Today was a day of resting, that followed a day
of cleaning, and then delectable family visitors. By evening, my battery was a
bit filled, so I tucked Dante onto the leash, and off we went, down the
brightened color-filled mountain, to the Summit Road, for the
cheat-dog-walk-deal. The late autumn sunlight cast its golden self across the
fields, through the orange and red and yellow leaves, out upon the range that
rippled with trees in their colorful last blast.
Some of the cows from the dairy were having a turn out in the pastures, out of the confines of their tiny enclosures, so gamboling about, chase chasing each other, feeling the fading sun upon their beautiful backs, munching down on the delectable fresh leaves of grass.
Dante was playing 'leap and flush out the small wild ones' in the tall grasses by the side of the road, and I watched him do the big jump flush out, such an instinctual thing come up from within him, along with the lifting of the one paw, which of course Pointers do. All the things no one had to teach him to do.
Overhead, a flock of perhaps 60 Starlings made their way along the very top of the range, swirling about as they do, and I stood there in the delicious dusk, thinking about the conveyance of instinct and genetic material that manifests in all our lives. How obscured much of our own is becoming, moreso with each generation; how we even feel confused or shameful about deep instinctual wisdom.
I remember realizing this at 27, with my firstborn by my side, at the home of a British nurse-midwife up in the hollows of Vermont. Tidily ensconced in her birthing room, all my choices intact, til a few days later, when my overcooked luscious babe predictably had a bit of pneumonia, and off we went to Mary Hitchcock in NH, where I staved off all the young studying doctors who wanted to prick him and reinsert IV's for no reason other than practice, and the one time I left him for an hour,used a syringe to pull urine out of his bladder. For practice.
It was then that it came to me; my ferocious protectiveness was exactly what any animal in their right mind would do, when faced with the necessity of being in a large bustling building with a bunch of strangers you knew not from.
You saw that article recently, where the four young Bucks, exhausted and suffering from hypothermia, willingly crawled into a fishing boat, and settled down on the deck until the boat reached land. All of necessity, that is of instinct, also. Survival.
Since that two weeks with my newborn, I watched myself and tutored myself in the wisdom of my powerful responses, that are summarily ridiculed in this culture. Due to reasons I can certainly understand, but which involve mass amnesia of how things within us truly function.
Standing out on the road, as the pup searched for rabbits; chipmunks;, ok, maybe a mouse.... I looked up at the thick forest and the cleared section that held powerlines, and a rocky road.
Some of the cows from the dairy were having a turn out in the pastures, out of the confines of their tiny enclosures, so gamboling about, chase chasing each other, feeling the fading sun upon their beautiful backs, munching down on the delectable fresh leaves of grass.
Dante was playing 'leap and flush out the small wild ones' in the tall grasses by the side of the road, and I watched him do the big jump flush out, such an instinctual thing come up from within him, along with the lifting of the one paw, which of course Pointers do. All the things no one had to teach him to do.
Overhead, a flock of perhaps 60 Starlings made their way along the very top of the range, swirling about as they do, and I stood there in the delicious dusk, thinking about the conveyance of instinct and genetic material that manifests in all our lives. How obscured much of our own is becoming, moreso with each generation; how we even feel confused or shameful about deep instinctual wisdom.
I remember realizing this at 27, with my firstborn by my side, at the home of a British nurse-midwife up in the hollows of Vermont. Tidily ensconced in her birthing room, all my choices intact, til a few days later, when my overcooked luscious babe predictably had a bit of pneumonia, and off we went to Mary Hitchcock in NH, where I staved off all the young studying doctors who wanted to prick him and reinsert IV's for no reason other than practice, and the one time I left him for an hour,used a syringe to pull urine out of his bladder. For practice.
It was then that it came to me; my ferocious protectiveness was exactly what any animal in their right mind would do, when faced with the necessity of being in a large bustling building with a bunch of strangers you knew not from.
You saw that article recently, where the four young Bucks, exhausted and suffering from hypothermia, willingly crawled into a fishing boat, and settled down on the deck until the boat reached land. All of necessity, that is of instinct, also. Survival.
Since that two weeks with my newborn, I watched myself and tutored myself in the wisdom of my powerful responses, that are summarily ridiculed in this culture. Due to reasons I can certainly understand, but which involve mass amnesia of how things within us truly function.
Standing out on the road, as the pup searched for rabbits; chipmunks;, ok, maybe a mouse.... I looked up at the thick forest and the cleared section that held powerlines, and a rocky road.
I
remembered a few years ago we heard down the road all sorts of clatter, as
trucks and lights passed by in the early hours of the morning. It was
wintertime, and several ding dongs had had too much of a good time, clambered
into a ATV, all six of them, raced along the road, and made the error of not
looking up the path ahead of time. So that suddenly, the vehicle veered off a
cliff, out into air, then dropped and rolled and crashed down the mountain
side.
Imagine standing there, watching the choreography, as each of the six people, none with seat belts of course, were tossed far into the air, and then bashed down the steep incline. In your mind, watch how the huge machine bounced and twisted in the air, missing first one body, then another, miraculously bashing about the lot of them...machine and people....and none of them colliding or worse.
Now that I have you, see this- the last person, tossed high in the air from the vehicle, maybe really coming to at that moment from the blood alcohol levels cited in the paper the next day, and with some inborn wisdom, reaching out their hand as they catch sight of... a limb. From a tree. Catching hold to that limb, holding so tightly that with that hand, they halted their own projectory down the mountain, and dropped themselves to the ground. While the crashing and the other people went plummeting down.
All of them survived. Not without hospital stays, of course. And it goes without saying that big bunches of local firefighters and cops went plowing through the deep snow to gather up the six of them, on that steep mountainside, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the winter, in the cold.
But what I was left with sometimes comes back to me; that moment, when that guy kind of came to his senses, and his senses needed noone to remind him how to see, in the dark night, the extended branch, as he flew through the air, to reach out, to grab it hard enough, to catch himself somehow. Noone needed to teach him that.
Imagine standing there, watching the choreography, as each of the six people, none with seat belts of course, were tossed far into the air, and then bashed down the steep incline. In your mind, watch how the huge machine bounced and twisted in the air, missing first one body, then another, miraculously bashing about the lot of them...machine and people....and none of them colliding or worse.
Now that I have you, see this- the last person, tossed high in the air from the vehicle, maybe really coming to at that moment from the blood alcohol levels cited in the paper the next day, and with some inborn wisdom, reaching out their hand as they catch sight of... a limb. From a tree. Catching hold to that limb, holding so tightly that with that hand, they halted their own projectory down the mountain, and dropped themselves to the ground. While the crashing and the other people went plummeting down.
All of them survived. Not without hospital stays, of course. And it goes without saying that big bunches of local firefighters and cops went plowing through the deep snow to gather up the six of them, on that steep mountainside, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the winter, in the cold.
But what I was left with sometimes comes back to me; that moment, when that guy kind of came to his senses, and his senses needed noone to remind him how to see, in the dark night, the extended branch, as he flew through the air, to reach out, to grab it hard enough, to catch himself somehow. Noone needed to teach him that.
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