Nature

The sunny days we had last week drew me outside for some much needed yardwork.  The trumpeter swans flew overhead as I wrested with the roots of blackberry bushes on our hillside.  Snowgeese lifted in a majestic cloud over the brilliant yellow of a nearby daffodil field in full bloom.  Eagles squawked at each other at the top of cedar trees on our neighbor’s property.  It was hard to get any work done, as my senses were full to overflowing with the beauty and grandeur of the sights and sounds that surrounds us here in Skagit Valley. 

I love all the wildlife that share their home with us.  A huge raccoon sauntered by my front door the other day.  Rabbit pellets lie at the edge of our lawn.  I hear coyotes calling out and great horned owls hooting in the night when I sleep with the windows open.  Our birdfeeders keep the songbirds, squirrels and chipmunks as regular visitors.  We’ve seen opossums, skunks and even porcupines on our road.  Deer are frequent guests and even wild turkeys have made their way to our yard on occasion. 

My thoughts drifted back to my own childhood, growing up near Issaquah.  We had bears and cougars roaming our neighborhood in those days, so the wildlife wasn’t appreciated as much back then as the wildlife I enjoy now.  The creek that ran through our community kept me busy in the summer catching crawdads, minnows and tadpoles.  In the fall, I’d walk into the woods and watch the salmon fighting their way upstream to spawn.  I often reached down to pet them, as there were so many, and the water was so shallow.  All that is gone now, though.  

Development in the area has nearly dried up the creek so that only skunk cabbage and reed grass grows in the spot where it used to be.  No more salmon, tadpoles or crawdads.  My heart ached the last time I drove through there and saw what was left of the wide-open spaces where we used to play.  So many changes, and none of them seemed to be good.

As I was working out in the yard last week, I wondered how many of these sights and sounds of nature that are around us now, will be just a memory for my son when he is an old man.  Will he remember back to his childhood encounters with nature on Pleasant Ridge with the same fond memories I remember my own?  Will the snowgeese still be landing in the fields in front of our house?  Will the deer still be nibbling on the apple trees?  Will the chickadees still be eating from our hands?

Change.  It’s not one of my favorite words, but it’s inevitable. Sometimes change is good and that’s why it’s called “progress.”  While it may be progress for mankind, it’s not necessarily the case for nature, however.  One thing in nature I’m sure won’t change though, is that we will always have blackberries bushes.