demonstrations of strength impress us,
displays of kindness mark us.
sometimes we're tempted by the simplistic view that holds nature as nothing more than a series of uncorrelated events.
sometimes we look at the trees and they're just trees.
the birds diving in the pale-blue-sky are just dumb and fickle.
the deer pacing in the deep-green-grass are just scared and desperate.
the wolves roaming around the warm-brown-trees, the biting-apex-larger-than-life machines of nature droning around the ever-present-inconceivably-huge portrayals of resistance are just stupid, evil beasts.
and then, something happens.
something that reminds us that every thing that makes us humans has come from nature herself,
and we are not that special.
a loon, driving its anguish and its rage and its beak into the heart of an eagle that ate its chick: revenge.
a deer, frozen to the ground by its gruesome end at the hands of a demon made of screaming metal and light: fear.
a wolf, going out of its way to spare a problem, a nuisance, a rival, simply to prevent the bloodshed in his family: kindness.
what do we have, that we could not easily find out in the green?
intelligence? like the crow that warns its brothers and sisters of the ones that'd do them harm, and then prepare to protect themselves?
charisma? like the birds that spend entire seasons training their dances and songs to impress their lovers?
loyalty? like the mother bear, that runs for miles and miles and miles after bears twice her size, wolves ten times her number, and men thousands of times more dangerous, to protect her cubs?
love? like two eagles, talons locked together, diving and spiraling through the air at breakneck speed, knowing, trusting the other will let go before both meet their death?
the most 'human' act of love, to wish to hide your pain and your ruin from those you love, to make it all seem like it's going to be okay, just so they don't worry about you? like that wolf, 21, that waited until his family went out to hunt so he could climb their favorite mountain, coil at the top, under his favorite tree, to rest alone, a final time?
