A Hundred Ways to Tell the Story
A lone turkey is strutting in my driveway, making a fool of himself before only me. No other turkeys are around, which is odd because wild turkeys are like rodents in my neck of the woods—a ubiquitous nuisance. But he is in full-fan, gobbling gallantly to no poultry in particular.
My dog has gone to investigate. The thing you should know about my dog is that she is a “bird dog” without a lick of ill intent in her lithe body. She will point, maybe chase, but never for more than fun and certainly not for catching. Mostly she chases shadows on the ground, which is endearing and embarrassing. Also butterflies. Endearing.
The turkey has moved off into the woods now, and Scout has come back to the porch for her praise. “Good dog. That turkey was so scared”. He is still gobbling and I wonder if I have read him wrong. Maybe he’s not trying to impress. Maybe he’s lost something. He is now haunting the woods around our house in a wild, ancient tale that I have reinvented for him, because I can. I can tell this story any way I like.
Last night the resident owl in our woods sounded as though he had landed on our third story deck to gack up a wood rat that had lodged horizontally in his throat, right outside our bedroom window. Have you ever thrown back a handful of vitamins, the volume and variety of which requires a Pill Suitcase, only to realize you left your water in another room? And you gack. And you’re a little scared and unsure if you should continue to gack, or attempt a whole-hearted swallow? That was Hooten the Owl last night.
I was in that deep-space-place of falling asleep (such a suitable phrase—falling asleep) when I heard the retching of the owl. I was floating heavy through the atmosphere of almost-a-dream, the way you think to yourself I must be dreaming because that was a really weird and dreamlike thought I was having but here I am, analyzing it, so I guess I’m awake? when I heard him. My eyes were dried up in their sockets (am I dehydrated?) and I am sorry now but I was too heavy with sleep—a sleep I was thankful to be drifting into after a very stressful conversation a few hours before bed—to get up and look for him out the window. Too tired. Eyes sealed shut.
My goal is to get him on camera again. I stood face to flattened face with him last summer, in broad daylight in front of God and everybody. I filmed and photographed him, his beady marbled eyes unbothered but very bothersome. Birds eat meat. I am meat. I got so close I could have touched him and the inverse of that thought is he could have embedded his talons into my skull but I was too entranced to think that, in the moment. I only thought about it later, when my daughter told me about this story. Shudder.
He is there every night. Sometimes I hear him during the day, asking Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?1 Part of me wants to dangle a mouse by its tail over the rail of our deck and feel the rush of a wild thing swooping into my domesticity, which I chalk up to the influence of reading H is for Hawk. This is what books do, even to adults. This is what wildness does to even very domesticated adults.
I think I want to capture the wild but I find myself only strutting when nobody’s around, chasing butterflies, a fairy tale in my head, a figment, a thought to analyze. What I mean is: I live very close to the earth with my physical body, but I live far above it in my spirit. What that means is: I am anchored but light. Embarrassed and endeared to embarrassing creatures.
I think everything I write is trying to define what I mean and I hope I never quite get there.
If this desire for wild things is The Problem, I’m going to give you The Solution that is correct 99 out of 100 times in every Sunday school class the western world over:
Jesus is the answer to the soul’s wild longing.
Anchored and Light, on the earth and above it all. Powerful in a way that draws you closer and scares you and then draws you closer still. A shadow on the ground you will never catch. Misunderstood.
You have told His story a hundred different ways and I hope you keep trying.
Thank you Merlin app, for that gem of a description of the Barred Owl’s call.
Oh my friend, reading your essays is like watching someone at a jewelry store gather seven disparate sparkling jewels and stringing them together in one lovely strand, all to catch the light.