I am walking back toward the house
Returning from the short walk I take every morning
Right after I get up, even before coffee.
It is something I have been doing for myself,
Mostly for my back, for over a year.
On this walk I am usually half asleep,
Waking up. In symbiotic fashion
So is the world waking up.
Rain or shine, misty or dry,
There is a freshness to the air
That works on me to gradually rouse my senses
And ease me out of dreamtime.
As I walk I see a creature
Making its way toward me on the road.
I think it is our fluffy gray cat, Tulsi
Who is coming to meet me.
This is the only thing I can think of
Even though that would be totally out of character for her,
She being a home body . . Still,
Who else could it be! Then I see,
It is a porcupine. Tulsi's "fur"
Becomes a coat of quills.
It / she is exactly the size of Tulsi
And just as self-absorbed.
She doesn't seem to be aware of me,
So I stop. Then she catches my scent.
She stops, gets one look at me and
Heads off the dirt road straight for a tree
Which she starts climbing
Without speeding up or slowing down.
Up she goes. As she climbs,
Sort of walking straight up the trunk
I begin talking to her, using my sweet voice.
"I would never hurt you.
I like you.
You don't need to be afraid of me.
We're friends." That sort of thing.
She stops climbing about 12 feet up and stops.
She is listening to me.
Then she backs down the trunk,
Neither fast nor slow.
Once on the ground she turns
And continues into the deep woods.
This has happened before,
This sort of thing, when talking to a wild animal
Changes the conditioned dynamic
Between human and wild-creature.
I can't be the only one, the only male,
Who has noticed this.
I am not a hunter. I am a vegetarian.
I do not look at animals and see food.
I see another conscious being
And I usually see distrust and fear.
The Catch 22, for those of us who are not predators,
Is that, if some of us
Try and befriend animals
Or at least communicate. . . love?. . .
Does that make them more vulnerable
To other humans who are not interested in befriending them?
In the old (old) days there was a sacred agreement
Between nature and people,
That, if people were respectful
And honored the sacredness of life,
Including their own, and only hunted or harvested
What was needed for survival
And perhaps a little more, nature would
Make the sacrifice, and this understanding
Became the basis of an ecology
That was not human-centered,
But life-centered.
That agreement has been trashed
By generation after generation
I am sorry to say.
And I say this with a twinge of bitterness.
There are too many of us
To all agree on anything!!
We have forgotten how to live in balance.
But when I sweet-talked my little friend the porcupine,
And she decided that she could trust me,
I experienced a good feeling
That lasted all day.
And that good feeling stood up
To a lot of shitty news from Ukraine and Gaza!
My thought was, it's personal.
Maybe that's the takeaway -
That the relationship between humans and nature
Can be healed one encounter,
One overture
at a time.
We all have it in us
To heal our own relationship with nature.
(Article changed on Jul 09, 2025 at 12:09 PM EDT)
(Article changed on Jul 09, 2025 at 2:31 PM EDT)