Nature as a Compass — Tailwind Acres

I started with gusto writing blog posts in the Spring, intending on their being a new one weekly but the realities set in of juggling distractions and work. I miss writing. Maybe you will hold me accountable. Ugh, I feel like a slacker.

Enter Fall. A season I adore for the smell and the harvest moon; a season I dread as a precursor to winter. I’m trying to get excited. Really. I even suggested to Adam that we invest in cross country skis so we can go up and down the gravels this winter when the footing is too rough for running.

The other morning, the neighborhood Sandhill quartet flew right overhead, literally I could see their underbellies. They’ve been frequenting our unfinished shallow water wetland and likely will head south soon.

Our shallow water excavation after 6 inches+ of rain in one week.

The other evening, a herd of deer played at the water’s edge. Yes, I mean to anthropomorphize the deer, because there isn’t any other way to describe the scene. The fawns played a good ol’ fashion game of tag and splashed for the pure hell of it.

The other day, a massive caterpillar stopped me dead in my tracks as I was finishing up a run interval. It was hauling across the gravel, as if it knew it was at risk in the road. I’d never seen one like it, so Adam and I spent the evening combing through online guides to see if we could identify it from a photo I took. No luck.

All around us nature ticks on. It’s easy to look out at the corn and feel like man’s touch is everywhere. Even here where it’s quiet and we rarely see others. But nature’s battle all around us and a pecking order ensues. One hen came up missing last week. Evidence that she met her fate lay in a pile of feathers by the garage, then more feathers by the road and even more in the ditch. We’ve only lost two, so I started to get a little cocky thinking we’d outsmarted the predators. When I saw the feathers, I felt foolish for forgetting about hungry bellies of the fox, coyote, and raccoon.

The world feels so small right now; it used to feel large and open. Our weekends full of races, always looking forward to that next trip or booking that next Airbnb. But that isn’t current reality. With restricted boarders Adam and I are left wondering if we’ll be able to rebook tickets to Portugal; wondering if family will be able to adventure and take advantage of youth. A friend and I agree this a privileged problem, but it doesn’t stop the wanderlust. Maybe you’re not feeling wanderlust, but a yearning for something to return? Maybe you felt “it” 5 months ago, maybe “it” hasn’t hit or maybe “it” is just starting to seep in because winter is right around the corner. Winter already means slowing down, quiet, and isolation, when there has already been some slow, some quiet and some isolation in a time that is normally frantic and exhausting.

And I need to bring myself back to the forces around me. That nature ticks on around us. I haven’t heard the Sandhills in a few days. The swallow tail caterpillar which built a cocoon in Linden’s little bug house hasn’t emerged yet. And hazy sky to the west has been a reminder that something seemingly happening so far away is on the horizon. And that all is not right in the world. And that it’s not so small because we can see evidence of those fires 1,800 miles down the road. I think about the time this summer, when we burned a pile of decaying brush in the yard. That fire jumped and roared and came so close to a living walnut tree which could have set our entire windbreak on fire. Fire is powerful and I felt microscopic.

Nature has the ability to bring you close and bring you global and for that, it feels like my only compass.