This afternoon, in a moment of birds cheeping while the rain pitter pattered, a piercing animal scream and a chorus of coyotes yipping, shocked me into full alert. The brain said one thing but my instincts another. One knows not to mess with nature, but the scream was too much. I ran faster than I even knew that I could, across the road and up the bluff, but I was too late. I don’t know what the creature was, and though I could make up a million stories of possibilities, my feelings were on fire and they were all I could be with. Life is so precious, for every creature, including coyotes. I stood for a moment and watched, and then the nervous eyes of the hungry hunters told me to walk away. And so I did.
It started to pour, just for a few seconds, what a gift.