It was warm today. I will be sad when the snow begins to melt. It has told me so many stories. Today I found what I think are cougar tracks. They are much bigger than the lynx or bobcat tracks, and are so different from a dog’s footprint. Cats walk light in the snow and have rounded pads that don’t sink in deep. I was excited to find them and followed until they, poof… Just disappeared! Jack and I explored deep in the canyon and found some caves. I thought it would be exciting to explore them…until I remembered the cougar tracks. I decided to leave it for another day.
It was an event filled animal day.
The sun rose and the ravens landed on the roof just like they do every morning, thunk, and then a swoop of their heavy wings and they took flight over the canyon.
I heard cows this afternoon… New Mexico is a fence-out State. If you don’t want beasties wandering on your property you have to fence them out, otherwise you can wake up in the morning to a herd of cattle. So today I heard cows. I put on my boots and ran outside. I could hear them mooing plaintively down in the canyon. When I got to the edge of the cliff I realized that they were up on a ridge above the canyon. One, two, three, four different cow voices stuck somewhere in the snow. Then far off in the distance I heard an insistent truck horn, way up, maybe 5 miles away. I realized after a while that this belonged to the cattle men trying to give these four cows a noise to orient on to find their way back to the feeding ground. Everywhere you go on the roads there are cattle guards designed to stop the cattle from crossing. However, the cows aren’t stupid. They walk around the cattle guards and cross wherever they damn well feel like crossing. There are more cows in New Mexico than people.
Four elk passed in front of us about 20 feet away. They are as big as refrigerators. They paid no attention to us.
And then, as we were walking, Jack stopped all of a sudden, buried his head in 4 inches of snow and frantically started sniffing. He knew he had found something great. Well, he did, but as I watched, a very large Jack Rabbit appeared and crossed about two inches in front of Jacks face. He never saw the rabbit as it bounced away. He was too busy sniffing in the snow.
So these are my lessons:
The sun always rises.
Sometimes the path that is right in front of us can disappear, just like that!
Sometimes we are too busy moaning instead of listening for those who will show us the way.
Sometimes we are invisible to those who have bigger energy.
Sometimes we can’t see what is standing right in front of us, even if it jumps, because we simply won’t look up.