Sight Lines

In the woods north of the house, more than a mile into deep woods, virtually lost but with a fair sense of direction, I find something I've never actually seen before, but have read about. It can only be a red squirrel midden. Other squirrels, the eastern gray, the fox squirrel, all bury their nuts, or store them in a convenient tree; red squirrels just make a pile, and this one is 12 feet long, 6 feet wide and nearly a foot deep. Other critters must steal large amounts, but like that ice pile Ted Taylor built to cool a building at Princeton University (Ice Pond, in Table Of Contents, John McPhee): if the pile is large enough, it doesn't matter if you lose some. On the way home, following my nose, I stopped at a stump, cleared the leaf litter away, to make an ashtray, sat and rolled a smoke; there was a gray squirrel, apparently eating poplar buds not fifty feet away. This whole forest is damaged by two severe ice storms in the last 7 years, and I get to view that most embarrassing moment for a squirrel, a fall. Moving from tree to tree, as they do with great grace, he leapt to a Chestnut Oak and the branch snapped, he sprung off, backwards, and like a cat, landed safely on his feet. I'd never seen that before, either. Sight lines change with the season, a month from now I won't be able to see 50 feet. A minor epiphany at the graveyard. Clearly, a flock of wild turkeys had moved through. One of the great natural scenes and sounds, if you can be a fly on the ceiling; and I have been privy, several times, by dint of living in the woods, is watching and hearing a congregation of turkeys moving through. They are thorough, they are wonderfully noisy, the scratching; examine their feet, consider their agenda. I used to shoot one, occasionally, because they are so good to eat, but I probably never will again. That was the revelation, I'm done with killing, I know where my meat comes from. Though I aspired to physical labor, I ended up reading Thoreau. I'm not sure he'd approve. I'm complexly involved with this reading of him, I haven't worked out the details, his relationship with Emerson, dancing at parties, I don't know what to think. Dover did a reprint of the journals in two volumes on onion skin, the second volume is where you should focus your attention, this is a person finding their voice, Emily in her garret, Whitman walking the streets of Brooklyn. I signed for that thing, where you could pretend to know less than you do, and it didn't work, I was left, exposed. Listen, failure is a good thing because it hones the senses. The stick trees disappear as a matter of course, then it's spring, then it's summer. What you see.