Meanwhile …

April 4, 2019

So Peter has had a rough go of it lately with the natural world. It’s not easy to get out and see it all. It’s not easy to take a pause and notice or take the time to reflect on the very exquisite habitat right in your “neck of the woods”.
The good news is that you are always just a few steps away or ok, maybe a short car ride to the nearest experience. Perhaps, it will come with that next long glance out the window.

For me, it does take some discipline. I have to make that time. I have to set it aside. Over the years though, I think that slight discipline has resulted in an ability to notice more often, the environment as it comes. This morning for example, as my children were eating their breakfast, I paused and shouted, “look, the sky is PURPLE”. Maybe, without that commitment to know more or see more around me, to explore a little further beyond, I would have missed the sunrise right outside our window.

Last Friday, I started the day doing a weekly coffee with a neighbor friend. I took him to see the Great Horned Owl several weeks ago at our local park, and ever since then, he and I both have been keeping tabs on the local bird population. In early March we spent the day traversing south eastern Virginia finding birds from the shore all the way back through the Newport News area. Together and individually, we continued to visit the Owls. The evening before, during his son’s soccer practice at a nearby field, he was out finding the owls in their normal pine tree. There was something different though. Unlike the normal quiet and enjoyable lonesome walk in the woods, there were many like him out and about, watching the owls. That made it a bit different, but so did the fact that they were also gazing into a tree 150/200 meters in front of the Great Horned’s. The owlettes had arrived and had amassed quite a set of spectators. So, we spent the morning trying to get a view of them nestled in the cavity of a giant decaying Oak tree.

Later that afternoon, while conducting my initial hive inspection, I paused at the foot of our porch steps and noticed a furry little something beneath the bottom stair. At first, I thought I was looking at a stuffed animal one of my small children neglected to carry back inside the house.  After a closer look, I saw what appeared to be a sleeping or pretending to be dead, possum.  Perhaps, undetected until now, I had found the answer to my January 31st post.

Sometimes, we have to go out and find nature. Sometimes it just shows up.

If it does, will we notice? If we stop noticing, will it continue to show up?