No Fences

No Fences

I look out over low hills. Yellow grasslands with scattered pine trees. The trees thicken into forest at the higher elevations. At this edge between forest and grass, I watch several elk and a buffalo graze. I know where I am: in the foothills of the Black Hills of South Dakota. I know when I am: a thousand years or more in the past. I'm not sure how I know this time stamp… it just seems to be. I watch this scene almost like viewing a photograph with only slight movements by the animals eating grass and the trees in the wind.

Then without warning, something changes. It is not the image I see or the place I am at. No… it is the time. I am now seeing this exact scene but in a different time. Maybe ten or a hundred or a thousand years into the future. There is a lesson about the circular nature of life. There is a lesson about nature being more resilient than I may give it credit.

And there is a lesson of nature's resiliency despite human occupation. With this last thought, I look down and see a very old fence laying flat on its side on the ground. I can hear Mother Earth, the Teacher, instructing me that human obsessions for control over nature, both in good and bad ways, is both arrogant and insignificant to the larger picture. That she is not ours to "fix"… because it's Mother Earth that is our caretaker. And She asks for our respect and our gentleness and our care because she does truly love us and enjoys taking care of us and does not want to see us go away.

This is my Journey.

A'ho
--Owl

14"x11" ink and colored pencil with digital manipulation

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