Two Rabbits, Two Snakes and a Puma
By 8am there was still a hard frost on the ground where the sun hadn’t penetrated. After a mild December, the season of cold days is really here now. On balance I prefer morning walks when it’s cold. There are fewer people about and I like the bracing feel of the cold air on my face, the maximum head-clearing effect.
Since my Father took us hiking on weekends and family holidays, I have always enjoyed walking as a means of physical exercise, but also for mental relaxation and refreshment. During the pandemic and the self-imposed isolation that we accepted as a discipline, walking for me, like many others, became an essential time to clear the mind and get closer to a purpose in life.
During the weirdness of 2020 my wife and I were fortunate to be able to retreat and hide from the virus in the hillside of central Virginia. I have spent most of my recreational time over the years hiking up mountains, peak-bagging and enjoying the views. But for this last year I just walked out from the house along the many valley trails around us. From the valley floor you can see mountain profiles all around you and I have come to appreciate that the view from the bottom can be as dramatic and as beautiful as the breath taker from the top.
Some days the mountains seem closer than on other days, not in the sense of being threatening but certainly they seem more awesome. Perhaps they seem closest when there is snow on the hills. I think their distance is determined by the quality of the light and my mind is certainly happy with a flexible, fluid universe rather than one of rigid dimensions. The distance between us is really a function of our relationships and feelings.
January is the time of long nights and cold days, the time when the arc of the celestial powerhouse is set low on the horizon. The night before had been a full moon and while the sun had risen an hour earlier, I saw that the moon was still in the sky disappearing behind me. While the sun travelled less, the moon seemed to be attempting a 270 degree journey in an arc round my sky. It was now effecting a slow escape from the rising sun while still reflecting her brilliance.
The universe makes little sense if you believe you are at the center, but sometimes, and superficially, all your senses tell you that you are. The sun and the moon appear to just revolve around the earth, and people can appear to be orbiting you and your life. Your fears, problems, limitations and obsessions can become the center of your universe. You can just sit inside your head and look out at everything around you. This was even more true somehow during the year of COVID. But when you go hiking you see enough to dispel this illusion and re-orient yourself as part of something much bigger.
Hiking is a multi-dimensional, multi-faceted experience. Bird sounds, different surfaces under foot, obstacles, weather changes, lighting changes, different textures to look at and feel. Things close to and things far off, there are different scales of view. A tiny insect might only be seen inches from us while other things of interest are 20-60 feet away and the horizon provides a limit which changes as we move. Wildlife is hidden and seen, sometimes just heard. And there are the immediate physical sensations of your own body, responses to the climbing of hills and the wind on your face. The valuables thing is that we end our isolation and connect seeing ourselves as part of something else.
When I go walking I take my phone as a camera mainly to capture close-ups of items of interest. A landscape view can never be photographed the way we really see it. Not even as we interpret it with eyes, let alone how we experience it with all our senses and imagination. The best that can be hoped for with a photograph is that it is beautiful in itself and that it helps you remember the real experience. David Hockney in his photo montage views and multi-faceted grand canyon landscapes comes the closest I have seen to capturing something closer to what we really see in the moment. His approach was in my mind when I created the image connected to this story.
One of the valley trails I walk regularly goes through a wetlands reserve. It really is wet all year round and so some of the trail is only made possible with the help of bridges and extensive use of plank paths to walk on. I am in love with paths and trails of all types. It is fun sometimes to roam freely but I prefer a sense of direction and destination that a path brings. In our own gardens I have always constructed paths, often positioning those first as the bone structure around which plants will be positioned.
Searching for the old cabin site I walk up the mountain creek, there isn’t really a path so I am free-wheeling now. I find it easily with no leaves on the trees although it surprising how thin trunks accumulate to disguise. I differentiate to see the bark-colored stone through the stone colored trees. You would have to look back through time to really see this cabin. All that’s left is the stone-built chimney stack and an observable one-room footprint from which timbers once rose. Probably a home to snakes now so I tread carefully even in winter. I don’t want to disturb a brumating rattler, for his sake and mine.
The related picture for this essay is called “Two Rabbits, Two Snakes and a Puma”. I didn’t see anything but birds on today’s walk, but snakes and rabbits are common outside of winter. And my wife and I did once see a Puma on the lower section of our house grounds!