Deer Watching

     So, today, because I clearly can't take a rainy day as an indication to RELAX, I went for another run. And this time the sky was not just misting, it was actively raining. I kind of wonder if it will ever be sunny again, actually. Judging from the weather forecast it might be some time.

     Anyway, I ran the same run that I took yesterday, but today, perhaps convinced that no human would venture out after such epic flooding, I stumbled upon a mother deer and her three babies. Yes, I counted them correctly, there were three babies. Which was the first strange thing about these deer, since typically a mother deer has only one or two offspring. The second strange thing was that, here they were, in September, when the deer are typically gearing up for their mating season, and here were three fawns who still had their spots.

     But this little family seemed completely disinterested in me as I jogged up to them, and carried on eating, even as I (completely abandoning all codes of the runner) fully stopped running, thus breaking my stride and crept up behind a log to watch them. Soaking my new running shoes. My new WHITE running shoes. In the mud. But knowing me that was bound to happen sooner or later.

     I think they would have let me watch them all day, they just kept eating, completely unimpressed by my presence. The mother would occasionally look up at me when I would move, soundless though it was to me, and she'd stare hard, her narrow elfin face fixed on where I was "hiding". I could tell by her delicate radar ears and her wide searching eyes that she was not fooled. But after a while she would twitch her ears and bend her head to the grass again, flicking her tail back and forth as she fed. When she had a good mouthful she would lift her head a little and survey her babies, chewing carefully. She would swallow only when satisfied that they were doing well, and only then dip her head again.  She was not a big deer, hardly that much bigger than her fawns, which made me wonder how she could have carried them all.  This must be her first or second reproductive year, she herself is hardly more than a baby.

     As a human being I thought to myself "Good job Mama Deer, take good care of your babies." and happily resumed my (now labored) pace. But as an environmentalist, which I can't shake no matter how much I might like to at times, I knew how the odds were stacked against this particular mother. A young deer, in her early reproductive years, birthing fawns late in the season, and having three of them at that. With each fact the likelihood that these fawns will survive the winter diminishes. But I can hope that at least, seeing as how a large graveyard in Philadelphia is completely devoid of anything resembling a natural predator, they might have a slightly better chance.

     Still this was a sobering way to pass the rest of my run, and I will look for this little family again on future runs. And at least with all the rain, although I don't doubt that more horrific flooding will result, they will have a few days of rainy peace to graze and start to prepare themselves for the coming cold.

Running

     When I woke up this morning there was a moment when I thought that I would not run, that instead I would wear jeans and a long sleeved shirt and shiver in the dark rainy cool. Though what I would have done with myself besides shiver I don't know. Running in kind of my salvation from being bogged down with free time around here.

     But the air, though misty and soft, was warm, and the sky was gray, but not dripping. So I put on my shoes and took off, heading for the graveyard.

   
     The benefits of the graveyard run are as follows: fairly flat, save for a memorable slow slope at the beginning and an even more remarkable one after the turn around point. Some traffic at the start, but since the bulk of the run is done in the graveyard the car-related-worries of a typical suburban Philly run are definitely lower. The graveyard is beautiful too, all flat sloping green lawns and beautiful sycamore and oak trees. Very old world Philly, back when Glenside was part of the country, fringing along the nicer Irish settlement.

     Of course, depressingly, the relative isolation means I have to maintain a heightened state of alert regarding any suspicious persons in the vicinity. But you pick your poison and there are definitely more cars than there are creepers in my home town.

     I love the days when you think you are not going to run, but then you decide to do it and you are rewarded by feeling like you could run for ever. The weather was perfect, damp and cool, which for this season is a relief instead of a burden. Through the wooded part of the run a silvery mist hung between the trees, turning the leaves a brilliant apple green and making the silvery gray-green lichen on the bark light up like lanterns. That is my favorite part of the woods in the rain, at first glance it seems dull and washed out, but then parts of it almost glow, each individual leaf dripping beads of water that catch the color around them. The normally bright colors, the reds and fuchsias are dulled, and the background colors, the shy colors, are vibrant and beautiful. It is the world in negative, in reverse.

     This quieted and personal world made for a dreamless, effortless run. My legs felt peaceful and well timed, muscles springing and coiling, releasing and coiling again, flexible and resilient. I can always tell when I am exhausted because my muscles feel like bricks, reluctant to relax, reluctant to tighten. When I am not exhausted they are smooth and springy, strong and seemingly tireless. My run today made me realize how exhausted I was when I began this summer. Every run I took made me feel like I was running in sand. But of course, when that's the norm, you don't notice.

     I noticed today, and now that I am back the sun is beginning to peek through the clouds. But I don't regret not waiting to run. I like to walk in sun, but run in the shade.    

What's Next?

