The wind blew fresh and fierce all night, and the stars whirled and the pines tossed. The sizzling days of summer were done and that night with its wild beauty had not been made for sleep.
Before dawn I slipped from my sleeping bag and into my shoes and set off across the hills. In the soft expectancy of early-morning darkness I hiked the familiar woods, coming suddenly upon an antlered buck atop a piney ridge. I drew up and halted and we stood a dozen paces from each other, for several minutes taking each others' measure. Then he plunged down the hill just as the sun leaped over the opposite ridge, and I set off, down into the tiny valley.
Young light skittered around the California poppies and the goldenrod. Sunbaked grasses swished around my knees. Jays squawked their bellicose challenges to the world.
And there, halfway up the trunk of a tree at the bottom of the hill, he sat. He was certainly no housecat, unless a creature three feet long could be a housecat. And anyway, this creature's short, tawny fur was rough like a golden retriever's, not soft and silky like my tabby's. I stood tiptoe looking up at him, thrills of excitement running from spine-top to toe-tip. The bobcat, for I was sure that was what it was, stared calmly down at me, and we stayed like that, silent and motionless, for several minutes. Eventually I had to leave, of course, and I reluctantly turned and walked down through the valley.
Years later I happened upon a group of bobcats in a zoo. Until that moment I had had no very clear idea what a bobcat looks like. Those animals were nothing like the cat I had encountered. It was not a bobcat.
At the library I found pictures of mountain lions, and there sat my cat. It had been most definitely a young mountain lion. And I had been too trusting and naïve to be afraid.
Fear breeds contempt, and possibly my complete lack of fear inspired respect. Or more likely, he was young and his stomach full. But what has stayed with me throughout the years was the majesty and grace that flooded that entire morning.
I was a teen back then, and I just celebrated the fifth birthday of my eighth grandchild.
Record the majesty or the mayhem of each new day, and you will not forget.
