of which I’ve already learned 5 of the ten. May make it before class on Tuesday evening. Figured out a way to separate Herme and Gaius. I turn my right shoulder, then my whole body to the side. Herme. The opposite with a brassy voice. Gaius. I think it’ll work. The seeker though. Haven’t figured her out yet. An Asian woman, mature, accomplished. Knows what she wants. But not pushy. Haven’t gotten to her lines yet in what I’m memorizing. Will focus on her then.

    Made a pan seared Halibut fillet. So good. Veggies. For dessert, a creme brulee truffle from Sugar Jones. For my light reading, The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier. Sky Castle, the K-drama. Bed. A solid day with before going to sleep thoughts about whether the sacred connects into a whole other world or whether it’s location and instance specific. About how revelation could be auditory. About doing laundry today, Sunday. And what to make for breakfast. As the edible hit and I drifted away into the arms of Morpheus.

     


  • The Sacred

    Summer and the Herme Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Two Koreas. Korea. Seoah. Flying to Incheon. All appliances good for 220. Adapters. Next chapters. Fourth Phase. Facing aging straight up. Happy, but real. Joyous and knowing that death comes next. Burn away everything but love. Start now. Look for the sacred wherever you can find it. Speak your revelation with confidence. Do not go silent in the face of mystery.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Psilocybin

    One brief shining: Once upon a time there was an old man who lived on top of a Mountain in a rust colored cedar sided house with blue solar panels and tall Lodgepole Pines and gray white Aspens who wrote early in the morning, then read all sorts of books, had meals with his friends and family, talked to others over the internet, watched TV, slept in the cool Mountain nights, and was happy.

     

    Still thinking about revelation. Picked up an old Mircea Eliade book yesterday, The Sacred and the Profane. As important to my thinking as Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy. Different takes on the religious experience but the main phenomenological writers in a long stream of theologians and historians of religion. Realized in reading the first chapter again that I’m approaching the religious experience in the same way as they do. What’s going on here? What’s it like? How have humans made meaning out of these encounters. Set aside dogma, charisma, bureaucracy, observance, ritual or at least bracket them. What’s common about the devotee’s of the world’s religions if anything? Not syncretism, nothing to do with what the religions say, but all about what they do.

    I’m not interested in as broad a sweep as that though, I have no academic journal mouths to feed. No. I’m wanting to make as much sense of my own experiences as I can. Eliade reminded of a missing element in my look at revelation. The sacred. Or whatever it is. The what that is revealed. Is it in fact one thing? The Sacred? Or is it multiple things? Is it even a thing? If so, of what quality? And the epistemological question, how do we know what we know about it? Is it out there? Or, in here?

    Let’s go back to that Rainy Night Watcher. Did his appearance reveal something out there? Or, something in me? Or, both? Does see what you’re looking at always mean take in information about what you see in as unfiltered a way as possible. Or, does it mean, how do you interpret what your eyes take in? In the instance of the Rainy Night Watcher there were two actors. The Elk and me. Did he see me as a glimpse into the other world? That of the creatures in metal who long ago invaded his territory? Or, did he look at me with wonder and awe as I looked at him? In wonder and awe.

    For the moment I’m going to come down on the side of the sacred as a thing, a hidden dimension of our World, of our cosmos, too. Consider the quantum realm. Consider the opposite, the macro realm, the Universe as a whole. Consider the spectrum of data our senses cannot experience. Consider the mystery our inner lives are to others whom we know, even those whom we know intimately. Does the sacred reside in any or all of these? Still on the journey. This most ancientrail.

     

     


  • Thursday

    Spring and the Mesa View Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Grif Gunnurson. Massage therapist. Alan, back from California. Mussar today. The Bread Lounge. Evergreen Market. Snow already melting. Love. Kate. Ruth. Gabe. My son and his daughter and their dog. The Ancient brothers. Diane. Mary. Mark. My treadmill. Anytime Fitness. All my wild Neighbors.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Travel

    One brief, shining moment: Israel and Korea and lbm’s, all journeys I plan to take this year, this mesa view year when I can see so far, forward to the 90 year old man I will be and back to the 67 year old man who moved to Colorado with those he loved and whom he has now lost to death, all gathered in one man this April day, a 76 year old man who remembers and who lives now and forward.

     

    Mesa view. Tom suggested this. I moved to the Mountain and now all of those who moved with me have died. So has Jon. Though I stand alone in that narrow, but very real and important sense, I am healthy and eager. Life far from over. Travelin’ shoes beginning to jitter in the closet. This is the Mesa view. Seeing far in all directions.

    I could also call it, will call it, the threshold view. A certain fogginess lifted. Baggage stored in a place of non-interference. The fourth phase, the final phase separated now in two. Then. And, now. Then. Before Kate and Rigel and Jon and Kep died. Now. When I stand on the Mesa, hand over my eyes to shade the sun, see into the distance more clearly.

    The door, death’s door which opens both way, has opened up for me again, this time toward life in the fourth lane, headed toward the final exit. And what a wonderful, exciting feeling it is.