     In the span of the past week, we have experienced; an earthquake, a hurricane, a tornado, and epic flooding. What's next in terms of natural disasters?

     Of course I can't personally claim too much tragedy. My house didn't even lose power during the hurricane, and I didn't feel the earthquake. Yes, we had some flooding in our basement, but nothing the pump couldn't handle, and here we are a week later none the worse for wear.

     But it has been an interesting week.  And it was interesting for all the expected reasons, the dire implications of yet more record breaking storms, the warm feelings of watching everyone come together during the worst moments and supporting one another. Those things were all very much in evidence, and definitely worth recording. But it's all be recorded before, so I will come at this from a different direction.

     There is something joyful about about a storm like hurricane Irene. And no, this is not meant to downplay the very real tragedies that this storm brought about, my heart goes out to everyone who has lost a home, a pet, or property in this storm. Most of all, the families of the few that died. But when I looked out at the storm itself, the wind and the rain, the eggplant color of the sky and the freight train sound, it seemed possessed of a fierce, wild joy.  Nature doing what nature has done for a untold millions of years, without a thought to the multitudes who are hanging on for mercy.

Eye to Eye with a Humingbird

     Today while I was doing some gardening (it's my one marketable skill apparently, besides babysitting) I had a close encounter of the winged kind. I was standing up to ease a few of the cramps out of my back, when a brilliant green humming bird flitted in to assess the caliber of my work. He hovered for a few seconds right in front of my face, so close that I could see his tiny black eyes, before zooming off again into the increasingly cloudy sky.

     It was like he was saying hello. He kind of tilted his little head to one side as if to say "Well, you and I don't look a like at all!" right before he whisked himself away. Hummingbirds are one of my favorite members of the avian clan, because they look so deceptively airy. A hummingbird in flight seems to suggest a tiny, iridescent fairy, a sudden gust of flower petals on a sprightly wind. A capricious glint of sunlight on moving water. Of course, they do have the slender hollow bones of all birds, but even above that they are especially minuscule, a fact which allows them to fly in a manner so insect-like.  The american humming bird, while tiny, is actually the largest of hummingbirds that grace the planet. Some of their southern cousins are so diminutive that at first glance they are often mistaken for flying bugs.

     But a hummingbird once landed on my finger as it dipped its beak to drink at a nectar feeder, and rather than feeling like a tiny puff of inconsequential air, it feel very solid and strangely heavy.  Its feet were strong, like wires pinching around my index finger, and it's body, with held from motion, seemed to condense. I was very aware of its presence on my hand, and equally aware when it departed, with a swift kick and lift that left indents in my skin. So, I remember thinking to myself, you are not quite so delicate as you appear.

     Hummingbirds are survivors. But the same could be said of everything in nature. Survival is the common thread between everything tiny, and everything mammoth. The smallest insect, the largest mammal, in each case their size provides them with some advantage that allows them to persist.  Even humans, with our height just generous enough to allow us to see over the tall grasses of the African savanna, our earliest neighborhood, are not exempt.  It's comforting to think that we are all exactly the size and shape that we are meant to be.

Musings of Mineral Soap

     Today I purchased new yarn, in a new color, for an afghan I am knitting. My mother (because yes, I have gone back to being a sixteen year old. Apparently) then purchased for me 1 chai and new soap AND matching scented moisturizer. These things have colored my whole day. I literally read the entire bottle of soap and am, even now, picturing tiny minerals soaking in to my skin and promising to make me healthier and more radiant.

      I am not much of a shopper. Really. I'm not. Unlike all of those people who say they don't like to shop, but appear to be wearing new shoes each time you meet them on the street. I honestly forget for much of the year that shopping is something that women often do, in the company of other women. And even when I do recollect it as a pastime and coerce (or are coerced by) a friend into whiling away a few hours in the mall I often buy very little. But for some reason this has changed this past summer. Suddenly I am seized by a desire to have new shampoo, new soap, new facial products. I am unable to pass up a shirt in this summer's "coral" color. Really, I swear I am never allowed to purchase anything in the pink family ever again. My best friend remarked, upon shopping with me at one of our favorite stores, "Wow...I think that time you actually spent as much as I did."

    Am I a shopping addict? No, surely not. I can't even imagine a world where I could possibly bankrupt myself via shopping. In my group of friends I am the frugal one, the manic savings account checker. The one who actually can afford to fix her car when things go south with my geriatric war-vet of a Toyota. So what is wrong with me? I actually thought to myself, while looking at the yarn today and wondering whether I should buy two or three skeins, that I didn't want to put it back, I didn't I didn't I didn't.  Foot stomp.

Foot stomp?

