squirrel perched
high on a waving tree limb
mocking terrestrial me
True story: I came outside one day this past week. It was grey and blustery with high winds. Hearing a strange jeering, I looked up and noticed a squirrel high on an attenuated limb near the top of our sixty-year old maple. He was riding the limb back and forth and seemed to be taunting me stuck so low to the ground.
It reminded me of the John Muir story about what he did in Yosemite during summer storms. He loved to climb the highest tree around (on a mountainside no less!) and ride that pine as if it were a wild bronco. I love what that story says about his love for nature and his love for risk.
Too often these days of Weather Channel and constant media warnings about bad weather we're encouraged to stay hunkered inside, to treat the weather as other, as frightening, as deadly. Not that it can't be any of those things, but it can also be energizing, recharging, and a wonderful world to explore apart from the ordinary.
I love days like that when the wind pummels in from the west and nearly lifts you up, hurrying you on your way. And I love days like today: calm, brisk, sunny, and filled with the light of the winter world. Time to take a hike in a nearby forest. Let the others shop. I will stride through the quiet under bare-limbed yellowwood and oak.
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