2.27.14 This Is The Way Of Things, Is It Not?

      Despite what has been said about this winter's severity , the absence of actual erasures around here point to a more moderate picture. 
     The Sumac berries are still intact all over, currently also being relished by the Robins. In hard winters, they are long gone by mid January. Our local marauding Cedar Wax Wings are sharing a still bountiful supply of perfectly seasoned cherries, apples and berries. Repeated freezing and thawing making them accessible to the non-seed birds. Interesting how possibly a majority of wild winter food is red....
     And a tromp through our local woods reveals branches and barks intact, as well as most buds, indicating that the deer have had enough supplies.
     The Coywolves have had full enough bellies to not bother with our compost for a week or so. So the wonderful noisy Crows come by and do what they will with what the mid-day adolescent Possum and the careful in-full-day Rabbit leave behind, after tossing about food scraps , much like shoppers at a midtown Jordan's Basement 2 for 1 sale.
     Of course, it's a tough time for adolescent Hawks that are fending for themselves, especially with the protein-consuming bitter cold nights.
     There has been at least one Dove casualty at my feeders -so contrary to a young Hawk 'a common sense, yet necessary when they simply can't catch enough mice and voles and all .
Which is also why we never ever feed breads to birds in winter, as the protein levels are low, making them freeze to death in the night .
     But all of this is the way of things, is it not? Our present day culture seems to have conspired to bring a lazy smile to our faces and a habitual consumption for consumption's sake - to our habits.
Lulling us away from the realities of both life , and death, and actual real life-is-not- a-Disney- movie.
     So that we so often spend our days, or lives, with this odd, vague and transient sense of feeling disturbed, a little culturally medicated, dulled, if you will.
     Or , too, 'dumbed down' and away from the challenging but vitally alive capacity to live life with eyes open, awake and aware, not to some barrage of killing grisly television and movie stories, or to an over consumption of terrible events all over the globe, but somehow a manageable balance for each of us, between being informed - but not harmfully barraged .
     Able to engage with what you and I have both lived and sorrowed and grappled with all our lives, that real local life of real in the present people, places and concerns - that we will weave our lives together with ; that inviolate substance of life.                                       T2.12.15