Friday, May 3, 2013

Favorite Things: Eight

{Part of a Friday series with AlexStar and Lee that celebrates our power to discern, discriminate, decide and declare. Please join us in the comments or on your own site if you have a few favorites, too.}

Hot on the heels of all that blathering about choice, it's Friday again. I just lose those early weekdays somehow, wheredigo? (to quote my daughter)

Favorite Tree

:: This category was Alex's doing, I believe. Trees are...significant. If I could have a power animal it would be a tree (don't over-think, just roll with it). I cry far more tears over trees in my acquaintance being cut down than I do the animals I eat, so what does that say about me? The way I remember my childhood (i.e. selectively) I am always going in or out of this tree or that. It appeals to the prey animal in me to be up high, as well as the hunter, the thrill seeker, the problem solver, the introvert and something else ineffable that just feels right cradled in arboreal arms.

Rather than try to come up with just one kind of tree that I love (impossible), I've chosen an individual, one actual tree that was a kind of refuge for me in the foreign New England world of brick buildings and dress codes and mind-numbing scholastic achievement. This beech tree.

Flouting said dress code, ca. 2000


With my friend Patrick.

Favorite Woodland Creature

:: Bobcat. This crepuscular cousin of the eurasian lynx is not only beautiful and exceedingly successful (it is surprisingly not classified as endangered, happily roaming over much of the continent's wild territories in many kinds of habitat), it is the trickster of the cat family. Like the coyote, but far more clever (no anvils or dynamite), this animal seems to delight in puzzles and obfuscation. I admire it as I admire all feline creatures, but it stands out for me because it has managed to remain more mysterious and viable than others of its family. Bravo, for surviving and for doing it with class.

felix rufus, photograph by Norbert Rosing

2 comments:

  1. Look at you being a little blonde grungepunk!

    I am so far behind on favorites :-( Too much busy has killed my blog mojo. When I get it back I'm going to make up for it in one gigantic fell swoop, though.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Haha, words that, before today, have never been applied to me. I hear ya on blog mojo, I keep meaning to post in between Fridays but then I blink and Friday is coughing politely in my ear.

      Delete