There was rain and no small winds that late evening. The growing gibbous shone bright around my chattering wet neighborhood of trees and brush, driveways and houses. I was under the carport enjoying the cool moist gusts when I heard a skittering on gravel, or pavement… both? It wasn’t startling, it just perked my ears up in time for a low moan which was startling. I wasn’t alone. Several tittering noises in two pitches rang out collectively—raccoons. For folks from some parts of rural North America, this is an unmistakable sound.

Around my second grade year, my parents were selling the house. I told one guy who visited that there were raccoons under the barn because I truly thought that was a selling point. I was wrong, as I would grow to realize, raccoons are not good neighbors. They are the monkeys of this continent. (Monkeys are terrible, is the premise here. I welcome your debate. You will lose. Monkeys suck.) They are crafty and sneaky and will steal whatever food they can get their actual hands on. Hands! Unlike monkeys, raccoons are very good at washing their food before consuming, which is actually pretty cool.

When I taught in Taipei, our school would sometimes go to the zoo where, as North American mammals, raccoons have a cush home. The kids absolutely loved all the masks and hands of them. They couldn’t understand why I wasn’t equally smitten. My students also didn’t care, while I inevitably questioned my own motives. The only time in life I’ve seen raccoons eating not garbage, neither bothering anyone. Happy raccoons? Or bored and lying in wait.

By this time in my current night underway, I’d realized I needed to remove myself. The whole scuffle were all right up within feet of me, noisy and busy in the dark. In their unknown number they continued their yelping and threatening, respectively, as I sneaked inside and shut the door. The group stayed in motion within sight of my view, deeply tucked into shadows; I still couldn’t make them out. Somebody continued groaning and then there was a scuffle. The yelps took on a higher pitch. All this proceeded as I realized I have on an outside light near enough. I turned it on, expecting to scatter the ruckus. Raccoons indeed! I saw that two were little, though certainly big enough to do some damage. Whoever had been angry—another raccoon? a cat? any theories please reach out—-had bailed from the pool of light in which now the babies and their mother seemed to collect themselves. Each pounced on the others in a frantic way, the biggest one shoving the babies along with her body. They crept in a waddle as a messy, aimless group, over to where birdseed was scattered in their reach. Where I’d tossed it. Never doing that again. Hello raccoon neighbors, please don’t stay.

In the morning: a baseball-sized pile of perfectly tubular and pointy black scat in the middle of my driveway. Raccoons.

Lightning always leads the way. Like when you know which club you’re going to and you spy the distant strobes going wild. You stumble down the street arm in arm with your equally sure-footed friends, aflutter with anticipation. Around a corner the beat lands, first in your body, then your ears. Thunder saunters in like this, sneakily powerful. Now you’re arrived. When the rain comes down it is a dance floor full of strangers sweating, grinning. The air grows torrential, and you are lost to the rhythm around you. Your friends are nearby but you can’t hear them unless they yell in your ear. The pattering grows pelting. The sky drops the beat.

The sun rises over the Tetons, softening their youthful roughness in layers of pale light. This is raptor country, a fact which causes me some confusion as I spy massive dark shadows flying swiftly over farmland through the morning haze.

These fields which, now graced by sunlight, glow with a green so yellow it’s as if this corner of country has been highlighted. I want to annotate everything, weeks later still beset by the confusion of broken trust, even as attempts to mend are made. Raptor calls are common—this early hour has them furtive in the hunt. I make out a shape atop a hay bale only just in time to watch it leap, feet first, into high grass. It’s a flurry of fluffy white pantaloons and reaching talons, broad wings catching the last inch of air before the ground, robust body somehow never touching. As it takes off, smoothly enough though neither quickly nor gracefully, I wonder at the hour and the breadth of the bird: could it have been an owl?

Looking around the fields I learn that not only Kestrels and Kingfishers hover—I spy a small dark falcon at work, suspended in the air with seemingly little effort. There is a reservoir nearby, so that every other electricity pole is graced by such a gathering of tree parts as to make a retrieving dog blush. The nests of osprey are easy to spot: all sticks, no twigs, protruding in every direction from what seems haphazard but is obviously a very stable home to raise a brood. In the early light the families are spending time together, parents visibly feeding their young in one nest. In another, two adult birds seem to be chatting.

I take myself to the water. A great blue heron hunts, slowly stalking in the shallow, reedy, mucky shores. A stilt stands in the solid mud on shore, exactly as you’d expect of it. Enter an osprey, wings wide, dipping her talons into the water as she flies. It’s hard to tell if she is swooping to hunt something or simply enjoying the cool wet on her toes. I have barely formed the question when a larger bird cruises in, directing its energy toward the osprey. A chase begins, and now I wonder if the first bird does have something in her claws that the larger bird is chasing. Ominously, a third bird swoops down into the drama. Now it’s two eagles, a couple, staking what must be territorial claims against my peaceful osprey. I wonder absently if there’s a teaching here as I watch the giant partners in pursuit of the lither bird. Something about the arbitrary nature of territory and competition. It’s clear that either eagle might catch the osprey if it was inclined, but the pair comes shy of attacking. The osprey, dogged after a while, flies off into the grand sky over the wide water. The bigger birds circle once before alighting again, separately in their respective tops of trees, on either side of their bay. Unperturbed, the heron and stilt remain on the shoreline.

I keep accidentally dipping my books in hot springs. She didn’t write down recipes she just never forgot things. There’s goodness in gossip there’s safety in telling. They gaslight you baby so you’ll buy what they’re selling. It’s a matter of time til someone starts preaching. It’s life you’ve been loving but now your heart’s reachin’.

