1905

 Every evening when I am at The Ranch, I try to take a walk.  I need the exercise of course, and it is a good practice to walk about and get a physical sense of how the land is "doing".  This particular evening, I stopped at 1905 and just took everything in.  I do not know why this particular time or place - just as often I do not stop but keep walking - but this particular evening demanded it of me.

Conveniently I had a seating location - the older pine logs are from the power line cutting 5 or 6 years ago; the oak is from Winterfall across what constitutes the "official" driveway that goes to The Ranch (if you read a county map), ignoring the fact that the road we all use has been used in the fashion for 60 years or more.  Although not on our property, when The Cowboy cleaned it up, he decided as he did the work, he would get the benefit of it.  I agreed of course; after all no-one comes up that far on the road, so who else was going to do it?  Still, there is plenty left on the ground at the site to slowly rot and become part of the cycle.

Off in the distance I can hear the turkeys calling to each other.  It is the high season for mating right now, and the one or two resident flocks of turkeys slowly make their way around the Ranch now, males bronzed and fiery red, puffing out their feathers and looking just like the pictures of a turkey at Thanksgiving.  I do not remember seeing them when I was young:  were they not here, or did I simply not go out enough to see them. And between the battle-cries gobbling of the males, I hear a more plaintive sound:  a male who has been driven off or a female who has been gotten too close to and spurred off.  Around me in the forest, I can pick out three to four other different bird songs as they settle into their places and territories for the evening.  I can see none of them, but their cries are very different.

The wind is still right now, so the turkeys and birds are clear.  It is a bit too early for the evening frog chorus yet and the horses eating away at the Spring grass cannot be heard above the bird song - although I suddenly hear their clumping as they start down to the end of the Lower Meadow. 

If I strain my ears, I can just make out the sounds of automobiles - or not, if I choose not to strain.  I also hear the sounds of a jetliner over head.  This is on one of the main routes and I am sure I directly flown over here many times, although I always seem to be on the wrong side of the plane to see The Ranch.

As I look down the path I have come and then get up to start walking back before it becomes too dark, the sounds of single bees whirr by my ears, last foragers on their way back to the hive with one more load of nectar or pollen or perhaps the location in their head of where the next one will be found.  They accompany me (I am on the road back, so perhaps this is the expressway for them) as I walk by the Lower Meadow and the pond where the frogs are undoubtedly preparing for their evening chorus.  As I begin to scale the hill back to the house, I start to hear dogs from around the neighborhood beginning to sound.  It is time for the evening bark perhaps, that mythical story made real in 101 Dalmatians but perhaps more of an actual thing that we humans can know.

In his poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", W.B. Yeats referred to peace as coming "dropping slow".  There are times when time itself comes dropping slow as well; I need only make the space for it to happen.