     

     


  • An Afternoon Sadness

    Samain and the Holimonth Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Tor. Orion. Kate, always Kate. The morning Sun on the Lodgepoles. Kep outside at 3 am, wandering. Trump referred for criminal prosecution. And, probably not for the last time. Merry Christmas. Congress funds the government. Gabe and his legos. Ruth. Hanukah. The 2nd day. Those Maccabees. Tom and the Winter Solstice. The World Cup. F1. Baseball. The MLB ticket. Sports. Waiting on the Cold Air. Grief. Sadness.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tor

     

    Yesterday afternoon. Back to pruning. Clearing off the wire shelving in Kate’s former sewing room. The last of her stuff still untouched. A long rectangular box. Heavy. Lifted it off the top shelf. Tor. Oh. Shot to the heart. Tor my beautiful boy. A wheaten Irish Wolfhound. Friend to Orion. Our last two I.W.’s. Petting him each night before I went to bed thinking I wanted to touch him one last time alive. He had a bad heart and dropped dead in the area behind our Andover garage. Oh.

    Clearing off some of Kate’s stuff I found a note from a reunion, a classmate’s after message. Loved being pulled down for a second kiss. I’m afraid I disappointed Kate. Not as passionate as she was.

    Tor’s ashes and that note coming right after hit me pretty hard. Grief and regret. There are some things you cannot fix. Felt like a punch to the chest. An hour plus later. Still sad.

     

    Going into the great darkness tomorrow. Perhaps appropriate. Fated. The dark night, the longest night. Since the summer solstice, we’ve lost a little light each day. Till now the days are short and the nights dominant. A Great Wheel time to be sad. For sadness. For inner work. For falling down the Great Well of inner space. Until. Until. We hit the world ocean of the collective unconscious. Swim in those waters.

    All the mourners slip down that Great Well for a time. Return to it when they lift a favorite dog’s ashes off a shelf unknowingly. Are reminded of their shortcomings as a partner. Other feelings rush into the space. Shame. Loss. Anger. Abandonment. Fear.

    Waiting for the light. Which comes. Not in the Spring. But on the day after tomorrow. As the days grow longer, bit by bit. So does clarity about these emotions. Set them in the context of life, of flawed humanity. No I was not all that Kate wanted, but I was much of what she needed. As she was for me.

    These moments have become rare, but not gone not completely. Love is a many splintered thing and grieving its loss one of the most complicated acts in life. No, that’s not right. Love is never lost. Grieving the loss of the beloved. The tactile mutuality. Sitting across the table talking. Lying in bed together. Visiting other nations, other cultures. Together across years and decades. That’s what’s lost.

    The descent into darkness and the gradual return of the light. A fundamental message of the Great Wheel. A message of life-death-life-death-life and again as long there is time and life. Before the Sun goes red giant. Until.

    Happy Hanukah and a very Merry Christmas.

     

     


  • Wild

    Samain and the Holimonth Moon

    Sunday gratefuls. Erev Hanukah. Gabe. Deciding which presents to open first. Avatar: Water. Pakeha. Cold weather coming. Kep. His blind life. Beau Jo’s pizza. Gabe’s teenage boy appetite. Rabbi Jamie’s adult class on Hanukah. The death of P-22. Vince and Frank Zappa. Kep on the grippy rug. That red alert call at 2 am. For the wrong city. Wellington Paranormal. Next to last episode.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: A grandson’s love

     

    The death of P-22. This article in the LA Times tells the story of P-22. In case you didn’t know it. A Mountain Lion that wandered into Griffith Park after crossing several freeways ten years ago P-22 became, as LA seems to require, a celebrity. Here’s another article about P-22 in the Washington Post.

    Beth Pratt, regional executive director of the National Wildlife Federation said:

    “I sat near him, looking into his eyes for a few minutes, and told him he was a good boy,” wrote Pratt, who said goodbye to P-22 before he was euthanized. “I told him how much I loved him. How much the world loved him.”

    And, quoted later in the article: “He changed the way we look at L.A. And his influencer status extended around the world, as he inspired millions of people to see wildlife as their neighbors…”

    I understand. Here in the Mountains our wild Neighbors continue to evoke awe and wonder no matter how long your residency. Driving yesterday Gabe and I saw more than fifteen Mule Deer at various points along the road. The rule in the Mountains is this. Where there are Deer there are Mountain Lions. I’ve never seen one though Kate did.

    Coming home from MVP Wednesday night I saw a flash of light, slowed and saw a healthy Red Fox gazing at me from the hillside. As I drove home, I thought about him slipping into the night Forest on the hunt. We humans are diurnal, sleeping at night and active in the daytime (most of us anyhow. though the electric light has altered our behavior a lot.) The nighttime Forest is difficult for us navigate. Dr. Astrov from Uncle Vanya, “You know how, when walking in the Forest at night, when you see a light you forget the darkness and your fatigue, the thorny branches hitting you in the face…” Many fairy tales have their story set in the dark Woods.

    Mountain Lions are crepuscular hunters, dawn and twilight. Ambush predators they lie in wait on rocky outcropping or on a tree branch. As P-22 did, Mountain Lions will eat pets. A Dog run up here without a top? Box lunch.

    Our wild Neighbors throughout the World remind us of the thin veneer we have created with civilization. The Arctic cold slumping south this next week may highlight this again in south Texas. Remember the sudden crisis in the Texas electrical grid in February of 2021? Bet it’s not fixed.

    We fantasize ourselves as separate from the lives of our wild Neighbors, but that’s all it is. Fantasy. Without the roof and walls of our homes, the heating or cooling they provide, the provisions available in grocery stores, without electricity or gas or fuel oil. Back to nature. Without my motorized chair or a pedal powered bicycle Denver is as far away for me as it is for that Black Bear I saw this summer.

    Dystopian movies and novels, of which there have been many as we head toward a possible Climate apocalypse, foreshadow the survivalists nightmare come true. And that nightmare is. A return to the Wild.