I’ve been feeling wild lately.
My days have been filled gathering acorns and picking up rocks, rescuing wildlife and tending my garden, while my nights have passed gazing into campfires in the backyard or creating crafts well past midnight in a messy corner of my house. I walk outside at all hours– feeling the air, making eye contact with rabbits and foxes, tasting the change of seasons. I even slept out in my hammock one night.
My ideas are all over the place lately, bouncing from novel notes to lines of poetry, from old short stories I’d like to revive to new concoctions of words I’d like to brew. It may sound chaotic, but I like letting them be free and uninhibited. How else are the unexpected gems supposed to find their way in?
One reason for my recent descent into wildness is definitely the change in weather. I wrote in my journal on November 8th at 6:44PM:
“I’m sitting in my hammock chair on my back porch guarding the humane trap I set in hopes of catching the opossum I saw earlier with the wound on his face. I don’t want a cat to wander in instead. Luckily, it’s a lovely night for opossum catching.*
This is my favorite time of year, when the weather is perfect for being outside at all hours, maybe a little warm in the heat of the day or a little cool at night, but never “too” either way. These are the days (and nights and mornings and dusks) when I can’t stop going outside, when I walk here, sit here, read here, write here, eat here, be here, sometimes even sleep here. I often tell people my favorite month is October, but I need to admit that October can disappoint. Too hot, too humid, too itchy, too sneezy, too much like September or June. Really , my favorite month is this, be it November or February or some random thirty days in between.
My October was wonderful, but not because of the weather. Now the jack-o-lanterns are rotting in the compost pit and the skeleton mugs have been returned to the shelves, and finally October is arriving, late and full of excuses.”
Another catalyst comes from the novels I’ve been reading. I read these two beautiful books back-to-back, and both had me longing for a secret home in the woods.
October, October by Katya Balen is a middle grade novel about a girl named October who was raised off the grid in a little cabin in the woods with her dad. When she is eleven-years-old, her dad suffers a serious injury, and October has to go stay with “the woman who is her mother” in the city. The book is told from October’s point-of-view, and the author does an amazing job capturing her emotions and way of seeing the world. There is nothing supernatural about this book, but it is magical nonetheless, and the end made me cry happy tears in a coffee shop.
Wake the Wild Creatures by Nova Ren Suma is about a girl named Talia who grew up in an old abandoned hotel hidden at the top of a misty mountain with her mom and a small group of other women and girls who all escaped from various abusive pasts. Some of the women, like Talia’s mother, are wanted for crimes they committed in the outside world, and when Talia is thirteen, the outside world catches up with them. Her mother is sent to prison, and Talia is sent to live with relatives she didn’t know existed, but she never gives up hope of returning to her real home in the woods. This book does have supernatural elements, but they are weaved in so subtly and gently, mesmerizing the reader in a way only Nova Ren Suma can. I finished this book not with tears, but with a strong desire to howl at the moon and dance around a bonfire.
Whatever the reason(s), I’ve been spending longer and longer stretches away from screens and keeping my phone on silent a lot more often these days. (My favorite notifications are from my trail cam, anyway.)
The result is a feeling of alertness and aliveness and a connection to nature that I hope lasts all winter and long into spring and maybe, MAYBE even into the dreary days of summer. (Is it possible to be wild in August in Texas? I’d really like to find out.)
* P.S. I did catch that injured opossum and took him to the North Texas Wildlife Center where he had his wounds treated for about a week. Then I released him back on our property. My husband named him Scarburrow. Here’s a photo of him the day we caught him and the day he came back home.
A quick unrelated note:
Some people are confused about the difference between my blog and my newsletter, which is understandable since both appear in your inbox from time to time. I’ll try to clear things up.
Blog posts are anecdotes or thoughts about one topic, such as our trip to Maine or the closing of my favorite coffee shop. They’re published here on my website, where anyone has access, but people who subscribe to my blog also get an email when I post.
Newsletters include a short story or message at the top, followed by news, announcements, updates, and what I’m reading. They’re only emailed to subscribers, but later can be viewed by anyone when I share the link online.
*THIS* is a blog post. If you received it in your email, you’re a subscriber. Congrats! If you also got an email called “Winning Poems, Ghostly Tales, & Gratitude for the Change in Seasons,” you’re subscribed to my newsletter, too. Double congrats! I don’t usually share them on the same day, but I did this time to help differentiate between the two.
Thank you for following along on my writing (and life) journey. You can unsubscribe from either or both at any time and there will be NO hard feelings on my part, unless you’re my parents.
Carie Juettner 