A ways down: construction. There are just a few vehicles ahead of me; I put the car in park for the long wait. In traveling as the lone driver and passenger of my car-casa, this is a rare opportunity: I am progressing toward my goals and yet am not required to maintain vigilance to the road. In transit I am the type to pull over often, if only to not drive for a moment; Yellowstone suits me for so many reasons. At this red light I manage to apply all the necessary sunblock, make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, then eat the pb&j before resuming the wheel.

The next time I find myself in this type of summer park standstill, it is behind a white Suburban hulking with darkened windows over my petite Prius. At intervals, I catch the SUV leaning this way and that, rocking side to side even in its parked position. What kerfuffle, what commotion must be occurring behind those tinted windows? The vehicle bounces on its chassis in response as we continue waiting.

I dreamed, now that the motherhood you used to plan against has come, I dreamed it all but softening your nature, so that my phone rang and you asked how I was doing. The morning came brightly pine scented, limned with peeking sunshine and birdsong, twinkling. No thoughts of prior or potential lives could distract me, then, the moment an adventure. Just so, an older bison bull crossed the road ahead of my car, bellowing. As he reached the opposite greenery, the whole width and weight of him flopped into a patch of dust there. Wallowing is too melancholy a word for the rambunctious task the buffalo set himself to. As a dog tosses itself in grass or snow or shit, this ungainly animal ten times the size wriggled, limbs up spine down, to gather dirt into its thick blanket of dark fur. Its legs seemed incongruously thin as they waggled from one side to the other across the giant creature’s tall chest. Nearby the dozens, probably hundreds, of other herd among the hillocks and recesses of field. All the beasts resting and grazing, the broad family completed by the here and there appearances of playful calves marked by the russet coppers of their first ninety days. Among those varyingly large masses of fuzzy browns, the lithe and lightly shaded figures of a family of pronghorn weave. As the breeze rolls over the high grasses, the serenity strikes oceanic; here a buoyant group of smaller ungulates drift amid a leisurely school of bison. I float along. Just down the road, several cars stopped on dirt shoulders, many more stopped directly on the pavement. I wait patiently with my foot on the brake. From his truck in the oncoming lane, out the open window a man is telling the cars ahead of me where to look, and for what. I am clearly uninterested in a full conversation but this driver bellows down toward my car, “It’s a bear.” Deadpan, and drives on. I am still chuckling as I pull up toward another bison bull, lounging boulder large in the near, high grass. I slow down and wink from my window. The buffalo winks back.

There are several miles of Yellowstone Park, definitely more, where the air is graced by mineral presences that describe a tale of week-used porta-potty. Open your windows to be smacked by blurry memories of festival lines ending in uncomfortable small spaces, not to mention what awaited you inside. Here, it’s in vast landscape of hills and mountains, greens and florals, wildlife and weather. In this glorious view and extra fresh air: a smell not unlike several hundred human reliefs simmering in a hot plastic box for days. Earth farts.

At a trailhead with a toilet in northern Yellowstone, there were several No Parking signs, a few more for Horse Trailers Only parking, and then a weird little section for 15 Minute Parking. The last was crookedly occupied by both a campervan and an outback, the two squeezed awkwardly enough that there was no room for me without blocking one or the other. As I figured this out, the others began to move along. A young femme came out of the toilet to see her car moving and peeked into the passenger window. Her grin was wide and shoulders shaking as she looked back toward me, semi-blocking them in. I smiled and shrugged, catching her laughter as I realized how they must have gone through the same thing when they rolled up. I was still smiling as I went to use the toilet.

I stopped hating mosquitoes when I lost faith in people. You strove to evolve and she couldn’t meet you. We been trying for small talk but the weather’s all global warming. I’ve heard mass extinction, who’s got better stories? The babies are running now, pure joy in motion. Let’s all cry together let’s make a whole ocean.

Curiosity did not kill the cat, but remade it a lion. He’s gonna have to pay for that no matter what you’re buyin. Who’s car were you following when y’all got lost that time? I’m begging for some hope here, would you please give me a sign. Magpies in their cliques flying by complaining calls. The dog wants to play fetch but won’t bring back the ball. That advice isn’t new, he’s still not gonna take it. If you want to be you, just fake til you make it.

I borrowed the dog, we enjoyed the ride. You ordered the entrée for what came on the side. She’s starting a business, they remade their place. They’re growing a family, we’re all sharing space. Magpies are squawking. The ducks’ clucks sound content. The dog wants for teaching or we’ll need a fence. The cat’s on the roof but what’s that shrill mewling cry? Peacocks at the haymakers, life under big skies.

the bruise has provenance unknown. the ache too many witnesses. we endeavor toward a home with tradition every christmas. here now confronted with the truth still hidden all the while. there’s nothing more to make it smooth, your edge against their mild. damp fecundity, soggy greenery, clouds aren’t snuggly like you’d hoped. hours driving past wet scenery, hours wondering how we’ll cope. each is easily agitated, each other quick to blame. leave free creatures sovereign, let the babes choose their own names.

you experience as comorbidities grief and celebration. you were born to myriad futures to live many at a time. if we’re gonna go down swingin then let’s have that conversation. taking turns by circling, vultures scavenge in a line. you didn’t seek the accolades, they chose you nonetheless. he wanted to be angry but he knew they’d done their best. there’s no story can’t confine you, that’s how history’s been lately. you talk of nihilistic while you secretly choose saintly. when love looks at you you’ll know it. if you do love, let it go. I’ve got nothing to show for them, but my lives are all I know.

a damp to make you wonder if you’ve sweat. a damp to ensure you’re sweating. puffs and swaths in shades of slate draped over the precious stretch of sky. tree and hill tops colliding in the depths of distances, sometimes a lake peeking blue in degrees of haze. a cloud shelf beneath which rich green is abundant, dripping with fecundity and reeking of life, exuberant among layered greys, regal.