"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better."
Albert Einstein
My husband is a gardener; we call him "Farmer Frank" in our neighborhood. The year he gave a small pumpkin to every neighborhood kid, after I'd watched the pumpkins grow and overtake our entire back lawn that season with leaves like you'd find in dinosaur days, huge and prehistoric-like, remains one of my favorite memories of the kids' early years. The neighborhood kids were all about five, and they took their bright orange pumpkins in their small hands and brought them home as though they were on a school field trip to the "pumpkin patch."
Frank truly can grow anything he touches, while I, on the other hand, kill anything living that I touch. Hopefully, that doesn't apply to humans, but I must admit babies don't like me nor do dogs, and I've never met a plant I didn't kill. I liken his skill/talent to that eye-of-the-tiger-competitive spirit some athletes have from when they're in elementary school; I believe both are innate and not something you can develop or cultivate.
Frank also feeds the birds. He has bird houses in the spring where parent-birds come to build nests and over a matter of weeks have babies. He revels in the baby's first flight from the house and usually happens to be in his yard to witness it when it occurs. Usually, a couple babies are born, but only one seems to survive. Seems barbaric to me but, hey, what do I know - the nature thing isn't innate in me, and I'm all "peace & love & the giving tree" and never been one for survival-of-the-fittest.
In winter, Frank has bird feeders. Faithfully, he puts on his deep-snow boots and trudges out to the middle of the backyard to fill his feeders. He screams and pounds on the deck to keep squirrels away, and he hates the crows. The crows are usually on the grass, below the feeder, eating anything the beautiful birds Frank invites, drop from it.
Early October appeared to be peak foliage season in Portland, Maine this year. The trees I saw out my back bedroom window, from my bed, were breathtaking -- brilliant yellows, oranges, and red, the trees beginning to drop their leaves. As I turned to step into my shower one morning, I noticed, and I'm not quite sure why, a crow at the tippy-top of a beautiful, full-foliage tree in our field just beyond our yard. That crow was on his tippy toes, or talons, precariously balancing on a tiny twig at the very top of the tree, wings a-flapping as he tried to stay on.
I paused a minute wondering why he was doing that. And, as I sometimes do, I drifted off into the metaphor-world and the wonderment of what this meant to me. The fact that I would even notice this happening told me I'd better observe for a minute because this meant something.
The crow continued to fight to stay on the branch for a matter of minutes. Surely, the view, if that was his motive, would have been equally good from half way up the tree or from a thicker branch. Or would it? That is what spoke to me. It's better to be at the tippy-top, fighting to hold on, because the view is NOT better from part way up; the air is NOT better from part way up; the feeling in his body of pure adrenaline pumping is NOT possible from part way up.
The crow told me that we should go as high up the tree as we can. Why? Because we can. And because the view at the top is unparalleled.
(photo: Evergreen Cemetary, Portland, Maine)
