I like to bring a beverage when Deets and I go on longer walks. sometimes I have to put that beverage down, as you can imagine. one time, so far, I left a mug in the woods. this is a high desert woods, which is to say everything is low to the ground and brushy and there’s a lot of open dirt space as well. I thought this particularly bright and pale blue mug stood out beautifully. of course the day I lost it, I got home with Deets and didn’t notice any lack of mug. I also didn’t notice the next day, and continued not to notice until several days later when my shelf of very few mugs was looking a little empty. I had four mugs total at that time so this missing mug became a big deal. I guess not enough of a deal for me to notice sooner, but it definitely mattered when it did. I have this bonus problem of pathological guilt when I lose things that people have given to me; it’s a slippery existential slope that appears in my psyche to really drive home the fact that I have lost a thing and am a loser. if I’m not careful I get to ride a whole shame spiral around this object, potentially even for the rest of my life. so mostly I try very hard not to lose things that were gifts from loved ones. of course this mug was a gift from a loved one. of all the mugs I could’ve lost! I needed to reach for a positive spin on this immediately upon realizing it—I recognize the danger. so the next time I went to a thrift store, I bought a new mug. I said to myself, and I thought to myself, and I very consciously willed this: “because I have now replaced this mug I will find the lost gift next time we are in the woods.” the day after the purchase of my cute new-to-me mug, springtime comes in full force. our high desert goes through a weird several days of rain and the ground of this forest is just atrocious mud. our entire backyard really is sticky, icky mud. it’s the kind of mud that once you have one piece of it on your shoe, you take another step and have a platform. even Deets gets fussy when she steps her paws in it, shaking them off and gnawing until the dirt is gone from between her little toe beans. obviously we’re not going to the woods these several springtime days, and I avoid using my new mug during this time; it is a placeholder. I still feel a little strange calling this backyard area of ours a woods or forest because I grew up on the East Coast where everything is super wet and growing all the time. even the mud is too wet to stick in that verdant fecundity, a direct contrast to my current arid habitat where in the days of rain everything grew suddenly and exponentially: green, vibrant little shoots coming up all over the place, tiny flowers carpeting the dirt, dry tree branches filling with buds, and mobs of deer coming to feast on all the newborn growth. me and Deets, we wait. we wait for the mud to not be sticky icky anymore. the deer are curious about Deets, relegated to the gravel driveway with her fuzzy little feet. we need things to be just dry enough to allow us to hike up that hill to our little forest. Deets has plans. the wetness of the week has led to a seeming frenzy of lizard and bug action, and Deets can’t sit still about it. she’s trying to chase every moving thing immediately but regrets every step she takes while in the dirt that isn’t dried. evenings pass where we wander the driveway, searching the little ditches for fun. the deer greet Deets as they pass through on their grazings. days go by this way, often featuring late afternoon storms. one day without rain is not enough to harden the sticky, but eventually the days of dry arrive. (not that this is ideal overall—ideally it would rain here for long enough to replenish the rivers and make up for the lack of snowfall. that’s just not this story.) the weather is perfect and Deets is beside herself with impatience. she tugs at her lead and talks about hunting constantly. on the next morning I don’t have work, she and I are going straight to the woods first thing. by then we are both so excited. taking this cat out off-leash in our backyard has become a favorite exercise for me, and for her part Deets gets to hunting immediately. I notice that there’s one bird actually following her around, a phenomenon I’ve not seen before. deer friends are one thing but what is this bird up to, I wonder. it’s a towhee and I don’t know it’s opinion of Deets but there is unmistakable interest. I realize that she does get yelled at by towhees kind of frequently as she roots in the underbrush; towhees have this raspy yawp with a descending note that sounds completely approbative. when we get yelled at like that, I take notice immediately and usually wonder where the nest is. Deets did manage to catch a towhee once, and like a perfect murderous angel she brought that bird home for the torture she’d planned, and like a parent with loving boundaries I rescued that bird easily. this towhee following us silently now had me wondering if the rescued bird maybe healed planning vengeance, the first stage of which would be stalking Deets on her wanders. I’m composing the whole story for myself as we begin our journey into the trees that are mostly giant bushes with a smattering of glorious, eminently climbable juniper. I’ve got a mug (stolen from a past residence) of coffee. it’s a beautiful Sunday morning with a chill still in the air as the sun shines warm in a spring so true: cool air, warm sun, happy cat, settled heart. we’re having a great time in the ominous shadow of this strangely silent towhee. I’m particularly enjoying all of the other bird sounds. it’s high spring in the high desert and I’ve got my phone app out listening to chirps, songs, squawks, trills. one especially awesome aspect of this ecosystem is that because the growth is low to the ground, the expanse of sky and open country is truly fantastic. you can see and hear birds because light and sound really travel over these distances. here in my hearing are the moans of collared doves, the chipper songs of meadowlarks, vesper sparrows, house finches. I glimpse a little bushtit hopping through the low brush; kingbird and bluebird perched up at the top, brilliantly yellow and blue in the sun, respectively. looking higher I spy magpies aloft, along with crows and vultures, maybe a hawk a little farther off. all of this, in my backyard! this cute little wooded area is essentially private from humans and shared by every other creature from far and wide. I apologize to the lizards, caught in quick succession; I will light a candle for them later. Deets is throwing another one around. in a familiar and ongoing internal monologue, I reconcile my relief that she’s not chasing birds or bunnies. I often run a timer to see how long we can walk because I get really excited when I suddenly realize we’ve been walking for like 45 minutes and I thought it was only 20, or alternatively, how long have we been walking and it’s only been five minutes! I like when I’m enjoying myself enough to lose track of time. that’s my favorite—who doesn’t love those experiences? so Deets and I have been walking for a while and the timer is approaching an hour already. I’m sitting down to drink some water and bask in the adventure, just letting the whole scene sink in, when suddenly I notice! bright and pale blue. there it is, my mug—just where I left it, and precisely when I knew it would be found.
update: less than a week after this post I set the mug down on the patio shelf and it became the first thing Deets has ever broken.
Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment 