68 ~ Oh, love of life!
Wisconsin’s regular trout season opened last Saturday - its traditional ‘first Saturday in May’ opener (a catch-and-release only season has been open since early January, but doesn’t hold much interest for me). I didn’t have a lot of time to fish on the weekend, stayed close to home, and it was a pretty quiet opener for me.
The last few weeks, while waiting for Wisconsin’s season to open, I’ve been slipping west across the big river border to Iowa, where the trout season never closes (“in the Big Rock Candy Mountains…”), and doing pretty well. Last week Monday, early in the morning, I caught this beautiful matched pair of a foot-long rainbow (top) and foot-long brown trout (and some smaller ones). Cruising around the trouty backroads of the Iowa Driftless, I also stumbled upon a winery & tasting room (open on Monday morning!) and a beautiful Zen monastery, where I gifted the abbot with some fresh trout.
Shortly after my return from Iowa last week, under one of the first warm days of the year, I had a few friends over for grilled venison brats and smoked trout, including farm neighbors Chad & Nadia https://farmfreshatlas.org/view/ducks-in-a-row-family-farm), and their beautiful kids Charlie, age 5 and Beatrix (aka, Bea), going on three.
Bea LOVES my hens (“Chickas!” in her lingo), in addition to nearly all living things. At some point she wandered down to where the hens were foraging, and trundled back hugging one of the loves of her life, almost as big as her! And it would seem that like is attracted to like – “Princess” is the particular hen she gathered up for an extended hug (and not to worry - my hens are very chill; I think Princess rather liked it).
The unfettered love of this girl for a breathing, heart-beating hen was inspirational. It made my week – and maybe my year. She’s still immersed in what many of us must now labor to remember – spontaneous love and wonder for the world, and for life in its many forms. As another friend (older like me) wrote in an email recently: “How can I ever pay close enough attention to life while I'm in the way?” That’s not a question Bea had to ask. There was no separation between her and Princess, nothing Bea had put, or forgotten, between them.
Granted, it can be trite to equate a child’s innocence with high altitude wisdom. On the flip side, wisdom doesn’t automatically come with age. The world has its share of bitter or fearful old folks. As we journey in life, most of us have to work at, stay alert for, and/or be mentored into whatever wisdom we can collect. And one of my recent teachers was Bea.
Her love of the hens, and her desire to hold them, reminded me of my love for trout, and morels, and the first wild love of my life, hawks (I became a falconer in my teens). Just looking at the beautiful hens wasn’t enough for Bea, she needed to pick one up and bond with it, forge a relationship with it. Similarly for me, exclusive catch & release trout fishing holds little attraction, and when I was a kid, just looking at hawks, beautiful as they are, wasn’t enough – what I yearned for was to have one, to be in relationship with one. The same thing Bea feels for the “chickas”.
Granted, birdwatchers, for example, get a lot of satisfaction from just looking at birds. But most also keep a count and list of the species and or/individuals they see. ‘Ticking’ a bird is also a form of possession. The bird is now on someone’s list, the way a hawk is on my fist.
This is tricky ground, since mere possessiveness without relationship can be problematic. I’m reminded of something a mentor, Martín Prechtel, noted about the difference between seduction and courtship. “Seduction”, he said, “is is getting what you want. Courtship is seeing the other person and giving them what they want.” One of these is simply taking, the other is cultivating a relationship.
And so I try to be in relationship with every trout, morel and deer I take, and every maple tree I tap. This is where both courting and then gratitude come in, as my parts in our exchange.
Just as Bea’s kiss of Princess is a kiss of gratitude, and love of life.
In other news, the maple syrup season wrapped up with about 4 gallons produced, the birches took over and have been flowing for about ten days now, and I’m still waiting for the first morel. Maybe some morels will pop with the hot weather this week (2022 seems to have dispensed with spring and jumped straight from winter to summer!). The garden is also underway: the garlic is reaching toward the sky, the first asparagus finally poked up its nose, and parsnips and peas and the first wave of carrots and beets are planted. Welcome to May, the full time (or rather, ‘full-time’!).
Hawk and eagle updates:
The weak adult Red-tailed Hawk I picked a few weeks ago and euthanized (see post #66) has tested negative for avian influenza. At the bald eagle nest, a few days ago I could see at least one and maybe two wobbly, downy heads on the nest.
One thing dies, and others live and carry on.
Wisdom begins in wonder.
-Socrates