Nature and Puppies!

The morning sun awoke me with its rays shining through my bedroom window. I squinted through sleepy eyes and knew it must be just after six for that is when the bright bores through my easterly windows. It would be earlier, but a ridge a few miles away keeps the bright away until just after six.

I am fortunate to live in a house of windows. The bedroom has 16 different glass panels most facing east. At the Vernal Equinox the sun raises at the left most side of the window wall. At the Autumnal Equinox it raises at the right most panel. It is the first house I ever lived in that allowed me to watch the sun’s arc from the longest day to the shortest day and back again.

The profundity of the sun’s rising reminds me of the cyclical existence of my life. I awake. I live. I sleep. It goes on and on each day that I am privileged to experience this thing we call life.

In the part of the day that I am active on a conscious level I am presented with phenomenal opportunities to learn, that is not to say that sleep does not offer similar opportunities, but in a different awareness.

By observing carefully and patiently one can watch other life and if you let it, it teaches.

Squirrels, in my area are ubiquitous. I suppose I have encouraged their presence. I have numerous bird feeders and that’s cotton candy to the intelligent tree rodent.

Yesterday morning early, I sat on a deck chair, coffee in hand, and watched a young squirrel creep by me on his/her way to a hanging feeder. He or she was not more that two feet away from my chair. I spoke softly to it saying it was OK to pass. It would turn and stare me down until its mental safety mechanism or its hunger for the delicacy of sunflower and thistle seeds released it from its stare and it moved toward the feeder.

Once the Squirrel finished breakfast and left the feeder, the Finches, the Goldfinches, the sparrows, a tufted titmouse, a small woodpeckers, not the big palliated kind, and the Chickadees move in with their darting flight that seems so fast I cannot understand how they can light, without crashing, onto the small metal bars of the feeder. We have lots of Wrens and Bluebirds here too, but they seem to prefer other feed.

The Red Finches and the Gold Finches have their pecking order. No pun! They do. Chickadees grab a beak full and go someplace else to crack the seed and savor the nugget inside. The Finches eat the whole seed and chase others, not of their clan, who invade their territorial table. A little flight squabble ensues and the one of them perches on a nearby branch to wait for a turn.

Life’s like that. Sometimes we have to wait for a turn.

Oh Yeah! And then my wife and I went out a bought a puppy. Her name is Amber. She looks like a three pound Ewok. Now the puppy will get me up earlier than the sun. Some of us never learn.