I wrote this during the last winter of Mr. Simply's life, before we knew:
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
-From "The Summer Day", by Mary Oliver
What I planned to do, I have mostly already done. They may not have
always, or even mostly, been the right ones, but I have made plenty of
decisions: I once bought a convertible sports car. I moved to Atlanta,
married, went to Outward Bound school, became a therapist, bought a
house, started my own practice (now there was a leap of faith), adopted a
child. I've accepted a dog as a gift, sight unseen, and loved her for a
decade and a half. I've bought a dog, bred and raised two more, and
adopted another one. I've rescued a cat and re-homed two parrots. And I
have done a fair job with most of these things. Not great jobs, but I
haven't, I hope, made complete hashes of any of them.
Some of the
most wild and precious things about my life weren't planned at all.
I've slept outside and listened to a little island deer call its mother,
and heard her reply; that same night I heard an owl hoot from a tree
directly over my tent. I've paddled the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, and
heard the loons calling there. I've watched an eagle snatch a fish out
of a lake in the Great North Woods -- right in front of me, in a place
so quiet, so wild that I heard his wings beating long before I ever saw
him. I've lain in my tent at night with Daisy and listened to foxes
bark, and sat on my sister's back porch and listened to the
Whippoorwills calling in the woods behind her pasture.
I've
smoked dope, drunk too much, and sobered up. I've ridden horseback,
traveled the world, swum, and hiked -- until I thought I would die of
heat stroke, until my leg blistered under my brace, until I crossed
trails with a timber wolf. I've been lost in the woods and come upon
fields of flowers with clouds of butterflies. I've watched a puppy chase
a butterfly. I have eaten pancakes made over a camp-fire with blackberries picked from
beside the trail (thanks to Mom for that one). I have birded and taken
photographs, and tried to write. I can identify 223 birds by sight, and
some by sound. I have seen Woodcocks in their courting flights and heard
them peent. I have read some of the most wonderful books! I've laughed
out loud in public over passages from
A Prayer for Owen Meany, and tried
to hide the tears streaming down my cheeks while I read
The Art of
Racing in the Rain.
I have sat through close to 50,000
psychotherapy sessions, and at that I think I have been pretty good. I
can hypnotize people. I may now have only a couple of hundred sessions left in me.
Many things I'd hoped to do, I never will. I will not walk the AT
(certainly not with Mr. Simply's dad), ever take Mr. Simply to Europe, or learn to fly.
It is too late for that.
Instead, I will watch the birds slipping
around on the ice, and if careful observation is a prayer, then I will
prayerfully discover that what I thought was one Yellow-rumped Warbler
is in fact two distinct, recognizable individuals. I will praise Mr. Simply for shoveling the drive today because it makes him feel useful, which he
in fact is not much any more. I will finish Cheryl Strayed's
Wild,
which is what started this whole meditation, sip hot cocoa with whipped
cream. I will stay in touch with friends and family, keep counting
birds, and make my yard a better place for wildlife.
And above all I will remember this: All life, even an old, tired, dried-up life, is still wild and precious.
Simply,
