Turn! Turn! Turn!

It is commonly said in the Açores that you will experience each season in a single day. This also applies to my new home in southern Montana. As I sit, the sky is dark and grey light is filtered through falling cotton. There are piles of soft stuff sitting on the ground, accumulating from the large and old cottonwoods that grow along the river. “Should I clean it up?” I ask Squanto, but figure another weather pattern will swoop in and remove the growing pillows.

And it is in the night a thunder like I haven’t heard in years wakes us both. The lightning illuminates the room and we count. “It’s farther away than I would have thought,” I tell Sq, but when the thunder does come, it is as if it was in my exact room, no distance too great to feel its power.

This morning when I went out to check the vegetables and say thank you to squash blossoms that only bloom early in the day, I noticed the cotton was, indeed, swept away.

Another two days of storms, and then my smartphone promises eight days of full sun. I ache for the sun as do my crops, but how many seasons will pass between then and now? How many times will the weather change its mind before it performs?

At night, Squanto and I have taken to driving. Normally this would be when we are in bed, but because of the long summer days, because of our northern locale, because the light never seems to want to give in, we are still awake. We drive country roads, rural roads, back roads, county roads, roads with no names or descriptions, roads with no pavement or wire.

The other night we took a road and I told myself, I told Squanto, we would see something. I didn’t know what we would see, I didn’t know if we would see anything, but I rolled down the back seat’s right side window just as he likes, and told him to keep his eyes open. I kept my eyes open. We drove for miles. No cars, no people. Abandoned cabins, wildflowers, rock. In search of nothing, in want of everything.

It was then that we saw the wild elk. Settling in for the night, comfortable in a pack, comfortable in a fissure in the hills. They’re not like the elk in Colorado, they’re not brash and demanding of your space. They keep to themselves, they run from you. They don’t want to know you. We got out of the car and stood on the side of the road and let the minutes pass, our eyes focused, our bodies still.

It wasn’t until I was driving back that I noticed the deer. The cows. The birds. It was through the rolling hills we drove that the orchestra appeared, teeming with song. It was the elk that had opened our eyes. We had been hearing birdsong the entire time. And not just the same bird but so many birds, so many birds with so many sounds. I thought of all the animals I could see and hear, and all the ones I could not. The snakes. The bugs, chipmunks, marmots.

It was darkening now, the time when humans would be going to bed. Wild animals would be safe from the species that plagued their day, their movements. They would be safe to feed, to talk, to intermingle. Safe to sing.

But there is a space, a place where I can take them in and they can take me in. Me, the dog, the elk. Three species consider each other, acknowledge each other. Our eyes meet, our energies draw from one another. There is no fear, only passing seasons.