February 9, 2024
The night passed quickly and before I knew it; I was up, sipping hot espresso with steamed milk, and saying good morning to my wife over FaceTime. I wrote for an hour while reading humorous texts from my wife while she walked alone at a park. Her tactical briefings of the park’s safety concerns made me laugh. I worked as a bodyguard and on a tactical team for a couple of decades, while my wife served in the military and watches way too much Dateline. This potent combination meant safety was always on our minds. I often wonder what a person who stumbles onto our property with bad intentions will think about our hospitality. We have four large dogs to greet them, along with modern weapons, medieval weapons, and a new four-pound hammer with a sixteen inch hickory handle that seems suitable for a variety of tasks.
During my lunch break, I made a run to the local Piggly Wiggly, picking up some chicken wings, which I placed inside a large ziplock bag with a teriyaki marinade. This evening, I had plans for a hot fire and a cold beer.
After work, I went into the woods, and it was already getting dark outside. However, my evening just isn’t complete without time in the forest. I planned to walk to the creek, but when I got to the north end of the pine grove, near my ground blind, I saw three deer in an empty crop field. I got inside the blind and watched them. There were more deer just inside the tree line on the opposite side of the field. I cinched the window closed to cover myself, leaving a narrow gap to watch out.
One deer entered the field and was moving toward me quickly. The large doe suddenly stopped, however, and turned back toward the herd. The deer were all facing east, away from the blind, toward a neighboring property. They were on high alert. A doe sounded the alarm, barking once. In a flash, all the deer ran south along the tree line as I counted them, nine in total. It was nice to know the deer were still in the area. I’m sure there are several pregnant does who will give birth in the spring. Exciting.
I spent some time gathering firewood and cutting it into kindling. After, I lit a fire in the Solo Stove and sat outside, listening to music with the dogs, while sipping a Noda Radio Haze IPA. It was the start of a beautiful Friday evening. After relaxing for about an hour, I fired up the Traeger wood pellet grill. When it reached about three hundred and twenty-five degrees, I place the marinated chicken wings on the grill and let nature take its course. When the wings were done, I went inside to grab a paper plate and ate outside under the stars. The teriyaki wings were so good, I vowed to get more marinade over the weekend. The dogs thought they were great too, as they each discovered one complete wing at the bottom of their dinner bowls. It’s always feels good to make a good life for our dogs. These guys were all rescued, and now, they eat better than most people on the block. And they deserve it.
After I finished dinner, I dumped the bones in the garbage and threw the paper plate into the fire, watching it ignite and turn, almost immediately, into thin ash. I stayed outside, lying on the outdoor couch, looking up at the sky. It was a clear night, and the stars were out. People used to think that these were just holes in heaven, but little did we know what was actually up in the sky. With time, hard work, and science, we determined Earth was not the only planet, and that we were not the center of the universe or even of our solar system.
Then we found out that what we thought was the “everything” was just one of innumerable things. Our sun was one star of a billion in our galaxy; and there were a billion galaxies. The universe was possibly infinite and, yet somehow, expanding. And there were possible infinite universes. How can the human mind deal with all this? Apparently, it is one thing to figure it out and quite another to understand what it really means.
How could I fully contemplate and give meaningful context to the stars I see now? That I am viewing objects that are so far, we have to measure them in the distance light travels in one year, when it travels over one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles in a single second. How can I grasp the fact that the pinpoints of light I am watching with my mammalian eyes are one million light years away, or ten million, or a hundred million? Why, from the comfort of my property, I am looking up and seeing things more grand than the entire history of life, which, in universal time, is as fleeting as the small embers shooting up from the fire. Life emerged and will be gone in an instant. And yet, we have learned so much.
I wonder, will we ever see as deeply into ourselves?