I pay attention. I just do. I love the world around me. Though, this paying attention could come from more years in college than I care to admit. I majored in the natural sciences. I loved the information. Yet, I wanted to major in English. However, my advising prof strongly suggested I say in the sciences – but I was so unhappy. I should have changed schools, but again, the same adviser wanted me to stay. I know realize that the department got more money for having me there…not me in specific but generally. The more students in classes, the more income for the department. My adviser was a very intelligent woman and I could never stand up to her. The education I got was fine….mostly I learned a lot of really interesting things. How practical was it? well, I am going to say not so much. I think it makes me interesting at cocktail parties and could have served me well if I weren’t so intrigued by everything else around me…so intrigued that I would have rather been writing and crafting these visions into something to share. As it is, I still haven’t settled on a career. I work in the natural resource field. It’s fine, but I get bored with paperwork after a while and feel the need for adventure, for letting my brain be creative. So, from time to time grant writing fills that void…but my dreaming is bigger than that. At some point I will take the leap…it’s coming, at least it is in the planning stages.
But here I am, I drive 90 miles round trip a day to an office that I thought I would only be working in for about 2, maybe 3 months at the most. But here we are 5 months later, though I think it will come to an end in a month or two as I hope they will have hired their forever project manager. I am not as excited or productive as I used to be and that isn’t fair to me or to the office.
In this 90 miles I typically listen to books on my iPod. There isn’t much traffic, sometimes I pass a combine or hay baler, the occasional road cyclist, dangerous gazing tourists that don’t realize other people use the same road for more than sight seeing – though the sights are beautiful, but do everyone a favor, pull over for the gazing, it is much safer for everyone involved – oh, and look both ways before you decide to run across the road.
Today on the way to work, I passed a bailer and a combine, as well as a motorcyclist tourist that was driving about 40 the whole way – he signaled for me to pass on a solid line – not something I would normally do but I could see and was running about an hour later than normal because for some reason I can’t actually seem to get enough sleep or I am tired all the time regardless of how much sleep. About 2 miles after I passed the combine, I passed a freshly bailed alfalfa field, however there was something strange….four white legs straight up in the air. Yep, a dead cow. Cows can get too much of a good thing and in this case it probably chowed down all night and then foundered with no one around to help…of which you can completely save the life of a cow in this situation by sticking it in one of the four stomach chambers, but I forget which exactly. Once you make the cut, the trapped gas will be released. I hear it is pretty smelly business, but it saves the life of the cow and about $2000 or so for the farmer.
Yesterday on my way home from work, at the stop sign where the small road meets the main highway, and I where I make my turn for the last 31 mile drive home, I saw a little party of three skunks. I was stopped and here they come. I wanted to jump out and take a photo…but of course, where is the camera when you need it? Home! I watched them for a moment, of course as I checked the rear-view mirror for cars – I don’t want to be the gazing tourist. As the three little skunks rambled off into the bushes, I made my left turn onto the highway.
The day before yesterday I drove to Bend, OR to have one of the beasts groomed and to wash the other myself at the self wash because they got into something insanely smelly and well, I couldn’t stand the smell of either of them and one was getting so matted from lack of grooming I was feeling like an abusive parent. On the way home, about 40 miles from my house I saw my favorite creature of the wilds – a coyote. I realize they aren’t a favorite of many but I love them. I love seeing them. They are beautiful and smart and mostly down right crafty. This coyote was small, a youngen, not sure how young, perhaps just a year. He was running across the road from the left to the right and he was carrying something. I so badly wanted to get closer to see what it was….but I slowed a little when I first saw him – mostly out of awe and of course because I don’t want to kill anything, let alone my favorite creature of wildlife. But as he started up the bank on the right side I saw it – he was carrying the front half, that is the front two legs, shoulders and head of a deer fawn. Just as I saw it, he dropped it! Oh! come back little guy. It’s okay…dang. I do hope he got it, a find like that isn’t easy to come by, especially small enough that he could carry it all the way back to his den.
And now here I sit in my office, my education taught me about observation of wildlife and fishes and the world around me. So sitting here isn’t something I do easily.
