Reading the landscape

We’ve banned our dog Bear roaming free because of a chicken fetish, but on a recent morning he burst through the door and became a black streak moving through the woods. I deposited the toddler with Mama and gave chase. Occasionally I’d glimpse him joyfully racing back and forth through the browns and dark greens. When I finally caught up with him, he was standing over a dead buck sporting a bullet wound.

Slowly and carefully I approached, leashed him, and pulled him away. He seemed too overwhelmed by the munificence of the universe to protest as I took it away. That seems like an interesting metaphor, but for what I’m not quite sure.

Later, as I watched a downy woodpecker bob and dart around a spruce tree, I thought about the different ways we read the landscape. As a descendent of fruit-seeking primates, my eyes are drawn to remnants of color. As a domesticated human, my needs are more emotional than physical. I see beauty in the patterns made by the exposed roots of a tip-up, where a rabbit would see shelter from threats like our dogs. I can’t hear if insects are active beneath tree bark like the woodpecker can. Farther on I find piles of discarded spruce cones, their bracts closed tight but empty of seeds underneath. Around the tree trunk is a thick pile of bracts and stripped cones. I couldn’t have known that these had had seeds while the others were a waste of time just by smell, like the squirrels did.

The day was cool and overcast, with a hint of rain that never managed to fall. Distant crows cawed and squirrels rattled. Humanity moved about in the background noises of cars and planes. It was mid-day, but owls briefly sang their melancholy songs, contributing to a feeling of fading light. If humans had better senses or if the temperatures were much higher, the whole scene would have been permeated with an odor of death. Not being a scavenger, that would not be a joyous thing for me.