Junior Varsity Football

                                                               

                               The score was 20 to 18 with 1:31 seconds to play as the opposing team took the ball on their own 16 yard line. A long pass to a receiver was caught and he ran to Warrens 20 yard line where he was tackled and made to fumble the ball...Warren recovered; Game over. That is him dejectedly walking back to his sideline knowing that he cost his team a potential last minute victory. Soon after both teams met midfield to shake hands in the traditional show of sportsmanship that defines amateur sports.
                               I played football for a few years in the late 1960's and nothing has changed in 50 years from that perspective of teaching young athletes the ups and downs of life. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. This kid will remember this moment the rest of his life and so will the kid who caused the fumble and it's recovery. That's life. People around here do not much embrace the politically correct view of giving everyone a trophy simply for showing up. They recognize it for the BS it is and I suspect that sports still teaches a deeper reality regardless of the spin some people might want to put on life. In the future, this receiver will catch one and score and remember that both success and failure are temporary, and how he reacts to them will determine the character that describes his lifetime. While it is easy to become cynical of the corruption that infiltrates sports, they are nothing more or less than another pathway for the potential good that is the  challenge of every human endeavor.

 

Musings on life, and death

          Walking in Hearts Content woods today I slow to a saunter and exhale in the quiet shade of Toms Run Trail, thinking of life, and the pointlessness of so many things I once thought relentlessly important-sex, ambition. dreams-all the things that describe a normal human existence.  As death comes closer it seems that life is merely a recurring play recast with new characters, and nothing changes but for minor alterations of the plot. From that larger perspective we all step briefly onto a small stage and describe our roles in whatever terms we like, improvising with those around us but never able to affect major revisions to the unfolding drama. It is all vastly important to us in the moment but lost to time like all the rest of nature.
          The trail I am walking upon this hour is carpeted with last years leaves, now brown and decayed, while high above me is this summers growth fading to yellow and soon to fall. The unyielding force in being alive, that ebb and flow of life and death, is all around me, and I know I am a part of it despite my human tendency to ignore or separate myself. The decaying logs on the ground would appall me were they human bodies, yet I would become accustomed to them were they a common sight, and bones and flesh would seem no more remarkable than the moss and fungi and old leaves on the ground. We are all fodder for the earth more utterly than we are the kings of nations, and that is the reality we live and die upon. Perhaps pointless is not the correct title for this opera we each embrace, but repeating is certainly its theme if we are honest with ourselves. Only the young think that life is fresh and new, and that is a grand thing as it sustains them for many years.
           Being alive, we sometimes struggle against the inevitable decay, against the illness and sorrow and loss of everything we hold dear, yet it slips away from us all the same. We choose denial or avoidance or acceptance of those difficult truths, then choose love and laughter to make life a well rounded story regardless of the inevitable. We know there is always the curtain of death we cannot see beyond to tell us why we are here, yet that is never reason enough not to live well.
           As I gaze this hour into the hemlocks illuminated by the evening sun, into the soft light dispersed by gnats and threads of silk, I am made whole, and part of this world and the universe and my small stage within it. It is a stage that stretches far beyond me but everything I need is right here in front of me. I can see far enough to know that life is precious and the Earth a rare thing. It is Home and I am not separate from it. None of us are, regardless of the roles we choose. Always, from the perspective of the trees, the stage stretches beyond the roles humans play, with characters long dead and many to outlive us. I long ago decided that love and compassion are why we are here, and it does not matter who or what role we play so long as that is our mission.

Kettle Creek @ Buzzard Swamp

                                                        

    I hiked at Kettle Creek State park two weeks ago and came upon this bull elk sniffing the path about a hundred yards ahead. It was wholly oblivious to me so I whistled to alert it, after which it strolled nonchalantly up the slope behind it. This is the time of year that bulls assemble their harems, and in the next county the elk are somewhat tame, so one might see a bull with his harem of  females grazing a mere fifty yards from the road. This particular elk was alone and a mile from any other people or animals, so I suppose he was still looking.
    Hiking at Buzzard Swamp today the landscape is looking like early autumn, with red legged grasshoppers very common.This
Mourning Cloak butterfly will presumably survive through the winter, for this species enters diapause ( a form of hibernation) and is among the first butterflies to emerge in spring. The mating dragonflies are representative of several species active in the swamp now, and I recently learned that some dragonflies ( the blue darners for one ) migrate in autumn. Miniature radio trackers have found that at least one individual traveled over one hundred miles in 24 hours, following the wind current like migrating birds. Nobody yet knows where they go, or if they survive the winter somewhere.

    The milkweed seeds are of a kind that I have collected to plant at home, hopefully to provide more habitat for monarchs.