Gosh, We're All Really Impressed Down Here
Duke was sprayed by a skunk yesterday. This means I got skunk stink on me too. This is spring.
I'm not complaining at all. I love it. Not the stink itself, that's stinky, but I don't mind being confronted with some of the more unpleasant aspects of nature- like skunk stink, bug bites, itching, sneezing, near death and what not. It's there year round, but spring seems extra itchy and so extra "other" for me. I've had the pleasure of seeing coyotes playing from across a canyon, views from what seems like the top of the world. I know the dessert can be more than a drab olive green; that when it's in bloom it looks like the earth has been dusted with yellows, pinks, blues, and purples. I've been feet from bears, stared at the intricacy and detail of bugs, the patterns on lizards, and been wowed by the size of trees, I've seen rattlesnakes doing it. It's all great. I love it. But I'm not the guy that looks at it all and thinks "harmony." Maybe I think "counterpoint," or "still tuning." I'm not sure. I'm impressed, I'm filled with awe and wonder and all that. But I've never felt "at one with nature." Or, if I do, it's a oneness that makes me feel, not only very meek, but vulnerable and dependent.
I've been held under by hurricane swells that convinced me I was going to die. I've been covered from ankle to forehead with poison "itch." I've come away from a day of climbing with over 150 mosquito bites on my back and shoulders that made me sick. I've listened to coyotes cheer over a kill in the early evening. I've had my tent blown out of the ground. Just like in cartoons, I've come across sun-bleached cattle skulls in the desert. And this is from privileged bourgeois frivolity. People who have done nothing to be less fortunate than me live without needing a reminder of the closeness of death or discord all around them.
So what's this for? I don't know. I'm eating lunch and rambling. Maybe come Friday, when I turn in my last paper, I'll go get more insight into how I fit into nature and why the more suited my dog is to life with me the less he is suited for much else.
2 comments:
Oh Skybalon, desserts come in all sorts of colors besides drab olive green. There are red desserts and blue desserts and bright green desserts. Cakes can be yellow or brown or white, but then the frosting can be a rainbow of different colors. Ice cream can be bright blue, or dull purple. The sky is the limit when it comes to the bountiful colors of our sugary after meal delights.
Your wife really needs to broaden her food coloring palette.
I'm with you on the nature stuff too. I was walking in deep snow this past winter after a heavy storm, out in the wilderness a bit, when a pack of coyotes started yapping just down the hill from me a bit.
I was knee deep in snow, and couldn't move all that well. I know a coyote doesn't eat people, but a whole pack? I grabbed a big stick and walked away. I loved it!
Don't get me started about camping in the middle of an island of sea gull nests. I'll never stop!
That's funny, literally LOL funny; I distinctly remember thinking "two s's in dessert 'cos you always want to go back for seconds." Maybe I thought I meant I wanted to go back to the desert. Or perhaps I was confused by the fact that all my food really is drab green- it really is the color of desserts and deserts.
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