July 11, 2024

Small Wonders

Although I woke up feeling groggy, I was in good spirits. The morning coffee was especially delicious, and I sipped it enthusiastically as my wife talked. She was in a great mood, despite it being week three of her rotation. We always said she would get this whole graduate program thing figured out by school’s end. This morning, she was going to one location to watch a presentation, and then going to work at a different place.

The weather was cloudy, and when I walked my wife out to her car, the temperature felt good outside. I was looking forward to getting out into the woods today. Before, however, I sat down at my desk and knocked out a writing session, accompanied by a second cup of coffee.

When I walked into the woods, the lack of humidity surprised me. The air had been so thick that this cool, cloudy morning felt out of place, as if summer had slipped back into late spring. I noted the lighting in the forest was not great, being a little too dark for taking pictures. The weather, however, was so nice that I grabbed a few low light lenses and enthusiastically ambled through the trails.

While moving through the forest, I saw something shoot through the woods. It was small and dark, but I didn’t see what it was. It was quiet this morning and there were no deer in sight, not even a squirrel. However, I encountered several piles of scat that looked to come from coyotes. Maybe they passed through the area in the night.

I opted to return home via a western trail, a pathway I rarely used. As I walked through the woods, I heard thunder rolling in the distance, adding to the ambience of being out in the wild. When I arrived at the small picnic table my wife set up for the animals, I noticed all the food was gone. I grabbed the SD card out of the trail camera that faced the area and placed it in my pocket. While I was there, I took a few pictures of some odd shaped leaves. Even though this morning’s walk was quiet, I was happy to experience and enjoy the cool morning.

When I arrived home, I took a shower, got dressed, and got busy working. I had a heavy meeting schedule today and ended up missing my lunch break. After my last string of meetings, which went for three hours straight, I was ready to eat something. While rummaging through the refrigerator for food, my wife called to tell me she was on her way home. She was going to stop by the Piggly Wiggly and wanted to know if I needed anything.

With two hours of work left, my wife arrived with food and snacks in hand. This evening, she was cooking chicken in the air fryer and serving it with pasta and a salad. It was hard to focus during my last hour of work because the house smelled so good. I looked forward to eating dinner. When I closed my work computer, I realized that tomorrow was already Friday. Where did the week go?

While relaxing outside before dinner, my wife and I heard a strange sound coming out of the forest. It sounded like a cow mooing, or moaning rather, but there were no cows within earshot of our property. We wondered if a doe was giving birth in the woods. Curious, we slipped on our boots and took a short, impromptu walk into the forest.

While we didn’t find a deer in labor, we found many interesting things in the forest. Tiny things. Near the creek, there were two minuscule moths attached to each other, fluttering while mating on the ground. Their wings and bodies were a brownish-gray while white spots that looked like gigantic eyes covered their wings.

On the eastern trail, we came across a tiny frog, about an inch long. It was light tan with brown speckles that were outlined in black. The frog looked at me with its dark eyes and golden eyelids while I snapped a photograph. After, it burrowed beneath the plants that grew at the base of a small elm.

Near a rock that my wife recently named Eagle Feather Rock, because of feathers she once found in the area, we stopped to see micro mushrooms my wife spotted on a rotten stump. The mushroom caps were about the size of the small copper coated BBs I used to shoot out of my BB gun as a child.

While studying the mushrooms, we noticed that one of the large leaves growing in the vegetation around the stump was actually a large moth, perfectly camouflaged. Even though it perched on the plant in plain sight, it took us a while before we realized it wasn’t a leaf.

The moth hung vertically, with its light green wings hanging down, looking like two leaves. The top edges of the wings were dark brown with small strands that curled, looking like the decaying edge of a dying leaf. Its underbelly was a soft white color. 

Finding all the small creatures that lived in the forest was a reminder that the forest was full of life. It also reminded me we could discover wonder any time we stopped and paid attention. Whether I encountered a large buck or tiny moth, or rested under the shade of a towering tree or stood above the tiniest of mushrooms, all these things were forms of life in the wild. They were all organisms born of nature, just like me.

As we made our way back toward the house, it began raining. The smell of petrichor was intense. My wife and I inhaled the earthy aroma as we walked, commenting on how good it smelled. I dubbed the scent as nature’s corn chip feet. My wife laughed, which always made me smile.

Later in the evening, as she watched the rain from the window, my wife spotted something in the pasture. She called me over to see. It was our little blue fox friend showing its face for the third time this week. 

At night, as I stretched out in bed underneath the blankets, I imagined people were all tiny mushrooms living on this gigantic planet. We were all minuscule yet wondrous objects floating around in the universe's void.