Dear reader, society dictates I must conduct myself with a certain degree of civility. I smile and exchange pleasantries. I fold laundry, moisturize, and return library books (except for this one time when it was a really good book). I brush my teeth, stop at red lights, wait my turn, talk about the weather. I sit in music recitals and clap when the time is right. I attend church, place my napkin in my lap, and lock the doors at night.
For the most part I feel it. Sometimes I phone it in, but generally it's for real.
But I also feel this: my wild side.
Do you have a place you can go to be wild and free?
For me it can be almost any place, but the desert is best of all. Sometimes I feel a million miles away out there, it is so vast. I close my eyes and tilt my face to the sun. I stretch. I breathe. I take a few steps. My head is feeling better already.
This morning I found a little green bug. He was hiding in a cloudburst of yellow wildflowers and I decided I couldn't affort another fiasco like the recent missed opportunity of catching the midnight blue bee, so I plucked him off his bloom and deposited him in my skirt pocket. I cringed for the next forty minutes, picturing him bouncing around in my spandex, but I was still so chagrined about not catching that bee.
The tadpoles continue to hang out at the creek--a tight knit group of like, four. I can't tell if they're growing or what, they seem to be in no rush. I'm beginning to suspect some degree of juvenile delinquency there.
And the butterflies! I ran through a cloud of Painted Ladies and thought I was in fairy land.
The cairns are as strange and mesmerizing as ever. They are always changing, making my path both familiar and filled with discovery at once. They appear and disappear, arrange and rearrange. Do you believe in the ancient Norseman, dear reader? Do such things make you wonder?
As my run drew to a close, I noticed a bird of prey circling overhead. He was so close I could see the dark and tawny markings of his wing feathers. His scream pierced the air and I stiffened. Was he a trained falcon from the Middle Ages, warning me of danger ahead? I held out my arm like a waiter in case this was the luckiest day of my life, but no dice.
He wasn't buying it.
When I got back to my car, I grabbed my camera and fished the bug from my pocket. He was remarkably chipper considering his ordeal, though not about to exchange best friend lockets with me anytime soon. Still, he graciously posed for these pictures and I marveled at his coloring and wished I could keep him.
But he's a wild thing at heart and there's no changing that.
Nor should one try.
There's only acceptance and fitting moments of civility in between.