There’s a place that I go
When my heart is in need of singing
Its a wander, a journey going no where
but this moment.
When awareness fades into dreams and worries
I look to my friends, big and small.
They are busy, they are sensual in their occupations.
They are steady.
Under my house lives Pika.
Every day I wonder: is my Pika a female or male?
Every day I check on her.
Did she move the food I gave her to dehydrate?
How much did she eat? I want to be sure my high-altitude
buddy finds 6800 feet pleasing.
In the woodshed live rabbit and squirrel.
They cohabitate quite nicely, no squabbles at all.
Until ermine comes along, then all hell breaks loose.
They each have their own business to attend to
in that little habitat, my winter wood pile.
But as winter wears on, I slowly diminish their housing.
Out in the meadows the deer come morning and evening.
When the snows begin, they crowd near my house, looking for forage
the elk haven’t eaten down.
Sometimes the elk come down the hillside, but they are
a skittish bunch, with wolves always on their minds.
Turkeys wander in and out, making a racket wherever they go.
Coyote sings with his pals around midnight.
Wolves howl what sound like lonely cries in the night, but really they are the tunes
of happy communications.
In the fall and spring, bears come to raid squirrel middens and find juicy roots.
Mama Grizzly with her three cubs, hungry this year of increased warming and no nuts, no pine trees left.
We leave her the gut piles from our fall hunt. Eat mama and feed your babies!
I am not alone. I just don’t have the same tasks anymore that my non-human friends do.
Once, long ago, Sheepeater Shoshones spent their time here like these non-humans, finding food or simply dancing
with the slow rhythms of the natural world. Sometimes I visit their wikiups; I find their spear points; I make offerings at ancient sheep traps.
Now we are a hurried bunch, with nothing to do but invent large tasks
of meaningless importance.
Time has been going on forever in this place.
A slowness, a sanity, the delicious taste of not-knowing.
These are the small, and large, things to be grateful for.
