Cold, Clear and Uncaring
The wildlife on the bluff was beginning to put in an appearance and I had to be careful to put Sam's dog-door in at night. We were sitting in the breakfast room one evening when he barked as if he'd seen his ghost, his animated brown eyes peering into the darkness that invaded the screened porch. It wasn't such a far-fetched idea because I spotted a fluffy raccoon making its way across the deck like a surefooted bandit, its smudged mask radiating out from its eyes making it seem guilty before proven so. I was as curious about the creature as Sam was so I eased the door open. As Sam launched into a serious riff of barks it skittered up to the screen and stood there—whiskers twitching and eyes keenly trained on us as we entered the outdoor room built into the corner of the house. But when Sam bounded over to greet it, the animal sidled backwards so fast its fur wobbled like it was wearing an interactive coat of fluff.
It stopped when its backside met the deck railing and stood there, just far enough away to feel safe while being close enough for its pointy nose, which it held high in the air, to identify Sam's scent. I imagined this must have been as foreign a smell as it had ever encountered in relation to an animal given that Sam, who trembled with desire to get at the raccoon, had been to the groomer that day. Little did my beloved dog know he would have been no match for the teeth in that pointed snout.
Suddenly out of nowhere, a smaller fur ball came rushing in, tumbling under the larger animal as it playfully nipped at its feet. Sam was beside himself with the desire to play, prancing on his hind legs in frustration. The smaller creature, who had no fear whatsoever, stepped right up to the screen and stood nose to nose with Sam. I was guessing by then that the larger raccoon was the mother because the little guy was herded out of harm's way the minute Sam ran his manicured nails noisily down the woven metal mesh. As the duo skipped out of range of the floodlights flanking the deck, Sam moaned in disappointment that his potential new friends had escaped without a properly sniffed "meet and greet."
I'd never been able to experience raccoons that closely and I had to admit, even while knowing they were dangerous, I'd loved to have cuddled both of them to my chest. It made me realize why people fooled themselves into thinking that they could domesticate wild animals. I'd always been fascinated with the outlandish behavior of non-domesticated species, and some of my favorite childhood memories were when my father and I watched Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom." We'd tune in and find ourselves crying over a dying bear cub during one episode or fighting back hysterical fits of laughter during another that involved a flock of wild birds being startled by an airboat. My dad had a passion for auto racing and had owned his own series of quarter-milers for years so when the leggy birds bolted, wings flapping and feet skimming the shallow waters of some exotic glade, the skinny wakes they made in the surface of the water made them appear as if they were in a dead heat in mother nature's version of a quarter-mile race.
This was the only program, besides sports, that my mother would allow us to watch together because we were prone to being overly emotional and our tender psyches seemed to feed off each other. "Little House on the Prairie" had long been forbidden as the drama never failed to cause us to sob by the end of each episode. Before she nixed the show all together, she would walk through, roll her eyes and change the channel as we wiped our eyes and blew our noses, laughing a little too self-consciously at our silliness, which she thought was ridiculous! I'd never seen "Wild Kingdom" feature raccoons—maybe they weren't exotic enough for Jim Fowler, who seemed to prefer eagles, ocelots and monkeys—and I wished I'd known more about them when the duo visited again and again as winter progressed.
Sam never lost his desire to tussle with them—an ever-present frustration in his life as the weather grew colder and we had a second significant snow near Christmas. As the holiday loomed, I was determined not to admit that I was battling a serious case of depression, plagued by nightmares and bouts of sadness that left me feeling spent and wasted. I would make the briefest of entries in my writer's notebook and then go days without logging anything as I filled my personal journal with dark struggles: "The sky dulls with evening and my mood takes on its color." I felt like a the protagonist in a movie I'd watched—a dying man who knew his life had been lived in vain—when he said, "All those memories will be lost in time like tears in the rain." Would I succumb to a life lived in futility? I wondered. As I journaled about it, the red-tailed hawk patrolled the bluff, drawing me away from the page. I watched as it clung to a tree in strong winds, its talons gripping the limb as its body swayed in anticipation of its next move. Suddenly, it flattened itself against the currents and dove through the icy air, disappearing beyond the stony outcroppings at the edge of the yard.
I was trying to write poetry but only snippets emerged. As the new year dawned, I made a resolution that I would put more words on the page, hopeful that I could hold my resolve better than I had in the past. My first entry for 1989 felt like a strong start and as was most often the case when I was at home, nature was my inspiration: "The sunrise burned to expose itself as the knobby heads of mountaintops penetrated wispy clouds. The moon was as thin as a clipped nail last night, bent and useless in its loss. I watch the falls and wait for the water to take on the color of the awakening sky but it refuses to be anything but itself: cold, clear and uncaring—it falls not for orange glory but for its own clarity."
Life kept reaching out and I couldn't help but intertwine my fingers with its tentacles, which meant I was being pulled headlong after it and all it had to offer. I was often fooled into thinking I was planning the music of my days when more often than not I would end up dancing to songs I'd never intended to have as my soundtrack—all chosen by others. Why was it that life played its own tunes, forcing us to dance along while knowing the loving stances were the hardest to strike?
My stances had been as far from loving as any could be, and it truly bothered me but I was dancing as fast as I could, the poses I managed to hold not so graceful. Besides Sam, the natural world surrounding the Signal Mountain house continued to be the only bright spot in my life. I studied the raccoons as the baby grew, interacting with Sam beyond the screen in guarded but curious ways. I watched the hawk as it rode the thermals, circling above the falls for hours on end. I wished I could glide as effortlessly through life as it was able to sail on those stiff breezes.
I had been watching for several weeks as a highway was being bulldozed through the landscape below—a connector that would make the morning and evening commutes for thousands of people easier. The machines were busy at work day after day, mowing down trees and cutting into hills. I realized that I had a problem with development in some ways. It took strength for human muscles to brandish an axe against a great tree, but I felt it took minimal effort to bulldoze one flat. As I watched the "progress" day after day, I thought how ironic it was that we were a people professing strength while simultaneously being a culture that plowed across the land without any consideration for the future. Would anyone ever be able to see this? I wondered as I walked away from the windows that looked out onto the long brown ribbon of a scab growing on the land below.
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