Let us remember with humility the loneliness of being man in a universe we do not understand and the vulnerability of the human condition. The animals could do very well without us, but we cannot do without them.
Gerald Carson
November 9, 2022 - out on a limb
Hiking Alone in the Woods
(or - 6 Stops on Pokagon State Park’s Hell’s Point Challenge Hike)
#! Woodpecker hammered
in the dead wood
searching for bugs,
#2 Chipmunk shuffled
through the leaves,
chittering,
#3 Squirrel scrambled noisily
up a tree
stopping on a high branch
to eat,
#4 Ailing raccoon-
too ill to run away,
lay still on a log
eyeing me warily,
#5 Crow flew past,
pausing in the sweet gum
calling and drawing
my eye,
#6 Dragonfly
landed lightly on my shoulder.
and my lonely hike
was over.
November 9, 2022 - Something is wrong
The hike I went on was called “Hell’s Point Challenge”. It’s an 8+ mile hike through Pokagon State Park in Indiana. Along the way, you’re supposed to take a picture of each of 6 various sights in the park, a bridge, a spring, a lake, a wetland view, the dams and Hell’s Point itself. I did all that, but I was really thinking about all the animals i encountered on the hike, and how they make me feel connected to a place even more than the sights.
November 9, 2022 - Crow in Sweet Gum Tree
November 9, 2022 - Red Dragon
Couldn’t resist one last picture of a squirrel…it was so healthy and curious and literally standing up and looking right at me.
November 9, 2022 - A squirrel giving me a questioning look
November 6, 2022 - A lost goat stands precariously on a retaining wall over the collapsing bluff
November 6, 2022. A little black goat escaped from his owner and ended up over four miles from home, choosing a broken stairway and a collapsing retaining wall as her temporary shelter. Here she is standing on a wooden beam on the edge of the bluff. It doesn’t look so steep from this image, but the drop off from where she’s standing is significant. In the picture below, you can see that even she is wary of going straight down.
November 6, 2022 - Looking down at the bluff
November 6, 2022 - Safe and warm
I found the owner by using a couple of community groups on Facebook, but even he wasn’t sure how to retrieve her from the bluff. My neighbors and I, and the owner and a few of his friends all worked together to eventually steer her to a set of good stairs where we managed block her from the top and bottom and get a leash over her head, wrap her in a blanket and carry her to safety. I realized how much we all felt the need to save this sweet animal. How much it meant to us to get her back to her owner who was really upset over losing her. I love my neighbors for all the effort they put into this; but it makes me realize that the quote at the beginning of this post is really true. We need animals more than they need us.
I’m on the road now, and this is a somewhat hurried post; but the experience of “rescuing” the goat is what got me thinking about all of the animals I see and hear while I’m out hiking - not just the landscape views. I would really be a lonely hike in the woods without the other creatures.