     Seriously what am I a petulant five year old denied a treat? Shameful.  But maybe I am being too hard on myself. There really was nothing to buy where I was living before, and what there was came from Wal-Mart. A hollow pleasure, knowing what I know about Wal-Mart. The most exciting thing I can remember purchasing was a blender. Which my boyfriend and I fawned over as if it was a rare and beautiful flower, sprouting from our counter.

     If this passes over without further event (and I am sure that it will, since I, hopefully, with have first and last months rent to make on an apartment in the near future) than all will be well. It's just been so long since I've had anything new, or really anything nice, actually nice not Wal-Mart nice, that the rush has gone to my head. This must be what it feels like to be a real adult.

      I better put a stop to it. I am not a real adult. Or rather, I am, but a highly underpaid one.

Thunder and Lightening

     It's raining outside, or preparing too rain hard. It's definitely thundering and lightening like crazy. Which is nice, since I am almost as tired as I usually am on a Friday night after a week of work.

     Today I help my brother shop for things for his first apartment. His idea of "cleaning supplies" stretched to include; dish soap, clorox wipes, and toilet paper. I broadened his scope slightly. It was nice to look for all of those things again, although while I was in college I bought them all for dorm rooms, whereas his first experience of them is coming from renting an actual place. It's funny, I remember how excited I always was by the infinite possibility of the coming year. College allows you to reinvent yourself a little differently every semester if that's what you want to do. And you do want to do it, even though every time you do you tell yourself that this time it is final, you've really figured it out, and yet looking back each new version was really just a variation on a running theme. A running theme that, hopefully, upon graduation will, through a few years of self discovery, lead to the person you actually were all along. Unless my current mindset is all another alter ego, which raises a bunch of existential questions that are just too much to contemplate on a Friday night.

     I also remember not looking forward to going back to college. Whenever I read anything that I wrote back then it all seems to hurricane around a sense of displacement, of being home for only little splinters of time before returning to the grind and crowded loneliness of a college campus.

     Now of course all I see when I look back are golden afternoons with low humidity, blooming flowers in the spring, the smooth campus lawn. My classes. God I miss them. I wouldn't go back, of course, not really, but if someone gave me the opportunity to relieve a day I would definitely consult my old schedules to pick one that would hold a lecture from as many of my favorite professors as possible. And no, I am not terminally dorky. Pretty dorky, yes, but as much as I miss the material I miss a sense of purpose. When there are papers on The Tao Te Ching or the Theory of Island Bio-Geography to write, it's hard to feel like you are floating and lost.

     When I graduated I remember thinking that my whole life had been spent on a pathway, leading somewhere, clear, but fenced in. But now I found myself in a field, and I could go anywhere. I've tried to design a path through that field, but feel instead as if I am meant to discover each inch. Individually.

      But right now, tonight, I don't feel like complaining. I feel lucky. And not because I don't have to wonder how to transport eighty pounds of cleaning supplies to college in a tiny car. But because I already figured that stuff out. And it's not has hard as it looked when I was twenty.

Two Paths Diverged

     I am two paths diverged, but rather than the paths running wildly off to either side, they are meandering along side by side. What do I mean? More philosophic ramblings perhaps? No, but merely an observation I came up while walking in the woods today. Everything I chose to do seems to lead to the same place, and every time I choose something else the selected path seems more difficult and the path I passed by seems so much easier.

     I saw a tree that had been neatly cut down, and when my boyfriend counted the rings we discovered that it was in it's one hundred and fiftieth year of age. That tree was a sprout in the year 1861. A different world. For the first four years of that trees life, Abraham Lincoln was the president of the United States. It lived through the civil war, and the end of slavery. It saw the mass exodus of men to the Yukon for the gold rush, and survived the production of the first model T Ford. By the time the tree reached its seventieth birthday it had watched a world war, and the the beginning of the great depression, at at eighty another war that would ultimately change the face of the American economy. It breathed the air after the atom bomb was dropped and witnessed the addition of the final state, Hawaii, to the United States. The civil rights act, the fall of the twin towers, and nearly three years of the first African American President. An interesting juxtaposition since the first president the tree was alive to witness is hailed as the liberator of the slaves.

     Of course, the tree didn't know about all that. Still, it was something that had survived for so long I wondered what had caused it to be cut down now. The wood seemed to be in good condition, yet none had been harvested. It had been sawed in half, recently enough for only a little orange mold to have set in. Perhaps the tree had been dying for a long time, and some park ranger finally managed to set aside the time to come and saw it down before it fell over. Perhaps it was hit by lightening. But it will rot away, and be devoured by ants and termites, until it recreates the organic upper layer of the forest floor. Hard to feel sad when the cycle is so obviously spinning on as it was meant to.

     Things in a forest just happen on a scale so much slower than the span of a human life. This is the thing I find to be the most comforting of all.