Bitter happiness

 

Another spring has come.  The plums are blooming and some early apple and cherry blossoms are appearing. The daffodils are out, as are some early tulips.  In a few weeks everywhere will be a riot of color and bird song. Before long the roses will bloom and their aroma will fill the air.  Hummingbirds will dart among them.  Overhead the barn swallows will swoop and zoom. Then it will be fawn season. The year proceeds, as do all the years.

Nature, just as humanity, one of its subsets, does not care about the individual life, only the mass, the group, the species, the genus, the ....

The other day, I went outside about an hour after sunset to take a walk down to the pond.  I needed a bit of time alone. It was cold outside with a northwesterly wind blowing and I had to put on my boiled-wool coat and I was glad that I did.  It doesn't have a hood, so I wore a scarf.  A crescent moon hung low in the west, sliding toward the tree tops. There were bands of purple touching the horizon, fading to black as I walked. Last year's leaves were soggy under my shoes, silencing my steps, but they marked the path clearly in the gloom.

Once at the pond, I paused, listening.  A coyote yipped.  Then another.  And another.  Soon a chorus of yipping and yowling surrounded me. It was as if I were at the bottom of a bowl with coyotes all around the rim howling down at me. Some were far off, others sounded very close. The wind distorted their distance from me, depending on how it shifted through the trees. But it seemed they were coming closer. I wasn't afraid of them, but as a matter of prudence I searched the ground for a good-sized branch to wield.  I didn't find one. I kept walking and after a while forgot about the coyotes.  I knew they were hunting, but night creatures like possums, feral cats and raccoons were their preferred prey.  Or an old or sick deer. But still....

I came to the little jetty and boathouse where we store a Westwight Potter sailboat, a 15-footer, a rowboat and a canoe for summer enjoyment.  The pond was formed by the creek being damned sometime towards the end of the 19th century.  I guess actually it's more of a lake than a pond.  I think it's like 200 acres or something.  There used to be some cabins along its shore but there's nothing left of them now but foundations.  Anyway, at the boathouse I found a walking stick that my father had made out of an old oak branch, heavy and solid, and carried that along for the rest of my walk.  

I thought a lot of grave thoughts as I plodded through the increasing darkness, the moon down, the stars blotted out by racing clouds, but then I thought, as much as everything dies, other things are born to take their place, forever and ever, so from a distance, maybe from God's distance, it all looks the same and unchanging.  Maybe to God a life is like a raindrop in a rainstorm.  Each drop is created, falls down and down and down until it hits ground and dissolves into the general dampness of the soil, no longer a unique individual thing, but somehow, some way, still there. And despite the obliteration of that one raindrop the rain still falls, is still rain, something made up of perishing raindrops but that itself does not perish.

I didn't really know where to follow that thought.  On the one hand it was gloomy: doesn't the individual want to always be itself, an individual with an individual life, individual thoughts?  How is losing that into something else, something larger, something amorphous, something to be desired, looked forward to? But on the other hand, in the case of a raindrop, in some manner it continues on, becoming part of a pond or river, or a flower or a tree or a chipmunk or mountain lion and eventually another raindrop again.  Is that good or bad, something to  anticipate -- or to fear?  And whatever it is, what can you do about it?  It's going to  happen no matter what, no matter if you are a raindrop or a human being.  And am I not just part of the life cycle of a raindrop?  Am I really, is my identity, that of a human being?  Or is my true identity a raindrop? 

Tired and feeling I had walked far enough, I stopped and leaned against my walking stick. I  had wanted to tire myself out so I could sleep, not lie in bed staring into the darkness, my mind racing, going over the same things again and again. Now I was anxious to get back.  The wind had mostly been behind me as I walked but on the return it was in my face.  I bent my head down against it and sought out the slight lightness of the trail to keep me on the path.

By not looking ahead, I missed something coming toward me on the trail.  We surprised each other.  It huffed and thudded off the trail into the brush and trees.  A deer.  Maybe two. The wind brought their scent to me. But it had kept mine away from them, thus their surprise.  They were lucky I wasn't a mountain lion or a pack of coyotes. After that, I looked where I was going despite the wind. 

The coyotes had fallen silent and there was no sound but the creaking of tree branches in the wind.  I wished I had worn boots instead of tennies. They had gotten soaked and my feet were cold. It began to snow.