Imbolc and the waning Ancient Moon
Tuesday gratefuls: Rocky Mountain Land Library. Colorado Humanities Council. Flaco. Wild neighbors. Arapaho National Forest. Black Mountain. Conifer Mountain. Bergen Mountain. Evergreen Meadow. Maxwell Creek. Kate’s Creek. North Turkey Creek. Shadow Mountain. Shadow Mountain Meadow. The Moon and its phases. Lunar calendars.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mario and Babette on the road
One brief shining: My high altitude coffee maker has a reservoir with always hot, coffee pot sized amounts of water ready to go when I pour in more water and close the lid; so I have a routine, turn on the coffee bean grinder, empty the old coffee filter, fill the coffee pot with filtered water, take the ground coffee basket and the now full pot back to the coffee maker, turn off the grinder, measure the ground coffee, put a new filter in the basket, the basket in the coffee maker, pour the water, close the lid, and in less than five minutes I have fresh coffee.
Flaco. In case you missed the story of Flaco, here’s a recent NYT article. Sister-in-law BJ wrote this:
“Flaco was a magnificent Eurasian Eagle Owl that found a free life after someone cut open a hole in his Central Park zoo cage last year. He could have stayed put but his innate curiosity made him venture out. He somehow wandered to the busy sidewalk on 5th Ave and 58th street. People gawked and police stood guard over the animal carrier that the zoo brought to recapture him. In one amazing moment you saw Flaco the owl look at the people and the cage, turn his head and then take flight going into Central Park.”
He lived on his own for a year in spite of having been in captivity his whole life. Flaco died crashing into a window on the Upper Westside. New Yorker’s loved him, seeing in him a symbol of freedom. But I think the truth of their love lies deeper than that.
Yes, freedom. Of course. Why won’t the caged bird sing? Whether vandal or liberator the person who slit the screen holding Flaco created a story of escape, of choice, of survival in spite of the odds, and of tragic death. A compelling narrative. Let freedom ring.
From my vantage point in the Rocky Mountains I wonder if at least part of the freedom story is about urban life itself. Wonderful and stimulating as it can be, city dwelling comes with the price of distance from Forests, Lakes, and Mountains, Oceans. Sure, they can be near by, as the Atlantic is to NYC, but to visit the Atlantic where it abuts a major city or where it is carved up into ports and docks, is to visit Ocean used as a tool for human commerce, not the wild Atlantic of Washington County, Maine for example.
In Songtan, Korea as in many Korean cities, there are Mountains inside the city limits. In fact one rises behind Seoah and my son’s apartment building. Crisscrossed with trails, small parks, and outdoor exercise equipment it long ago gave way to domesticity.
Flaco, I think, gave New Yorkers a taste of Wild Neighbor life. His escape, his refusal to return to his cage, his survival meant he made the rare transition from captivity to wild life. How many New Yorkers carry in their briefcases and quick strides a desire to make just such a transition themselves?
One last note. Wild Animals live shorter lives than their captive specie’s mates. So Flaco’s death, while tragic, was in fact typical of an Owl’s in the wild. Not in its manner, no, but in its suddenness.
