Yes, I know I've mentioned this before --probably more than once-- but, oh how Spring messes with my equilibrium.

Yes, the air is sweet. The days are long and the temperatures have been in the mid-70s all week with loads of sunshine, so please, how can this be anything but heavenly?

Well, I don't seem to ever be able to articulate what happens for me, but yesterday I had a glimpse, I think, of what is at the source: disruption, destruction, unleashed wildness.

Yes, not really the words most people use when describing Spring. My sense of what the general populace experiences when Spring rolls around is more like puppies! and daffodils! and little lambs running through the field. Me? I know those lambs are gonna be butchered and I can't bear it.

Yesterday, as I was running some errands in town, I went to the back of the drugstore parking lot to cross over into the bank parking lot through a little passageway known to locals only to find it permanently blocked. I have used that little connector road for upwards of fifteen years and now, I am being diverted back onto the street. In that moment, all I could think about were the animals. All the animals who have their tracks and their well-established pathways and how the number of human made blockades are constantly increasing-- whether they be suburbs, or a new road, or a new mall, or a new gas station where once were fields and woods and the paths they have always known.

It makes me cry. It bothers me so deeply in a place I can't put words to. And it's a bad feeling I cannot shake.

Crazy, non?

And then, something I haven't told you guys about-- our birds. We have dozens and dozens of birds every day at our feeders. We also have windows on our house. And, yes, with some frequency, I will hear a BONK and run out to find a dazed chickadee on the ground. I now have a box for this emergency as when I first started lifting them up and holding them in my hands until they regained clarity (sometimes it would take as much as 20 minutes and in the bitter winter I would bring them inside and then when they "woke up" they'd fly around inside and the dogs would go nuts and I would be a wreck trying to get them outside without causing them any more trauma-- you can see why I've never mentioned this--------> helloooo, lady loco).

The box has a soft towel in it and I rest the bird there in the sun while they recover and then when they are ready to fly-- they are already outside.

Yesterday, the BONK was loud and hard. Someone much larger had hit the window.

Our first evening grosbeak. And, can you see? She flew off the feeder with a sunflower seed in her mouth.*

I knew the moment I saw her that she was already dead. When I lifted her up, her long neck flopped against my palm.

Oh, here's another word I should add to my list of Spring vocabulary: distraught.

I held her close and sat with her in the sun for a long while. Then, I put her in the box because I was going to have to bury her and I wasn't ready to do that. Went inside and covered the windows with butcher paper.

Last night, just before bed as is our nightly habit, T let the dogs out for a pee. In a flash they were off after a black bear that just happened to be in the driveway at the time. Fortunately, the bear went up a tree not far from the house and T got all three dogs back into the house unscathed.

But, what if it had been a porcupine? A fisher cat? We've been there so. many. times. before. with the bloody, wounded dogs and midnight rides to the animal hospital-- so, I lay in bed grappling with the realities of our life here in Spring which is that we live in the midst of many wild animals and my walks with the dogs are going to have to revert back to only two at a time, with one of the boys on a leash.

And, the moon was full-- blazing into the bedroom. Full moons and I do not get along at all. So I had to get up and go down the hall to the dark, north-facing guest room to sleep.

This morning, it is a gorgeous, soft, delicious day. The dogs are champing at the bit to go out for a huge walk-- they are definitely in the puppies! daffodils! little lambs! camp when it comes to excitement about this new seaason. But, I'm going to have to curb all that joy and enthusiasm-- which I hate. I hate hate hate having to exercise control over joy. I hate having to discipline my dogs even though I know it is what they need and what will keep them alive and safe. And yet, I just want everything to be wild and free.

And yet, when life runs of its own course-- wild and free-- there's lots of prey and predator, natural accidents and death. So, why does this bother me so?

sigh.

I'll tell you one thing. I feel slightly better just spilling out all this absurdity here on the page. It somehow releases a pressure valve in my head to just pour it out.

Now I'm off to walk and I promise the smell of pine needles warmed by the sun will make my heart sing as no other scent can do. And then, the afternoon will be consumed most happily by finishing my final drawing project which will take me upwards of four hours of sitting and scribbling (okay, there will likely be a fair amount of cursing) in the living room.

Walking and drawing. (Cursing). Windows open. Stillness and birdsong.

These are good things.

___________________________

* Which actually helps me as it makes me think of the scene in The Unbearable Lightness of Being when Tomas and Tereza have just come out of the warm and cozy bar where they danced and drank and are, in fact, rather buzzed with happiness and they are cuddling in their car together after having so many struggles in their relationship over the years in this moment they are so bonded and in such a true, perfect moment of happiness when they are killed instantly in a car crash (oops, sorry for the spoiler if you don't know the story).

When I go, I want to go like that. In a moment of perfect happiness, on a sunny day with a delicious sunflower seed in my mouth just about to be cracked open and eaten.

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