For the animal shall not be measured by man.
In a world older and more complete than ours, they move
finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the
senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices
we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are
not underlings, they are other nations, caught with
ourselves in the net of life and time.

Henry Bestion – The Outermost House

Romeo … the Wolf

https://www.outsideonline.com/culture/books-media/how-one-wolf-charmed-entire-town/

The people of Juneau had mixed feelings about having a wolf hanging around town, playing with their dogs. Why do you think some people enjoyed having the wolf nearby while others wanted it dead?
We have this schizophrenic relationship with wolves. Some people recoil and some people move toward them. I guess it’s a natural fear, since it seems to be somewhere deep in our being—you know, the Big Bad Wolf, the Three Little Pigs, Peter and the Wolf, Dr. Zhivago. Wolves are bad news. That’s the story we have in our heads. But what to do with a social wolf?

This was not the way it was supposed to go between big, wild things and us. Where you get to know an individual, and interact with them on a social level. Where it has no survival benefit for either party, but it’s obviously enjoyable for everyone. I mean, he’d come over to see me once he knew me. And, I mean, I didn’t feed him. And plenty of times, I went out without a dog, and he’d still come over to say hi. He clearly knew individuals. And it’s hard not to call that friendship. I think most people would agree, we can be friends with a dog. But say, well, ‘The wolf was my friend.’ People go, ‘Yeah, sure…’ Well, why not?

That’s what this whole thing was about. The way we relate to the wild. Even people you’d think would know better believed this to be an impossible situation. We’re talking about biologists, wildlife managers. They don’t want that to happen. It’s their worst nightmare. Because they want an animal to remain a faceless resource that can be managed—can be removed, can be shot, can have a radio collar put on, can be studied. They don’t want people to be friends with individual wildlife.

A Wolf Called Romeo Images

Healing resources:

Beauty After Bruises

~
Irene Lyon  – her older youtube videos are really excellent

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Tanya Markul on Instagram, also goes by ThugUnicorn.  Beautiful life-poetry.

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Abramaham-Hicks – countless YouTube videos and many books.  Completely altered my perspectives.

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Books
– You Are The Placebo, Dr Joe Dispenza
– Braiding Sweet Grass, Robin Wall Kimmerer
– The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben
– Mary Oliver … everything she’s written!

~~~ Be Love

This Morning I Watched the Deer
By Mary Oliver, from Why I Wake Early (2004)

This morning I watched the deer
with beautiful lips touching the tips
of the cranberries, setting their hooves down
in the dampness carelessly, isn’t it after all
the carpet of their house, their home, whose roof
is the sky?

Why, then, was I suddenly miserable?

Well, this is nothing much.
This is the heaviness of the body watching the swallows
gliding just under that roof.

This is the wish that the deer would not lift their heads
and leap away, leaving me there alone.

This is the wish to touch their faces, their brown wrists—
to sing some sparkling poem into
the folds of their ears,

then walk with them,
over the hills
and over the hills

and into the impossible trees.

Why I Wake Early – Mary Oliver

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety–

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light–
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
~~

 

Cohabiting with wild animals is tricky.  I figure WE are the invader. Humanity has decimated wildlife habitats.  It becomes a balancing act. Live traps,  making an area inaccessible or undesirable are our methods for dealing with anything we don’t want in certain areas.  To me, every creature except humanity, is attuned with this planet we call home.  They live in balance.  There is an ebb and flow with their existence.  A grace, a purity of spirit.  To make long eye contact with a squirrel or deer or fox or any animal, wild or domestic, is to see a soul that makes mine hunger to merge with that shining light within them.  They are truly authentic, without artifice.  The have humor, sadness, joy,  quirkiness … a vast array of emotions, as we do.

Be Love ~

Repeating this beautiful poem …

Sleeping in the Forest
By: Mary Oliver

I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

~~