Author: melaniereynolds

Focused on leading a nature-led life in pursuit of creative, sustainable and just solutions for complex social and environmental issues.

Too Much Sky

~ melaniereynolds ~ 4 Comments

I’m of the mountains and valleys. On a hike I’ll often say; “Just a little bit further, let’s see over yonder.” I follow paths sometimes only I can see. They have secrets I want to explore. Discoveries to make. Sometimes it’s a waterfall in a slot canyon, a vantage point to spy on animal or a really impressive tree. I once found an old miner’s cabin and on a solo trip an entire lake!  It was only Tuesday when I discovered the possibility of a new adventure. I remember it felt like forever for my day off to arrive. I took my cat, who thought she was a dog.

I drove up an old service road, then walked, shimmed, and crawled through the thickets until I crested a small ridge. The lake was small, more like a large pond, but I could see the outlines of what it had been. It was a place of eagles. I made a pouch for my cat out of my long shirt and tied it to my waist with her head sticking out. I didn’t want her to become a sacrifice. I fished the lake to see what was in it, only perch it seemed. I tossed them back in. The eagles can keep their perch and their secret lake. I’ll never go back or share the location. It’s for the eagles. I was only a guest. They were still on the endangered species list at the time, trying to recover from the long shadow of DDT pesticide use.

Sometimes, we humans, kill things with kindness. As I write this now in the year 2021, the Pine Siskin and other songbird populations are crashing. The Pine Siskins are going through an irruption and salmonella is spreading from bird feeder to bird feeder. It’s time to take them down, at least for now. Nature can rebalance when we let it. It needs space and time to heal, just as a wounded person.

When you kill a forest, you kill the magic within it. It destroys a sacred song. Until more people learn to harmonize better, some things will never be known to you. I’ve never feared for my safety in the forest; The monsters live in houses.

I used to practice getting lost, but my senses guide me to water and lower elevations. The trees never stop talking. There’s always something manmade to bump into unless you keep to the higher ridges and that is a conscious thought. It incurs intent.

The first time I flew from Washington to Florida the land below me became an ironed out Shar-pei, with Florida as it’s leg. (Shar-pei being both a wrinkled dog breed and Chinese for “sand-coated”) It was here that I felt lost. It was so flat! I felt like a mouse in a field looking for a place to hide. My future father-in-law said he knew the feeling; it was the feeling of “too much sky.” My future brothers-in-law took me to a terribly unfortunate named place called “the Devil’s Hopper” for elevation. It was there that I felt at home. What can I do but embrace my oddity? I’m the kind of person that feels at home in the bottom of a sinkhole. It seems ironically befitting. I’m a cat who needs a box, a fox who needs a hole, a dog who needs a den and an ant who needs a hill.

When I lay on my back under a clear night sky I am again overwhelmed with the feeling of “too much sky.” We are tiny creatures clinging to a rock. I’m grateful the sun rises every day and hides it all away from me.

Links for more exploration:

Descend Into the Sinkhole | Florida State Parks

How Ddt Harmed Hawks and Eagles | Actforlibraries.org

With dramatic increase in population of pine siskins, PAWS advises removing bird feeders to combat salmonella – My Edmonds News

White snow, black puddle

~ melaniereynolds ~ 4 Comments

For every moment of happiness there is a tinge of sadness. For every moment of sadness there is a tinge of happiness. My Grandmother’s funeral was on my sixteenth birthday. Two weeks later, was my first Christmas with no snow. It seemed fitting. My Grandmother was good at many things. I can’t give her credit for making snow, but she was a necromancer of sorts. What mortal coils we family members dragged around all year long could be brought together on Christmas night by her beckoning.

Once someone brought a tape recorder and the adults had a lively debate over the semantics of words. Why is an orange called an orange? Why is that color orange and not blue? To my remembrance no conclusion was ever reached, but drunken philosophy is always entertaining.

When did I first started bartending? I must have been good at it. The family clientele never complained and occasionally paid in $5 bills. The tab was always open. Adults drank and cussed and if you were a child of a certain age you didn’t dare do the same. You were both literally and metaphorically, “At the kids table” whenever family was gathered. On the playground, I was a decorated war general, a legend among my peers.

Once when Aunt Jean told me to stop serving Great Grandpa Jim. I was obligated to translate his response, “Go to hell!” into kid language “Aunt Jean, Grandpa Jim says to go to h-e-double hockey sticks.” She opened her mouth to retort but decided to deliver the message herself.

The snow brings many things, but it often makes me think of death. It makes tracking easier. I don’t hunt to kill anything, only to bear witness to their existence. Most tracks and trails are made by deer, but I’ve seen just about every other Northwest animal, except a cougar. Once while climbing up a rocky outcrop I put my hand in the remnants of a cougar kill! It was gross, of course, but I couldn’t let go because I was moving too fast to seek a new handhold. It had been a deer. I hurled myself up onto the ledge and landed like a spider trying to balance over the carcass and not in it. There was no choice but to wipe my hand on my pants and keep moving. The nearest source of water was the neighbor’s cattle pond, and I must say, that kind of water would have been no less foul.

One morning at the beginning of an exploration I reached the end of the driveway at the same time as a truck passed. It hit something just up the road and kept on going. There in stark contrast against the freshly fallen snow was a black puddle of fur. It was a neighbor’s new puppy, a cocker spaniel. Such a beautiful precious little life. I could tell by his eyes he wanted to wag his tail, but the message couldn’t be received. His breath was shallow and raspy. I scooped him into my lap and sat high on the snowbank. I held him until the light left his eyes and his breath no longer gasped. Then I took him home and notified the family. Their two kids were under the age of five and maybe this was their first encounter with death, but it need not be scary. Nothing more could be done when you’re 13 miles from civilization on a Sunday.

While receiving presents is nice, the real gifts are the memories we make. Some of them are tragically wrapped and some I would have wished not to receive, but there they are.

One of my favorite gifts was a visit from a white wolf. Of all the ways it could have traveled, it chose to walk through my little light. I was working as a night housekeeper just outside of town on the interstate. The bus stop was a pinprick of light at the top of a hill on a mostly empty road. That night snow was coming down in big puffy flakes. The white wolf trotted diagonally through my circle of light. We looked at each other, then it faced forward and disappeared. It never hesitated. I could have been a potted plant for all it cared. That brief moment of eye contact. The huge paw prints assuring me I hadn’t imagined it. I’ve spent my whole life around different breeds of dogs. When you see a wolf, you know it’s a wolf.