Half a Century Outside

Today I was visited by the stag twice.  Once in the morning at my bedroom window with a wave of his velvety 2-prong antlers.  Once in the evening with a flash of his white butt nobly pooping below the springbox.  A coyote, the pale-faced one with paler eyes that I think of as a middle-aged dam, searched the pasture for breakfast as I drove up the drive.  A pair of bluebirds landed on the barbwire fence for a morning breather while I reluctantly opened the front gate.

I don't remember the daytime business hours.


This evening, I moved the Adirondack chair to its summer position in the yard and watched the mostly black with one white cows graze a hill into roundness.  A kestrel faced the sunset from the top of an old, flattop Douglas fir.  A bluebird of happiness landed in the pine at my shoulder, and sure enough, I scanned the nearby grass with binoculars to find her startling bright blue mate swaying back and forth on last year's thistle stem. Suddenly, there is an evening bird chorus to challenge the waning treefrogs.

 I read the words "winter-flowering pixie-moss" and remembered my kid ears listening to southern breezes and my kid eyes gazing at soft pine needle patterns on the ground.  It must have sunk in, disappeared, and has resurfaced after a few decades.  Then it was going outside.  Now it is being outside.


When night finally nudges me indoors, the tiger moths bang against my window and I know it is time to turn off the people lights and go to bed so they can make more tiger moths for next spring.

A texting friend corrects me - I am the visitor.

 ---
"Winter-flowering pixie-moss" from Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray.