Homeboy at Home During Coronavirus
November 4, 2020: Coyote Hollow, Thetford Center, VT
6:29 a.m. 30 degrees, wind WSW 2 mph. Sky: high in the west, a sad-faced three-quarter moon presides over an empty vault; last night's ambassador . . . so polished, so pensive. Even the clouds are still in bed. Permanent streams: untracked snow on banks; water swirls around white rocks. Wetlands: five sober crows high in a vacant sky, three fly west, two north; not a caw between them. Pond: parchment of ice across most of the surface; mink ballad, a line of paired prints that end with the author standing on hind legs; curiously watches me watch him—a big, poker-faced male, cream white chin, everything else profoundly dark against a backdrop of white—a supple, wild mammal on an otherwise bleak, post-election morning.
Sexual dimorphism: variance of size between the sexes the hallmark of raptors and mustelids (weasel family) . . . but in reverse, a mirror image. Female owls and hawks, the frontline of nest defense; dwarf males, the dutiful provisioners. A male mink dwarfs a female, mates like a WWW deathmatch. Chases partner, pins her by the scruff of the neck, abuses her like a tempest, vigorously and expeditiously. A breeding system honed over millions of years that has yielded fascinating dividends: weasels, minks, fisher, martens, wolverines, ferrets. Otters, however, are more dignified, more social, raise their pups together—a two-parent family.
Once, I watched a mink mate. Nothing pretty about it. An unrequited romance, a tactless encounter. Repeated half-a-dozen times in woods on both sides of the road. The word rape comes to mind . . . nevertheless, such a chillingly chaotic ritual yields results. Had my mother only known the true nature of the beast whose fur kept her warm and chic?
Four precious chickadees spread joy, cast a ray of hope across unmanageable anticipation.
Here in a retirement community in Chelsea Mi, all that is wild has been sterilized, so as not to upset the "elders". At 80, I know I need to be here, with family so far away, but I long for who I was in the days of winter tenting and summer hiking. On this day after the shock of seeing the map looking covered in blood, I thank you for the reminder of fierceness, which is the truth of nature--and of us, as animals a part of that natural world. Annie Dillard is one of my guides; in "The Writing Life:" she says:, "What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking. We should amass half-dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at each other, to wake up; instead we watch television and miss the show."
So thank you--I'm feeling like shaking some gourds today, and your post helped. Thoreau said, "In wildness is the preservation of the world", and no matter what the news brings, that same wildness can sustain me--even in this gilded cage of a retirement community, where I may be the only person who doesn't own a television!