June 25, 2024

The Fifth Dimension

The brightening light on my wife’s alarm clock woke me up. After feeding the dogs, we made coffee, took it outside, and watched the sunrise. The cooler weather surprised me, reminding me that the summers here, while hot, were not as bad as Texas.

Golden rays emanated from the eastern horizon, casting light on spider webs hanging in the pine grove, making them sparkle from the morning dew. The wren, who recently returned to a nest in the corner of our pergola, was up early doing a little home renovation to prepare for its next brood.

After coffee, I sat down at my desk to write. While morning writing sessions were a part of my routine, this morning classical music drifted from the kitchen to my office, making me smile. I had forgotten how much I liked to listen to this genre while reading or writing. This morning, my wife was off work and she had the music playing as she studied. The break in sound from my normal environment was a reminder that my best friend was home, sitting in the next room. This made me happy. After a study session, she left for the Piggly Wiggly to pick up some groceries. 

As I headed out the front door to go for my walk into the woods, my wife texted me she was a few minutes from the house. I waited for her to help her unload any groceries, and honestly, I just wanted to see her. I greeted her and gave her a big hug and kiss before heading off into the woods.

The temperature outside felt comfortable, especially with all the shade in the forest. I made my way to my ground blind, zipped myself in, and sat down to watch for any wildlife. I knew the area needed more rest before the animals would come, but I enjoyed sitting in the blind since it effectively hid me in the forest, cutting out any movement or sounds that I normally made while walking.

While sitting in the blind, I heard birds approach, perching in a nearby tree. They were making a ruckus, possibly warning other birds that I was in the area looking suspicious. A female cardinal landed on the ground about ten feet from the feeding area, but flew off before it found the bird food placed in the feeders.

It was nice to sit in the quiet and still be a part of everything around me. This was a living metaphor, I thought, for our life in the city, inside buildings, or living in our homes. We might feel like we were apart from nature, but we were all in a small blind sitting in the middle of a forest. The blind was just bigger, and the forest was our planet Earth.

Like watching the flames in the fire pit, I found my eyes drifting to the light moving through the woods. Although I could not see the sky above the forest’s canopy, I could tell where the clouds were, as well as the speed and direction they were moving. This information was apparent from the shifting waves of light and shadows in the woods playing out before me. I imagined this was what perceiving an additional dimension would be like. 

While we were all trapped in this three-dimensional world, moving through the fourth dimension of time, science told us there were likely other dimensions that were imperceptible to our limited human hardware. I wondered if using the light in the forest to paint a picture of what transpired above the forest, that which was beyond my direct perception, was the way humans would one day draw information from these additional dimensions.

After listening to the forest for a while longer, I quietly packed my things and exited the blind. After sitting still for so long, the noise of the zipper seemed to blast out into the forest. While I walked to my blind down a central trail, I opted to return home through the grove, an area that remained untouched by my morning footsteps. 

Walking slowly through the woods, I stopped to look for movement in the area where I had encountered a doe and her fawn. I saw nothing. Just when I was going to take my next step, I slowly turned to my right and saw a doe frozen, staring at me with her ears perked, fifteen yards away. Even though I was close, she continued feeding, looking up at me as I snapped photographs of her. The lighting in the forest was magnificent, as if I had set up a soft light box to sidelight the deer’s profile.

While shooting the doe, my eyes caught a movement to my left. I turned to look, seeing a small fawn, its red coat covered in white spots. Peering through my camera’s telephoto lens, I saw the pattern on the fawn’s right shoulder. It was Roku, a fawn I recently caught on the trail cameras. The small deer was quiet and did not appear wary, although its trust had nothing to do with me. This fawn’s behavior revolved entirely around its mother’s reaction to me. I took several pictures and short videos of the two deer before turning down the trail and moving on. As I moved south, the two deer moved north, continuing to feed. It was a magical moment.

My wife studied most of the day, but left the house for a few hours in the afternoon to go to a yoga practice at the Wilson YMCA. When she returned, I took her to lunch in Wilson and filled her car with gas. It was a great way to break up my day. I noticed on days where my lunch pulled me away from work that my mind felt fresher and I was more productive during the second half of the workday. If I ate my lunch in my office while thinking about work, then the afternoons felt tiring.

As my work day ended, my wife was in the woods recovering her sanity from a full day of studies. The forest offered us so much and I hoped we gave back to it too. The forest always seemed willing to relieve us of stress, providing us with clarity and calm. Maybe this was just another form of breathing out the carbon dioxide that was useless to us, but valuable to the plants and trees. And in return, they gifted us fresh oxygen to breathe. Coexistence wasn’t always a compromise. Nature, in her infinite wisdom, seemed to find ways of providing benefits that were not mutually exclusive. If only human solutions to the problems we created would follow suit.

In the evening, we cooked off the beef ribs we had smoked and ate them with steamed rice, pineapple salsa, and grilled corn. Outside on the rear deck, I studied a sunflower that was growing out of a pot that housed one of my wife’s ferns. It was finally opening. I also found a small green spider, perched on the back of the sunflower, perfectly camouflaged. I took some pictures of the insect and flower and went back inside the house.

Later, when I crawled into bed next to my wife, I faded off into another human dimension: sleep.