While on an evening hike recently in the west Mayacamas
hills of the
Napa Valley,
the
"wine country"
in California where I live, I spotted something about fifty yards off
to the east. As it caught my eye, it struck me that it must be
something unusual, given I didn't recognize what it was ie I had no
idea what it was I was looking at. Literally. The only thing I knew
about it was that if it were garbage, my
mind
was already made up to
walk
over to it and retrieve it and remove it from the park.
One of the things to which I'm committed when I hike is
picking up garbage from the
trails
and taking it out to the bins placed expressly for that purpose at the
park gates (and I'll spare y'all my personal, well-articulated
opinions
of all those nice people who use hiking trails as their private garbage
dumps). As I
walkedcloser
to whatever it was, now about twenty yards away, I still couldn't
distinguish if it was garbage or not. "It could be
garbage" I mused, "Hmmm ... it may be garbage",
closer
and
closer,
still maybe garbage ... and yet still maybe not ... until I had
walked
right up to it, closing the gap between us to mere feet, and got a
clearer look.
There are those times when you get near to something which from a
distance is unidentifiable, and then once you're
up close,
you see it's actually something quite commonplace, something ordinary.
Well ... this time definitely wasn't one of those
occasions. What it was, was a
little
snake throttling a large hawk
("Saywhut? ..." is what I gasped to myself, astonished).
Definitely not commonplace. Certainly not ordinary. Not exactly
something you see every day. It was a completely impossible encounter
between the two of them, a
David
and Goliath fight to the
death,
a wrestling match in which the gallant, battered underdog is pulling
off a stunning upset.
I have no idea what action and events preceded this
scenario ie what happened which led up to it. I can only imagine. My
guess is the hawk saw an easy
breakfast
in the snake, and got the surprise of its life (literally) when the
snake fought back ... and won (indeed it was surely the
last surprise the hawk would ever get in its life).
Standing there, it was clear to me the hawk was breathing its last few
breaths. Then, arguably because I'm a good
guy,
the
thought
crossed my
mind
to step in and rescue the hawk by unbraiding the snake
from its neck and thorax. Yes that
thought
did cross my
mind
... and immediately afterwards it was outgunned by another
thought
which intoned
"Walk on
Laurence, and leave
nature
be" - which after a few minutes I did, but not before bowing
to the
privilege
of having witnessed this epic battle at exactly this very moment, a
showing
about which the rich folk lore of our native American
Comanche people surely has something profound to
say.
As I turned and
walked away,
the dithering
thoughts
restarted. "Rescue? Or not? Rescue? Or not?". It was sixty yards down
the trail where I abruptly turned and
walked
back, the
thought
now trending was "Maybe I should rescue the hawk" (the
origin and skew of such well-intentioned
thinking
merit an entire essay). Yet once back at the battleground, I again
heard the firmly assured
"Walk on
Laurence, and leave
nature
be.". It's what I finally elected to do. By a simple twist of fate, it
could have been the snake to which my
thoughts
of rescue were directed. That would have been a second possible option.
This time they were directed toward the hawk.
But what got me finally was
"Walk on,
and leave
nature
be", the third possible option - maybe not the right
option (and I don't know what the right option is in a situation like
this) but it's an option nonetheless, the option I took, the option I'm
responsible for having taken. I left that
little
snake wrapped around his much larger adversary, not interfering in
their world, merely observing it, sympathetic to the plight of the
hawk, yet marveling at that
little
snake's against-all-oddsvictory over it.
