Psychedelic Parrots and Confessions of a Nature Freak

Greetings from Domelandia,

The Viking and I were sitting in the airport recently reading a NY Times article about how many people, especially city dwellers, have no connection to the natural world. They don't really know (or care) where their food comes from, for example, or what gets sprayed on it while it's growing or right before they sink their teeth into it.

The extent of this disconnection amazes me. Strawberry Blonde daughter has a big garden and chickens. She is a generous woman and shares produce and eggs with people she knows. Her chickens lay green, blue, and tan-colored eggs. They eat table scraps and bugs and scratch around in the dirt. They live the way chickens were meant to live. The shells of the eggs are hard to crack, and the yolks are a deep yellow-orange with a rich, delicious flavor. She was dismayed to learn that one friend had thrown the eggs away because they weren't white and because they were hard to crack.

Besides trying to grow some clean food, I think the main reason we're here is because we need to feel connected to the wild world. I feel odd and out of sorts if I can't spend some time outside every day. Being outside makes me feel peaceful and centered. Maybe because the sky is huge. Trees, not buildings, crowd the landscape. The noises we hear come mostly from birds in the daytime and coyotes at night. There are millions of small lives being lived in each moment of every day. We're surrounded by Beauty. We are tuned in to the music of the spheres.

Before we came to the land, the Viking and I were frustrated city kids. Both of us had fathers whose lives had taken them far away from their farms. They talked to us about how wonderful life is in the country, how satisfying it is to provide food for one's family, how peaceful life can be away from the city. We dreamed of this life separately as children and then the stars aligned themselves so we could dream our life together. This was good, because neither of us would have been satisfied with suburbia. I think God has his quota of normal people, and then there's us.

We've learned how to live in relative harmony with Nature. I quit being afraid of bugs and spiders. It doesn't scare me when hummingbirds fly right up to my face to get a closer look at me. I enjoy getting to see them up close. From the beginning, we decided not to kill beneficial snakes (they eat rats and mice), though one bullsnake did a thoroughly believable imitation of a rattlesnake, and the Viking bought the act and killed it. (We had little kids, for gosh sakes)! We were both chagrined to find that we'd killed a 'good' snake. I sat down and cried. A few years back, the Viking decided that even rattlesnakes deserve to live. They get relocated far away from the house, because now we have grandkids, for gosh sakes.

Best of all, sometimes we get to catch glimpses of the Mystery. There is a pond on our place that holds runoff water, but for many months there is no water in it. Before the monsoons start in summer, the pond is baked dry. After the first pounding thunderstorm, the water seeps down into the dirt and the Spadefoot toads wake up. They start singing and swimming around in the muddy water and begin the happy job of making tadpoles. As the pond shrinks away in Autumn, the toads bury themselves and wait until it's time to start it all over again.

One of my favorite things is bird watching. I recognize most of the birds that come to our feeders, and look in the bird book to identify the ones I don't. I can identify some birds by their songs alone. I missed seeing the Evening Grosbeaks for a couple of years until my friend and fellow nature freak reminded me that some birds prefer to eat from perches and some like to eat their seeds on a flat spot. These Grosbeaks are one of my favorites and I nicknamed them The Psychedelic Parrots because they have large, fluorescent yellow-green bodies. You wouldn't believe a bird could look like that unless you could see it for yourself.

In true nature freak fashion, when they came back, it made my day.

Neighbors

Greetings from Domelandia,

I live in a little valley in Southern Colorado down by the New Mexico border. We've been here 30-odd years, with the exception of a year spent back east while my husband and I worked to pay off the hospital bill for the birth of our first child. We also took a sabbatical in 2000 to see if we could find a better place to live, but ended up back here. When we finally got home from that trip, I was so happy to be home I fell to my knees and kissed the ground.

Sometimes I tell people how long we've been here and they say, "Oh, do you like it?" It cracks me up every time.

We raised two amazing daughters up here in the foothills. At first we had no running water, no electricity, no telephone. It was hard sometimes, but the payback was being able to live in the middle of nowhere. Who needed TV when the wild world hummed with the music of LIFE, right outside our door?

My husband the Viking planted us smack dab in the middle of this little mile-long canyon. The first part of our 'driveway' down at the county road crossed a stream and this crossing was steep, narrow, and dangerously slippery when wet. The Viking said, "Keeps out the riff-raff." Only our most determined friends would dare that crossing, even in fine weather. It wasn't a problem for us, at least in the beginning, because we didn't have a vehicle. We caught rides to town with one of the pioneers who live further up the road. It worked for us.

We didn't have neighbors until some time ago when the land that borders the county road was sold and the first people moved in. They were determined to tell all of us The Right Way to Live. They had opinions about everything and expressed them louder than anyone else. After a few winters, they moved on. We'd gotten used to the reality of having neighbors down there, and so we welcomed the new ones that followed. The Viking even helped them with some building projects.

We had the whole valley to ourselves, acres and acres of unfenced wilderness. Our children rode their horses all over the canyon, following the paths of elk and deer. Every place had a name--Raven Rock, the Meadow of Morning, Serendipity Trail. I can still see our girls, red and golden hair loose and streaming behind them, pounding up to the barn after a morning in the hills. They rode bareback and were patently fearless.

An elderly couple bought the 80 acres behind us. We were a little surprised, but not upset. They drove a small travel trailer back to the end of the canyon and visited only in the summertime. They were friendly and considerate. They brought us little gifts, including some iris corms that I planted alongside the path to the well. The neighbors made little hitching posts near their trailer so our girls could tie up their ponies when they visited. One day they asked us if we would mind if there was a gas well on their property. And would we mind having a nice new road with big trucks going back and forth in front of our house all day? We were horrified. "We don't see our place as an investment," we said. "This is our home." And for some reason, maybe because they were people who understood that money isn't everything, they declined the offer from the gas exploration company. I am forever grateful to those two sweet souls. When the iris bloom each May, I think of them and send prayers to Heaven, where they most assuredly reside.

As the years went by, we got running water, solar electricity, a good road, a satellite dish, a couple of cars. We even bought a little parcel of land to keep it safe from development.

A few years ago the land at the end of the canyon was sold, and sold again. We had an opportunity to buy it, but by then we were saving money for college tuition. (Plus if you buy all the land that touches yours, it just never ends). The most recent owners are from the Big City. They bought the land as an investment and as a possible place to live when they retire. We hardly saw them until a couple of years ago when they started spending time on the property in the summertime. They told us that their intention was to allow the gas exploration company to put a well on their place. This time there was nothing we could do to prevent it. Thank goodness the road to the well won't go through our place, and that makes it way more tolerable, but we struggled with these changes anyway.

I don't recall the Viking and me formally discussing it, but at some point we became reconciled to the fact that we'll be getting full-time neighbors. We even said when they move down here for good, we want to have a good relationship with the new folks. I'm glad we had some time to get used to the idea, because the other evening, our new neighbor stopped by for a visit. He wanted to talk. He said, "Where I live is tame, boring. Down here is wild." He asked surprising questions: "What have you given to the land? What has the land given you?" He wanted to know how he could be a good neighbor. There was more to him than I thought.

He and his wife will do just fine down here in the wild world, with the help of some good neighbors.