March 6, 2024
The Storm
For me, it was just another Wednesday morning, but my wife was off for the next two days. I missed having her home during the weekend, but I wanted to make sure she was recuperating on her day off. So, during our morning coffee together, I surprised her with an early morning invite to go eat breakfast at Cracker Barrel. Her eyes lit up, and that was that.
The restaurant was empty, with only one other customer who was having a loud conversation on his phone. However, he was kind enough to turn on the speakerphone, enabling us to hear both sides of the conversation. The host sat us at a table near the fireplace, which blazed with tall flames. My seat faced the fire and watching the wood burn felt familiar, having spent so much time outside in front of my fire pit.
Unfortunately, this also made it easy to notice the fireplace was not actually burning wood. To fool onlookers, the wood was imitation and flames fed with gas. While understandable from a business standpoint, it made the entire experience feel contrived. As we ate breakfast, the sky opened up and dumped rain loud enough to hear inside the restaurant.
I enjoyed having my wife home while I worked. Even though I was locked up in my office, diligently working on emails, I could hear her laughing, singing, and conversing with the dogs. During the day, she left to walk in the woods twice, each time with one or two dogs. Even though I preferred to be outdoors with her, I smiled, knowing she was in that sacred place. I hoped nature re-energized her with its beauty and brought her a quiet calm. She’s so busy with graduate school and under constant pressure. It was good for her to be reminded of what her life would be like after she finished school.
During lunch, I took a walk with her into the woods. She invited Bodhi, the only dog that had not been out. The weather was damp, but cool. It was a beautiful day, and the rain brought out all the colors of the forest. The wet bark turned trees from brown to black, and the green mosses brightened, looking like they were glowing. We stopped to inspect mushrooms of various types and listened to bird songs, trying to identify their source. While I loved being alone in the woods while my wife was gone, it was always fun to be together. The woodlands transformed from a place of solitude to a children’s playground. But only for those who held the curiosity of a child, I supposed.
Bodhi started the walk full of energy, his bright white fur gleaming in the woods. By the end of the walk, however, he was walking slowly, his entire side blackened with excrement he had rolled in. Within ten minutes of the walk, and to our dismay, he rubbed furiously in deer poop on the wet ground. Ten minutes later, we were at the creek, laughing at how possessed he looked while rubbing on a log. He was neck down, twisted onto a log with his back legs upright and fully extended. We waited for him to fall over as he writhed about, but he never did. When we arrived home, we walked Bodhi straight to the tub for a bath. As he walked by, the other dogs caught his odor. They looked at me with jealously burning in their eyes.
It rained all afternoon. While I didn’t mind being outdoors during inclement weather, today I was stuck inside working. This allowed me to occasionally gaze out the window and enjoy the view. I found the rain peaceful and calming. Since childhood, I viewed thunderstorms as something comforting. Because a large storm had a way of making me feel small, I felt like it also made my problems insignificant.
In the evening, I reviewed an SD card I pulled from a trail camera placed near the creek. There were several videos of a raccoon family, a mother and her three children, feeding in the area. The mother was peculiar, as she walked about on two legs, standing tall to tower over the others. She had long, slender hands that looked sleek, like a tight pair of fine leather gloves. The family visited several nights in a row.
The camera also captured an elusive heron that would strut back and forth, triggering the camera. While I photographed several herons in North Carolina, this heron has eluded me with its shyness. At Lake Wilson, there was a blue heron that was used to people from the foot traffic around the lake. That heron wasn’t overly friendly, but, if I was quiet, I could shoot photos for five or six minutes before it flew away. The heron on my property, however, was hyper vigilant. It always flew away before I came within two hundred yards. It was good to study the enormous bird on the trail camera footage.
Other animals crossed the creek. There was a rabbit, fox, squirrel, and several deer. A black crow also landed in the area to take a rest and grab a drink of water. I enjoyed reviewing the videos on the trail cameras. During my first few months here, I wondered if there was any wildlife apart from the occasional squirrel and rabbit I saw during the day. After placing several cameras in the woods, I discovered the sheer number of animals that lived around me and it shocked me. From several herds of deer to coyotes, beavers, otters, rabbits, squirrels, opossums, foxes, raccoons, and more. This places crawled with life. It was a friendly reminder that one pair of eyes was not enough to see the world. We have to learn how to see through the eyes of others to gain a truer, more complete picture of reality.