Wednesday, March 30, 2011

New Comer


Little Bear from Yukon Territory.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Tawny and the Winged Tiger

Five train cars loaded with ammonia washed into the Upper Sacramento affecting all things downstream. Tawny left when the river flooded. Her kin knew sickness, driven by greed and chilled by blindness. An ancient survival mechanism was terribly awry.

Many determined footsteps led North. She slowed when hemlock met the salty shore. Paused next to breathe the air from crowns of wild ice. Tawny opened her shoulder sack for water and nuts near tree line. With her snowshoes stuck down into the slope she suspended her legs above the wet. Crunching and listening to the forest, she inhaled the only sunny patch on the hillside.

Then, Mountain Dweller, the Great Horned Owl invited her to nest. His courting song, resonant, deep and complicated, rumbled her core. He and the afternoon wind promised to share a stable fragility.

Hidden from the bright light filling his home, food from every forest niche lay in storage boxes. His orange face and gentle accomplished manner sparked and challenged; a mentor offering to teach her the finesse of survival.

Starlight and the snowy moon were used for hunting. Dawn found them processing their catch; rabbit, fish, grouse. January brought them three eggs, so their afternoons were spent nesting. The lovers shared the effort by plucking down or tufting fur to insulate the quiet, white orbs.

A weight filled their hearts when nothing resulted from these efforts and a ritual dinner was made from the eggs. They promised to try again next year. Over many seasons of failed hatches, they finally accepted this fate.

Mountain Dweller told the story of his long ago wives who came to the forest during unusually lean years in their village. They had repeatedly broken the law, taking more than they needed and at the threshold of their womanhood were banished, ordered to leave to subsist on their own.

From his perch, he watched, enamored by their determination. They accepted his invitation to share the homes he’d built and to learn the great secrets of subsisting lightly and well.

Eventually the women were needed to care for their aging relatives. He requested they return and pay off their debt. He sent them with a thimble size basket, woven long ago, magically holding an ample supply of meats and fruit; love from the forest. Down through the decades of great ice and the years of wild change, Mountain Dweller, in his solitary, generous way, helped to steady the beat.


It was time for Tawny to go. To find a way to teach the youth from where she’d come. Back in the city she kept her bushy tail tucked beneath britches and a skirt.