Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Home Sweet Home

Assignment: go on an adventure, take a path you've never been. So, it's 5 degrees outside, I slap on my "sleeping bag with arms", warmest gloves and hat and head up the road with my dog Cooper. We're going to find our way to Matt's pond. He's my nephew. When I met my late husband Lance, he owned 10 acres near where I live, which he promptly sold to Matt. I'd been there a few times when we first met, when Lance was 26. In his late teens, he actually lived in what was once their campground's bathhouse. Pretty rough but hell, I lived in a house with no water for a month in my twenties. Same attraction as he had - it was free. I'd forgotten all about that bathhouse.

What surprised me most was that I felt no emotion. My husband's been dead a little over 4 years and I never know what will trigger the sadness that has become part of me. This was not a trigger.

Cooper and I found a convenient road down to the pond. Again, I'd been there a few times with Lance when we first met but I barely recognized it. Mother Nature can change things in 21 years.

So another lesson learned about how I grieve - things/places that weren't a big part of my life with Lance don't necessarily bring on the tears, even if they were a big part of his life before we met. Plus I am currently well rested and in a very good place mentally. Fatigue and feeling vulnerable brings the sad closer to the surface. Or maybe I'm processing things differently as time goes by.

As I walked home, I thought it was too cold for a pretty sunset sky. I had hoped for a picture of the pond with color behind the trees' silhouettes. As I got nearer to my house, I realized I was wrong about the temperature affecting the color. The sky glowed behind the trees, behind my home, the place Lance and I shared it all. No tears. Just Home Sweet Home.






Monday, January 2, 2012

Of Mice and Me

Mouse-Eye View of my live trap
Here's a cool thing - 31 Days of Adventure. In this post I've combined the 1st & 2nd days' prompts - take a picture from an unusual angle and notice the little things. GREAT! I've been wanting to tell the world about the most amazing mouse. So here it is.

I live rurally in a very old house which will never be mouse proof. I simply share this space with the critters of the North Country. But I draw the line when they start eating my food, leaving deposits and scratching in the walls. Early on, I used the cheap traps. My husband would set them, since I was sure I'd lose a finger doing it. But I was the first one downstairs in the morning and sometimes, the poor mouse would only be partially nabbed, dragging itself across the room to die. I hated it. So I started buying more expensive UBER efficient, you-don't-see-the-dead-little-body traps. They were supposed to be throw-aways but I would eek 4 or 5 uses out of them, turning my head as I unsprung the trap over the garbage can, then taking a peek to see what a smooshed mouse looks like. I thought this was the right thing to do. I considered it nicer than my neighbor's way: rigging a bucket of water so they fall in and drown. I don't like that much. 

Then I realized I really don't like killing them at all. Plus I kept having to buy the darn traps. A-HA! Buy a  live trap! Every morning I walk in the woods so I could release them then. So that's what I've been doing. Then I wondered how far from the house they have to be let out. So I put red nail polish on one mouse's tail so I could see if it would come back. (Then I worried I killed it with the toxicity.) One cold morning I set a trapped mouse on the porch for an hour before my walk. In that time it died. Maybe it froze. So there I was, cuddling it in my mittens as I walked into the woods, trying to revive it. I felt awful. I laid it in a pretty, mossy spot and told it I was sorry. I didn't set the trap for a few days after that. 

I catch mice maybe every other day. I would stare into the cage, trying to notice markings, characteristics, something distinct. Some seemed smaller, others more intent on cleaning themselves, some sticking their little pink noses out the holes. One day, I found a great spot under a tree to release an especially cute little feller. I opened the door and it bounded over a boulder that held a stack of smaller rocks. I watched it go. And then the most amazing thing happened - it came back onto the top of the stack and looked at me. Just for a second. Then it was gone. I couldn't believe my eyes. Suddenly I felt connected to everything around me - the snow was sparkling in the sun, the bare trees spectacular, shadows dancing, beech leaves whispering. Holy smokes, was I connected!!


(Here's a preliminary sketch - the tree on the left is all wrong so the final drawing will be different.)

I put the trap away for a week, kind of my Christmas present to the mice in the neighborhood.
But tonight it's set again and who knows what joy or pain it will bring? What a gift to have such a memory to remind me to pay attention, look around as I walk and notice how beautiful the world is. Thank-you, little mouse.