Out where the wild things are

The photo is not definitive; it’s a little blurry and out-of-focus, but one can definitely make out a fabulous wild creature, one that I’m convinced was a gray wolf, not the usual, smaller coyotes one sees around here, a wolf simply passing the front of my house, minding its own business. It was an extraordinary few seconds, and then he was gone, into the hollow, into the mists of time, like he was never here, away from me toward a world filled with barbed wire and highways. The wolf and I understand small bits of our journey here, the traveling alone, not really knowing what’s ahead. Maybe I make too much of it.

A couple of nights ago I had an encounter with a smaller wild thing. Driving down my road late one night there was a slight movement from the left and a opossum stepped out onto the gravel, causing me to come to a pleasant stop as she crossed the road, ever so slowly, my xenon lights showing the way as she disappeared into the tall roadside grass.

As I was writing this, three deer just raced across a field in front of my house, like they were being chased. Over the years I’ve taken down most of the fences on my land, especially after untangling a deer from one of my fences on a deep-snow winter’s day. She bleated at me like she was mad, but I think she was just afraid, bounding off through the snow.

There were twin fawns hanging up by the road for a while, but now there is only one, as the other was hit by a vehicle. A neighbor found it … by the smell of the rotting carcass. In the hollow the other day I found the remains of a raccoon, mostly skeletal. I run across this stuff and for reasons I cannot even begin to fathom, I have raccoon skulls hanging on a wall in my garage. I respect those who share this land with me and I want to be reminded of there has always been, and always will be, a constant cycle of life and death that holds true for all who take breath.

For a couple of nights this past week, one could sense autumn in the air, a haunting time of year. Walnut trees here are throwing their fruit to the ground and their leaves are already blowing around the hollow. Walnut trees are the last to leaf out in the spring and the first to drop them in the fall. At the beginning of summer someone will invariably stop out for something or other and, unsolicited, tell me that the ancient walnut tree hanging over the drive is dead. My father started doing it decades ago. No, it’s just the last to leaf out. That tree was here long before I was born and will be here long after I am gone.

There is a palpable rhythm to this life-or-death stuff and most of us eventually see it, feel it, and become one with it. If we didn’t we’d be constantly thrashing about, angry all of the time, demanding to know why things sometimes don’t go our way, why those we love with all of our hearts die, why life is so much more difficult for some than others. It helps a little to know a bit about music, not the scholarship of it, but the listening, where there might be an introduction to a song, followed by a verse or two, a bridge, a final verse, and an ending, an actual ending that concludes a story, our story. And if the story includes some wild creatures, then so much the better.

Kurt Ullrich lives in rural Jackson County. The Dubuque Telegraph Herald recently published a 60-page magazine of Kurt’s columns. The magazine can be purchased here