A Natural Companion

“Now through the white orchard my little dog romps,

breaking the new snow with wild feet.

Running here running there,

excited, hardly able to stop, he leaps, he spins

until the white snow is written upon

in large, exuberant letters,

a long sentence,

expressing the pleasures of the body in this world.

Oh, I could not have said it better myself.”

(Dog Songs: The Storm (Bear) by Mary Oliver)

During the long months of winter, I enjoy walking my spaniel when twilight hours soften the grey of the day. There is a hush to the darkening world that settles the heart.

Towering pines sway above us as we walk with careful steps across the ice and snow. Deliberate, meditative movements settle the mind. While some people long for sunlight and warmth, I return to life during the quiet times between Christmas and early spring.

On one early February walk, Lucy and I passed by a familiar pine tree, but an unsettling whoosh passed above our heads. In the quiet of the night, I heard a solitary whoo and signaled for Lucy to stop.

The phantom that soared above our heads proved to be a barred owl resting on a sturdy branch in the stately evergreen.

I had never seen an owl in the wild innocence of nature. So very still, the owl peered out from the branch. So very still, Lucy and I stood present in that powerful moment.

After some time, we went quietly on our way. I hoped that the owl would be in the tree, waiting for us upon our return home, but the mystical creature flew out into the night searching for another place to rest, to hunt, to live.

Pulitzer prize winning poet, Mary Oliver writes about her deep connection to nature. She remarks, “The world where the owl is endlessly hungry and endlessly on hunt is the world in which I live too.”

Oliver finds truth in nature and its infinite revelations. It is almost as though her poetic spirit is wrapped up in the silky moss covering the bark of a forest oak. It is almost as though she can see her own image in the silhouette of the elusive owl and hear her own voice in its cry.

Through exacting turn of phrase and insightful metaphor, Mary Oliver lures us into a place that is at once pure yet filled with mystery. A place where the spent hibiscus pod lies beneath a pristine casket of ice.

There is wisdom in the pattern of the seasons and great beauty in the swell of the tide, the falling of autumn leaves, the clarity of a winter’s night.

Some of my favorite moments have occurred during the lashing of rain along the rising water of an Irish strand in December or in a lamb-filled meadow in spring.

Closer to home, the precious hours that I have spent with my dad, sitting in near silence, listening to the spring peepers in late April and the bullfrogs in early June, rest quietly in my heart.

Mary Oliver urges us to explore the natural world with sensitivity, to imagine the texture of the white river birch beneath the soft stroke of our fingers, to live with the lightness of a soaring heron, to share joy with a beloved dog.

Loyalty, fear, forgiveness, wonder, all are present in nature. Epiphanies, great and small, may manifest during a walk in the woods, or even on a well-worn path in one’s own backyard.

During a recent snowstorm, Lucy and I did not venture far beyond our back door. In the heat of August, wildflowers sprout and tomato vines tangle in a raucous rave, but in early January, mounds of snow cover the lively garden beds.

Free from the confines of her harness, Lucy bounced from mound to mound, unhinged, running to her own rhythm. The frosty terrain gleaned with crystalline flakes every bit as bright as the Wolf Moon that shone above us.

I laughed at Lucy’s long-eared snow angels as she rolled back and forth. Inspired by her joy, I found myself chasing after her, laughing and playing like a child, or a happy pup.

Free from worry and misgivings, I relished the sting of the cold and the strength of the wind as it tossed the skeletal trees to and fro with honest power. In these moments of grace, we humans experience a gift without cost, a gift of infinite worth, the purist treasure of all, that of the natural world.