My Wild

Some of my fondest days have been spent in wild places where few men trod, cowboys rode on paints and cattle roamed vast tracts of ranch land. I watched a roadrunner lift a rattler, spin it in midair and kill it in a single move with it pointed beak. A wild boar with three-inch tusks in full charge is a scary encounter and a squealing Javalina flushed from the undergrowth will always set your heart a beating. This is wildness that is hard to explain and hard too to beat. I like such self-isolation in wilderness realms better than the streets of any big city or town and I am less fearful there than in the midst of humanity. But it doesn't have to be that kind of wild.

Wild life is my next best to working wood and making. I seek the side of a pond each day and sit. The wait is often worth it and sometimes I simply stumble on beauty in unexpected ways. As I dropped down near the water's edge a kingfisher took off ahead of me and from a perch overhanging the water, shot like a blue dart in an arc to the opposite side of the pond. Disappointed yet delighted in the same breath, I noticed that it wasn't startled away but just ready to move. I dropped to my haunches slowly and waited and lo, he came back in swift and direct flight just two meters from me and I froze each wingbeat as he passed me. Yet once more I waited for whatever else might come and the mother mallard with her two newly hatched bundles of fluff skipped, trotted and paddled across the water in pursuit of tiny midges to feed their ever-hungry stomachs on. This too I loved.

My visitors today were one cuckoo, a nuthatch, treecreeper, dunnock, mixed warblers including blackcap and all in a space of time of under one hour. Allin all there are three sets of mallard families.

One of them is two months old and the six out of the nine young are now full-feathered and almost the same size as their mother. It's hard to conceive that 8 weeks ago they too were skittish little bundles of fluff stealing the limelight from all else there on the same pond. There is also a large family of 9 mallard babes just a week or so old.

The flowers are all wild where I walk. Here is a dog-rose that's hard to beat don't you think. I cannot count the wildflowers on my walk but such things enrich my day as much as my working wood.